2016/Dusseldorf/comments

Comments and Community (#comments) was a session at IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf 2016

2016-05-07

Comments and community

Tom runs a German's musician's forum (since 1999).

They never had any problems with bogus comments or spam (too badly) but there was one person who really messed up every discussion.

This person kept re-registering with new usernames.

Weirdly this person openly identified themselves on this and lots of other forums.

This musician's community is really friendly but this one character can really bring out the worst in everyone.

Jeremy runs an Irish traditional music community The Session: exactly the same issue arose.

He swaps info with moderators of other Irish music sites but it's like playing whack-a-mole.

In the sports world, there are real hot-topic triggers.

It's not so much one bad apple, more about escalation.

The site has no real registration so people can comment anonymously.

Then there's the question: "are you talkin to a person or a screenname?"

To us, there's no difference. To others, there's a difference.

There's a service called Civil Comments.

The idea is you tap the potential of good commenters.

As a comment poster, you get asked to rate the civility of a comment when you comment.

Hellbanning: the troll sees their comments but no one else sees it.

Disemvoweling: remove the vowels from a troll's comment to make it harder to parse.

MacRumors distinguish between hot topics and non-hot topics.

To post on a hot topic you have to have a history of 100 posts.

On The Session, new users can't post straight away.

They have to wait an hour before making their first post.

Meantime, have a look around, get a feel for the community.

There's definitely a broken window issue with comments and community:

If you're not around to moderate, things will get progressively worse over time.

Who owns the comments on your site? You? The commenter?

What about when people want their entire history deleted?