Everything in Moderation

As online publishing grows increasingly social, publishers are eagerly trying to foster community on their sites. But when everyone gets a voice, things can easily go too far. Thus, among several top Web publishers, the role of comment moderator is becoming that much more demanding. Justin Isaf, The Huffington Post’s community manager, oversees the 7 million online comments per month that flood the site’s servers, helping a team of moderators and algorithms police pages to shield users from offensive content. The hot buttons are usually race, religion, politics, and even parenting. “What people don’t understand is that there is a huge psychological factor to the job,” said Isaf. “Moderators deal with some horrible stuff and genuinely difficult things every day, and at other sites they are often under-cared for in terms of their own mental health. That is a real shame, because it gets draining.” Isaf said that HuffPo moderators are trained to handle complex, divisive issues like the Israel/Palestine conflict (besides fielding frequent f-bombs, HuffPo is often accused of being both anti-semitic and Zionist). At social news site BuzzFeed, community moderator Ryan Broderick is the sole individual tasked with combing through nearly 22,000 user comments per month. Broderick interacts constantly with BuzzFeed’s regulars to keep them from causing too much trouble, but tensions inevitably abound. “The Trayvon Martin period was a rough couple of weeks,” Broderick said,... Continue reading at 'AdWeek'

[ AdWeek | 2012-06-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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