TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

moderation

My thoughts on Facebook’s commenting system

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There’s been a lot of debate around Facebook’s new commenting system, particularly due to the fact it is currently being tested on Techcrunch.

Matthew Ingram does a good job of summarising at GigaOm, although the heart of the debate seems to be in the comments section of Robert Scoble’s post (I pop up a couple of times in the comments!). There are various reasons for allowing a choice of commenting profile, whether or not that includes the facility for anonymity in an easy or more complicated manner – such as creating a fake Facebook account. But I think I can summarise one major flaw in the test and reactions so far.

When UK pubs had a reputation for violence, they’d introduce a dress code requiring shoes. That’d work for a couple of weeks. And then you’d find yourself in fights with the same people, but in slightly smarter clothes.

On a more analytic level, there are a variety of reasons for not using a commenting system which currently rests on the shoulder of one company.

  • You may want to keep Facebook personal, and use Twitter/LinkedIn/your blog or site as your professional reference.
  • You may not your Facebook profile to be a mess of comments you’ve left around the web.
  • You may wish to be anonymous to voice your authentic opinion whilst minimising the repercussions either personally or career wise.
  • Facebook is blocked by a number of organisations, preventing commenting from people in the workplace.
  • Whilst I may choose a relatively public online persona, my friends and family haven’t chosen to participate in my online life in the same way. And whilst Facebook has privacy controls, I don’t fancy checking 500-odd people have the right settings in place before I post on Techcrunch. Or want any of them involved if I choose to disagree with something on there and annoy someone.
  • Blog comments have long been one way of creating community between bloggers, whether or not those comments are seo-friendly ‘do follow’ links or ‘no follow’. If someone posts a great comment on my site, I’d like them to get the small reward of a direct link to their site, if anyone wants to find out more. Not reward Facebook for doing nothing. And judging by the SEOMOz toolbar’s ‘NoFollow’ indicator, the Facebook comments are followed links back to Facebook everytime.
  • There are viable alternatives already out there – for instance Disqus, as used on this blog. Pick whichever ID you’re comfortable with, and use it!
  • The comment culture is built by the culture of the site – rather than using technical solutions, perhaps it’s more sensible for the TC team to look at why they generate so many antagonistic or crap anonymous comments. Besides their size and audience, perhaps the fact that they may sometimes stray into tabloid linkbait might contribute? Look at the difference between similar sites in terms of technology e.g. Digg vs Reddit vs Hacker News, for example. All three allow link sharing, but the quality of discussion is better on Reddit and Hacker News in my opinion, because there’s more of a community on both.
  • Facebook Comments has code in it which would have allowed Google and Twitter logins, but was removed for some reason – and as a company with an immense userbase, they’ve got no vested interest in allowing a wider range of logins.
  • Following a VRM principle would suggest that the content and data created is mine, and I should be allowed to choose how, when, and why I share it.
  • And finally, there may be times when I might have a legitimate reason to not share a blog comment, for example, on Facebook. Perhaps I’m enquiring about a present or a recipe as a surprise for my partner (Remember Facebook Beacon?). Perhaps I want to describe a personal experience which may relate to my family. Maybe I’m commenting on a site which I don’t want to necessarily be associated with or advertise because I want to disagree with what they’ve written.

I’m all for quality conversation, but as you’d imagine, I don’t think I’ll be installing Facebook Comments anytime soon… Am I making the right decision?

I’m not the only one questioning Pepsi’s Unfriendlyfeed

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A few days ago I wrote about the efforts by Pepsi and Coca-Cola to engage their consumers in different ways – Pepsi chose social media, whilst Coca-Cola chose a loyalty reward scheme. And yet they are both making mistakes big enough for me to post ‘How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy‘.

It’s not surprising that other people are also questioning the policy, like Todd Jordan with his post ‘Pepsi – Are you listening‘ (Found when he mentioned it on Twitter – @Tojosan). Interestingly his post appears to have been picked up by Josh Karpf from Pepsi, commenting as Josh.

It’s good that that someone at Pepsi has picked up on the post, but Josh is repeating the same things many people have already heard:

‘We’re listening, Todd–and making efforts to do just what you are saying.’

‘We need to find a better way to aggregate and share fans’ passion for the company.’

‘As for the Friendfeed room, it was never intended to live as a standalone communications platform for PepsiCo. It’s one of many “outposts” we have launched, and intend to launch going forward as part of our ongoing digital plans. We are actively taking in feedback from across the web and starting to join in on conversations outside of the room, which you may have noticed.’

‘We do need to moderate comments to some extent to make sure profanity is removed. However, we do not moderate at all based on things we do or don’t like.’

