Forums and Blogs: When to Moderate, How to Promote?

[Lou Ordorica]

My boss forwarded me this question today:

We're in the process of launching a forum and blog area on our web site. I'm curious if anyone else has experience with this, either presently or in a former life, and if so:


Is your forum/blog moderated?
If moderated, is it edited before the content appears live? Do you have any particular strategy for encouraging participation?

To be effective, forums need to be actively moderated by either company staff, paid experts, or leaders culled from the community of forums users.


Here is nice list of Top Ten practices for forums.

Blogs are usually unmoderated. It's good to have a policy in place to
ground participants. For example, here is Sun's:


http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/policy.html


Content appears live on forums before it can be moderated. This is the
case for blogs, too. However, a blog author can choose to moderate the comments posted to his or her blog, or disable comments completely.


The last question is a bit more difficult. To encourage employees to blog, leading by example is effective. For example, a CEO who can adeptly demonstrate the power of blogging to start conversations with customers, and build up their confidence and trust by being open and transparent will only motivate his or her employees to do the same.

Highlighting active bloggers by showcasing their posts and profiles on well-trafficked web pages will also drive participation. The intangible benefits -- such as enhancing one's reputation -- really mean a lot.

Along the same lines, rewards and recognition programs for active forums users are strong motivators. Acknowledging member's contributions through Ebay-style badges (Gold, Silver, Bronze) is one technique, but should be adjusted for your organization's context. Saying 'thank you' to people goes a long way, too.

Aggregating and syndicating active blogs and forums activity is another way to build awareness, and has the side benefit of adding a dynamic component to otherwise stale pages. Cisco does this well, through the Live Discussions feed on product pages.

Example:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6021/index.html

Agree or disagree? Love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

[Lou Ordorica]

Craiglist uses an interesting approach, where the community flags inappropriate content, and if the number of flags hits a threshold, the content is pulled from the site (self-policing).

[Stanislaus]

Moderation is a must..but the YouTube approach (wait until someone complains to remove the offending post) or the approach used by blogs like Huffington Post (flag this if it's offensive) may be a way to avoid having to moderate every single last potentially offensive posting...providing it's done quickly to satisfy those offended. A live person moderating an active blug is probably ideal.

[Lou Ordorica]

Funny video! In this day and age, you really need a thick skin when it comes to user comments ....

[Danny Holland]

Here is something David Pogue did that relates to what can happen when you don't moderate posts.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=755b60460503576f5b57242490e8add9d44df5bd