New Media Initiatives

Although we have had more problems monitoring spam comments than flame wars it is smart to consider both problems ahead of time. It could be argued that the only way to be 100% safe with comments on your site it too moderate every comment. Indeed that appears to be the path chosen by at least 1 popular museum blog Eye Level states a policy of moderating comments. In our case we felt moderating every comment would slow conversations down unacceptably.

Although we have had more problems monitoring spam comments than flame wars it is smart to consider both problems ahead of time. It could be argued that the only way to be 100% safe with comments on your site it too moderate every comment. Indeed that appears to be the path chosen by at least 1 popular museum blog Eye Level states a policy of moderating comments. In our case we were using our blogs to encourage dialogue and we felt moderating every comment would slow conversations down unacceptably.

Although we have had more problems monitoring spam comments than flame wars it is smart to consider both problems ahead of time. It could be argued that the only way to be 100% safe with comments on your site it too moderate every comment. Indeed that appears to be the path chosen by at least 1 popular museum blog Eye Level states a policy of moderating every comment. In our case we were using our blogs to encourage dialogue and we felt moderating every comment would slow conversations down unacceptably.

Although we have had more problems monitoring spam comments than flame wars it is smart to consider both problems ahead of time. It could be argued that the only way to be 100% safe with comments on your site it too moderate every comment. Indeed that appears to be the path chosen by at least 1 popular museum blog states a policy of moderating every comment. In our case we were using our blogs to encourage dialogue and we felt moderating every comment would slow conversations down unacceptably.

Summary \\

1.Set up spam protection \\

2.Monitor the comments \\

3.Respond individually (at first) \\

4.Respond en-masse \\

5.Close comments \\

Summary

Eventually you'll probably want to close comments on old posts. We instituted a policy of closing posts that were more than 3 months old. Having less posts to monitor and respond to allows us to comment more effectively newer posts. This has the duel benefit of forcing an end to any arguments on old posts that can take a lot of staff time to monitor and respond too but it also closes old posts off to spam bots. When we proposed the idea of closing old posts at least one author was concerned about shutting down active conversations, but since the posts are closed manually it hasn't been a problem. If there is an active conversation we just don't close that post until later.

Although we have had more problems monitoring spam comments than flame wars it is smart to consider both problems ahead of time. It could be argued that the only way to be 100% safe with comments on your site it too moderate every comment. Indeed that appears to be the path chosen by at least 1 popular museum blog "Eye Level"maintains a policy of moderating every comment. In our case we were using our blogs to encourage dialogue and we felt moderating every comment would slow conversations down unacceptably.

Eventually you'll probably want to close comments on old posts. We instituted a policy of closing posts that were more than 3 months old. Having less posts to monitor and respond to allows us to comment more effectively newer posts. This has the duel benefit of forcing an end to any arguments on old posts that can take a lot of staff time to monitor and respond too but it also closes old posts off to spam bots. When we proposed the idea of closing old posts at least one author was concerned about shutting down active conversations, but since the posts are closed manually it hasn't been a problem. If there is an active conversation we just don't close that post until later.

Most blogging software has some sort of monitoring built in that you should be using. Wordpress allows author to be notified by email when someone comments on their post. There are also RSS feeds for comments on the blogs that everyone in New Media Iniatives and one person in marketing subscribes to.

3.Respond individually (at first)

It's relatively straight forward to respond to comments individually at first. This shows you are not ignoring feedback from your audience, at this point it you can not be sure if flame war is starting.

4.Respond en-masse

As the comments keep coming in saying similar things it becomes inefficient to respond individually. In this case it is smart to craft some sort of complete response. We beleive one thourough response is more effective than a dozen short comments. It does not make an organization look good to have it's reprentatives drawn into an argument but it is important to refute mis-statements and to respond appropriately.

5.Close comments

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1. Set up spam protection
2. Monitor the comments
3. Respond individually (at first)
4. Respond en-masse
5. Close comments

Getting an uncontrolled negative reaction is one of the things people here were particulary wary of when we presented the idea of blogging. That kind of argument is often called a flame war can be brought about by genuine differences of opinion or less commonly by trolls (people with axes to grind about a topic or institution).

Flame wars are certainly a topic worth some discussion but it is hardly a reason not to blog and indeed can be a point that enables an organization to prove it's open mindedness and engagement with the community.

At the Walker we have only had one post that came anywhere near being considered a flame war was a post called The Herpetology of Huang which is the model we've used to learn from going forward.

First of all I'd say that despite the fact that not everyone who commented agreed about the validity of the work, any blog post that gets community attention enough to spark a heated debate about artwork in the Walker's galleries is a success. That in mind we want our website to be a forum for open discussion not for belligerence of toward the artist or work and there are some straightforward steps to encourage that.

1. Set up spam protection 2. Monitor the comments 3. Respond individually (at first) 4. Respond en-masse 5. Close comments

1.Set up spam protection

Your spam protection is your first line of defense as it will catch any sort of foul language. When the post I mentioned above was getting attention we had a blacklist of words that would get a comment deleted immediately and a graylist of words that were questionable and would get a comment held in moderation. Keeping those lists up to date is more important for spam protection than for any real sort of moderation. We have since moved to using the Akismet plugin which maintains a those lists for you. Since few of the comments hit any of our lists they got posted to the blog.

2.Monitor the comments

Most blogging software will

Getting an uncontrolled negative reaction is one of the things people here were particulary cautious of when we presented the idea of blogging. The kind of discussion often called a flame war can be brought about by genuine differences of opinion but also by trolls or people with general axes to grind about a topic or institution.