‘We are going to introduce more new voices into the room from inside and outside the company very soon. I agree that we need to be more engaged in fan-based communities beyond ones that are launched inside the company. You surely understand that this is a first step for us; and we are moving towards becoming far more open, inclusive, and “closer” to our consumers.’

All pleasant enough, and I’m sure Josh is a nice enough guy. And with people like Steve Rubel involved, you’d hope they’ve got an idea of where they can improve.

But it really doesn’t take that much effort to start making improvements right away – like opening the Friendfeed Room up to everyone. I don’t want more voices inside and outside the company. I want all voices by anyone who has anything interesting to say – and that’s what Pepsi should want too!

They can still moderate, either pre, or preferably post comment. But how on earth do they expect to get closer to a community by dictating strict topics for discussion once every few days? It’s like walking up to the community and shout “You will engage, You will engage, You will engage!” over and over and over.

Funnily enough, although the FriendFeed room is quiet, Twitter has 11 messages mentioning Pepsi in the last 20 minutes via Twitter Search. And in the whole front page there’s not a single message containing profanity.

None of page 2 or 3 either. Mainly because people are treating each other like adults!

And look Pepsi! Look at a blog search for Pepsi and Friendfeed!

  1. Pepsi are you listening? by Todd Jordan
  2. How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy by Me!
  3. Why blogger outreach can fail by Virginia Nussey
  4. Pepsi’s social media challenge by Jason Lee Miller (focusing on the lack of new suggestions generated)
  5. Pepsi asked for my thoughts by CC Chapman

Responding in the comments of the first or second post is fine, but by the third and fourth I’d be looking to make some immediate changes. After all links 5 and 6 were posted on November 12, 2008. Mine was on November 28th, and Todd’s was today. That’s almost a month without any obvious changes.

Maybe it’s time?

Pepsi can by schnaars (CC licence)

Pepsi can by schnaars (CC licence)

Pepsi – the taste of the web 2.0 generation?

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Although I’d already heard about the new logo, I picked up on Pepsi’s more social activites via Edelman Digital’s Steve Rubel, who is working with them, and having joined up, saw some early commentary from Chris Brogan.

Chris talked about How corporations should view comment polices, and I agree that offensive content needs to be filtered unless there is an age restriction on the community. And also that off topic comments and conversations can detract in a single room (I’d recommend having on-topic rooms, and a general one where possible). After managing and moderating forums including those on www.motorcyclenews.com for about 7 years, I’m fairly well versed in polite emails about offensive behaviour and swiftly editing posts on legal and good taste grounds!

There is pre-moderation on comments – a little annoying for speed of response on a microblogging, lifestreaming, conversation service – and even more annoying when the Pepsi team have finished for the day and comments are left hanging. (Note to Pepsi team – the other side of the world is still awake! Maybe find a Pepsi employee in another timezone to help?)

But it will be interesting to see the response to a couple of comments I’ve made about Pepsi’s Terms and Conditions. (I had an acknowledgement from Pepsi’s John Karpf, so it’ll be interesting to see what evolves.) At the top of the Friendfeed Pepsi Cooler room, there’s a hyperlink to ‘a few notes from our lawyers’. Which links to the Pepsi.com Privacy Policy.

Hmmmm

While I acknowledge the need for Terms and Conditions, and stating the standards for a community are necessary, I could have sworn Friendfeed has it’s own Terms of Service, and doesn’t need Pepsi essentially annexing a room! I’m hoping they find another way to express the principles of the room they wish to encourage in a way which doesn’t seem quite so much like our caffeinated overlords have arrived!

But fair play to them, I’d ignored the new logo, and become fairly loyal to Coke due to the cokezone loyalty promotion, (I’m a sucker for free Xbox games!), yet the prospect of a Friendfeed room has made me take a bit of an interest in what they’re up to at Pepsi. I’ll let you know what comes out of the vending machine at work when I go for a drink!

How CNN and Citizen Journalism can move forwards…

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I’ve already covered why the fake Steve Jobs heart attack story published on CNN’s iReport shouldn’t be seen as a fault of Citizen Journalism as a whole, and why we should all be encouraged to verify and fact check articles before we take them as gospel, or reprint them.

The Silicon Valley Insider has published a defence of their repeition of the story, but for me, it does little to convince me that they did anything other than repeated the story quickly to grab page views.Especially when they appear to justify reprinting any rumour that is possibly credible enough to be worth publishing.

‘Sometimes this information is fact. Sometimes it is rumor or scuttlebutt. Sometimes it is speculation. Always it is information that we believe is credible or interesting enough to bring to our readers’ attention.’

