A new chapter is approaching in the ongoing effort to figure out how best to manage reader forums. Beginning Monday, April 5, forum posts will be reviewed before they go live. The idea behind this, obviously, is to cut down on the objectionable, attack-posts that too often sidetrack conversations on the forums.
We have no intention of censoring posts because of political viewpoint or because the post disagrees with the Mail Tribune’s editorial position. That canard no doubt will be raised (again), but even a cursory review of what’s posted online and printed in letters to the editor shows that we routinely run opinion that doesn’t match ours.
However, if the opinion — whether it matches ours or not — wanders off into the area of name-calling, libel or false accusations, we will expect the moderators to alert editors here and the postings will be reviewed. If they are deemed inappropriate, they won’t be posted.
This is a change in one significant way. Currently, posts go live immediately and editors here review them only if we get a complaint from another user. That works to a degree, but also means that objectionable and potentially libelous posts are available for anyone to read prior to an editor seeing them. In the new process, the intervention will occur before the post goes live.
There is another change: The moderation will be done by an outside company that has contracted to provide the service to all newspapers in our company, the Dow Jones Local Media Group. Moderators will review posts 10 times a day (seven on weekends). If they see no apparent problems, the posts will go live. Anything that raises a red flag will be forwarded to us for review and we’ll apply the same standards that we’re currently using to determine if a post should be killed.
Believe me, our preference is to intervene on as few posts as possible. We’ve always wanted the forums to be a place where people could exchange ideas on important and interesting topics, but too often that exchange has been highjacked by people who prefer to hurl abuse. We hope this new moderation approach will help keep the conversation civil.
