Manila, the software from Userland that sits behind Harvard’s Weblog server, has recently been enhanced with a feature that makes it easy to moderate the comments. This should make it tougher for spammers to abuse a Manila-hosted Weblog and maybe also to improve the overall interest level of the comments. Oftentimes the comments tend to be abusive, which satisfies the (angry) person who posted them but not other readers. The result is emails like the following, from one of my former students at MIT:
“P.S. Your blog’s comments section continues to amaze. It’s like some kind of zoo, but with idiots instead of exotic animals.”
My strategy in moderating the comments here will be similar to the strategy that I employed on photo.net 10 years ago. Alternative perspectives on the same topic are welcome. Anything that seems like a review of the article or posting should be deleted. A review is useful in the hardcopy world because you might want to learn about a 300-page book before investing $20 and several hours reading the actual book. A review-comment is not useful in the Internet world because it is generally only accessible to someone who just finished reading the article in question. If you’ve read Article X and liked it, what difference does it make to you that someone else liked or did not like it? Similarly a comment praising or condemning the author as a person is not interesting to other readers who presumably have already formed their own opinion about the author.
If moderation attracts more thoughtful comments perhaps I’ll hire a kid in India to continue moderating according to these guidelines.
A set of principles for forum moderation is posted at my forum, Ask ET, at
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000fT&topic_id=1&topic=
My first experience with forum moderation and, indeed, my first contact with Philip, took place when he deleted a contribution of my at his photo.net!