In their defence, the original story did contain a disclaimer: ‘We’re making calls, but as yet we have no idea whether it’s true.  Confirmation/denial the moment we get it.’

Anyway, in my opinion, as someone who has worked on websites with User Generated Content, and various levels of moderation, I think there are a few ways that sites containing Citizen Journalism can evolve.

  • Scott Karp covers one method. Rather than a totally open system that just requires an email address and solving a Captcha code – effectively meaning anyone can publish fairly anonymously, CNN and other site owners could actively search out anyone already publishing content, and select people who demonstrate a verifiable responsibility/ability. Increasingly this will be the role of professional Editors online, and although it goes against the ‘open ideal’, the main downside is that it costs organisations time and effort. Scott goes into more detail, and the restrictions he’s applied to Publish2 in a post well worth reading.
  • Sam‘s post on my previous article highlights the legal dilemma – moderate everything at a huge cost, or let it be a free for all. I disagree that we shouldn’t blame a company that encounters problems because they’re not willing to pay for the resources to moderate a service – but I think there is a third alternative – crowdsource the moderation. An effective rating and reputation system would indicate reliability and past success rates in the hands of fellow Citizen Journalists. And although it will be tough to make a system than cannot be ‘gamed’ to a large extent, it would have avoided an event like the CNN one – where an account is used to make one fake story then disapear. The better the system and the more effort it takes to game it, the smaller the amount of fraudulent users that will make the effort.
  • Increase the private identification of users. One easy way is to offer a small payment for articles, which requires bank details/paypal account details etc – or even some proof of identity before being allowed to post. It may add to the need for resources – but it’s less work than moderating every article, and would also weed out many of the fraudulent accounts.

That’s three possibilities with a bit of thought. I’ve actually been thinking about this problem for a while, and I’m working on some ideas which may help to increase the reliability of Citizen Journalism and Blogging, whilst also removing some of the barriers the citizen journalists and bloggers undoubtedly face – if I heard Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, would I know who to contact for a fast response, and would they be likely to respond? Or would my attempts to verify the facts mean I get scooped by a larger site or mainstream media and miss out on the benefits of getting the news first?

In a 24 hour, second by second online world where every moment counts if you want to break a story first, we shouldn’t blame people for falling for the idea that accuracy can be discounted in the rush to publish before anyone else – especially as the result of it backfiring can be a loss of respect, authority and readers.

But I also don’t think we should excuse it as a necessary byproduct of online journalism which can’t be evolved and solved. That’s just laziness. And many of the comments on the Silicon Alley Insider story pick up on this. In our efforts to evolve online journalism, it’s just stupidity to disregard all that preceded us in ‘dead tree’ publications simply because the digital world offers new opportunities and challenges. In my next post, I’ll outline some of the things that should make the transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘digital’ journalism, if the online world wishes to base itself on solid foundations and be taken seriously in terms of reputation as well as numbers and revenue.

You can’t control communities – but you should inspire them

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I went to an interesting discussion group today – unfortunately I arrived late, so I’m not sure how much I can disclose, and I also missed all the introductions.

But there were a range of people in positions of authority for digital products, services and communities from a range of institutions, both commercial and governmental.

And what I can talk about is the fact that we’re still debating whether brand owners should be prepared to relinquish control of what is created, published and discussed on their digital products.

Here’s something shocking:

You can’t, and you don’t control ‘your’ community. Never have. Never will.

The reason is that ‘your’ community isn’t just the people you moderate on your forum, or the people creating content that you can edit and publish. ‘Your’ community is spread far and wide, and comprises of everyone who has any type of interaction with your brand, product or service. At it’s most tenuous, it’s seeing someone in branded clothing, and your opinion of them informing your opinion about that brand – and discussing that offline, on forums, on Instant  Messaging services, and where-ever your conversations are.

Now try and convince me that you’re able to moderate and control everything someone does, everywhere they go? (Obviously I will accept arguments by Chinese Government officials…)

You should look to inspire communities:

This isn’t a new concept. The ideals of inspirational figures have been remembered and followed long after the names of those who tried to control/persecute/murder them. Pick whichever example is most relevant, from Jesus, through Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

If you want a certain type of content produced, or certain types of interaction, you need to plan to inspire your community to predominantly produce it. Whether it’s seeding a community with the right content, rewarding it (with fame or fortune), or simply being a part of the community in the manner which you would like to see, there are plenty of ways to do it – but don’t expect everyone to follow the example.

The only time I can ever advocate control and moderation is in the face of legal issues or persecution of individuals or groups. But this has to be accompanied by free and open explanation of the reasons for your actions. If not, the best case will be an annoyed user. At worst, you could see a forum revolt. Just look at the example of Sony HD DVD codes on Digg.com.

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