15. Moderating or facilitation discussions
From:
John Glover
Date:
2005 Dec 08 10:54 UTC
Short link
With regards to moderation.
As Carol said there are a mixture of pre and post moderation facilities
available.
Some time ago I spoke to BBCi and they said that for large
consultations/debates post moderation is preferred as pre-moderation is not
that scalable.
If a forum is set to be post-moderated you can apply an override to moderate a
particular individual if they have breached your posting rules. This is
preferable to removing them from the list. You should notify them that you have
done this if it differs from your advertised policy.
On moderation it is also possible to edit a response for publishing, but
certain organisations we work with have been advised not to do this as there
are legal issues with regard to the ownership of the published copy and
potential change of context.
Like this forum, our software makes full use of email to ensure and stimulate
engagement. The one issue you need to be aware of in post-moderation is that
once a remark is published it is automatically distributed to the forum
member's email even if it is subsequently removed from the forum web site.
I suppose one question is how interactive debating sites impact corporate
communications policy. Normal (static) web based communications (press releases
etc) are usually tightly controlled. In conflict with this is the key to
successful forums is ensuring that the council's topic owner
(officer/councillor) is actively involved in facilitating and responding to
themed discussions in their specialist area. I would be interested to
understand the views of your communications department. Do they see this as a
loss of control?
Regards
John Glover
Tel +44 (0)1488 648 478
www.inovem.com
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