moderation

From IndieWeb

Moderation is the process of holding comments for review by a human, and sometimes a source of frustration when a comment is written on another site that the commenter has no control over, and thus a good reason to post a reply on your own site and POSSE it to that other site.

Why

If you allow anyone to comment on your site, you may want to moderate comments by default, especially from (previously) unknown authors, because such comments are known to attract abuse.

Moderation Status

Under the current webmention specification there is no indication for when a comment is held for modification.

In many systems, however, there is a response for human commenters that is visible, indicating that a comment has been accepted and is awaiting moderation by a human.

Screenshots

Wordpress:

moderation of services

An example of an unwanted comment is on the bottom of this post has been brought in via bridgy and webmention.herokuapp.com - it's not clear which of those services should be used to mark it as not for display. Just deleting it on one or other of them is likely not enough, as it could be brought back by sending the webmention again.

Brainstorming

Moderation Criteria

  • Allow List
  • Deny List

Mediation

WNYC's On the Media has an interesting podcast segment on moderation and restorative justice: Can Restorative Justice Save The Internet? that has some interesting ideas as well as a case study involving moderation on Reddit.

Articles

Bad Examples

Intel Bleep UI

See Also

  • comments presentation
  • mute
  • block
  • spam
  • timeline review
  • vouch
  • https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1036304096280621063
    • "This is why I believe federated social networks are never going to work out long term. Someone who starts an instance doesn't know they're signing up for thousands of hours a year wading through the cloaca of the internet. That shit is *terrible* for you." @rahaeli September 2, 2018
  • ^^^ Thread - general problem of moderation tax, whether running your own site, or especially if running a shared site for others
  • https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/02/more-updates-on-our-actions-related-to.html
  • How NOT to do moderation, especially delegating/hiring out for it, and the negative effects thereof: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
  • some design considerations, and possible unintended effects: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1197643029131100160
  • See text on first slide for examples and features to look for / build into your IndieWeb site: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZiZFmtNwNz/
  • https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1589628794062934016
    • "If you think that Twitter has moderation problems, just wait until large numbers of people are having conflict on Mastodon and they’re being adjudicated by a few volunteers who don’t have set guidelines or community to navigate differences with." @IBJIYONGI November 7, 2022
  • Federated/decentralized considerations: https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/109887787033151885
    • "Moderation in this environment is a _nightmare_ of inconsistency and, instead of a faceless megacorporation, you get eight million individuals who have no idea what they are doing, no training, no accountability, and a lot of Ideas™ about what effective moderation should look likeMost of which are going to be wrong, but that's not even the point. They will _still_ screw everything up and then be passive aggressive with youThis creates an incredibly uneven and inconsistent landing experience" @hrefna February 18, 2023
  • ^ Of particular interest for diversity & inclusion per second post in thread: https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/109887787074284617
    • "So when we talk about this in the #fediverse what you are creating is a situation for marginalized individuals that is extremely difficult to navigate:1. Most servers are not going to feel safe. Why will vary: they are going to range from benign indifference to confusion to simple lack of education to outright hostility. Including when run by members of that group, though it can help.2. Moving instances does not allow you to bring your history with you and often leads to follower loss." @hrefna February 18, 2023
  • Cohen’s law is "The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases."
  • The burden of manual moderation does not scale (is too damn high), see & grab key quotes from text slides in: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzTll55gawf/
  • Why:

    When a sufficiently large group is unmoderated, and abuse arises, the victim has no choice but to leave the group to evade the abuser. This means that, in general, unmoderated groups tend to shed their most vulnerable members and retain their most toxic ones.

    https://critters.gay/notes/aka9setqynpf0420
    • "Chatrooms were not meant to last forever.

      I am currently in a chatroom which is about 10 years old, with about 40 members, and it is showing clear signs of rot.

      Nobody is actively moderating it. A couple of people are trying, but their attention is split, and this room is the lower priority.

      When a sufficiently large group is unmoderated, and abuse arises, the victim has no choice but to leave the group to evade the abuser. This means that, in general, unmoderated groups tend to shed their most vulnerable members and retain their most toxic ones.

      This is why I am disappointed in every chat platform that does not give an easy way to export your chat history. Because people stay in the room to keep access to their memories, when they should be leaving and letting the chat die. On IRC you didn't even have to request a data export, because everything was logged in plain text already. It's complicated now, and for reasons I do not find satisfying.

      This is why people like me refuse to use Discord as a forum, as a wiki, as a knowledge hub. Because knowledge hubs are supposed to last forever. And chatrooms are not.

      #indieweb #chat #moderation" @nycki March 25, 2026
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