Blogs and civility - building both into JewishBoston.com

As we dive deeper into design, Cantina has asked me and Liz to define the blog moderation guidelines for the community.  It's been interesting and rewarded to think about this as Yom Kippur approaches.

We're imaging that JewishBoston has many opportunities for different types of people to blog.  For example, organizations will have blogs attached to their profiles and be able to share news, announcements, and posts of interest to their supporters and the community at larger.  For JewishBoston, we're beginning to sort out what overarching community blogs we want. Perhaps one for people with young kids, or folks new to the area, etc.  Also, the platform we're exploring, Community Engine, lets any registered user blog.

Technology is one thing, people are another.  It's relatively easy to implement the blogging tools but, boy, is it hard to create an online community that is active, civil, and where things don't get out of hand.

One site that I've been following is Ann Arbor's efforts to create an online newspaper.  It's a great site from a design perspective, very clean, elegant.  Check out this thread on their moderation policy. To me, their policy seems straightfoward and reasonable.  But to a small group of very active bloggers, it feels like big brother is not only watching but also being irrationally controlling.  

But we know we need to create strong policies for the community to work.  Here are just a few of the policies that we're considering:

1.  Do you have to be registered to comment on a post?

2.  Are usernames okay or should people use their real name or something close to their real name (e.g. Patty J, Watertown, MA)

3. Are comments approved before they are made public or is moderation done after the fact?

4. If we delete comments, how do we show what's been deleted?

Complicated, eh?  We'll keep you "posted" on developments; if you have any suggestions, we'd welcome your input.   

Comments

[shouldbeintemple]

Let's me say again these resources are excellent. From the Ann Arbor site, I found the excellent, Tufte on Comment Moderation http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000fT&topic_id=1

Tufte's book, Envisioning Information, is superb (not so much the latest).

[JewishBoston]

Ah, thanks for the reminder! I meant to take a look at Tufte's post.

[john smith]

NPR has some good forum guidelines at http://help.npr.org/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=5670&task=knowledge&questionID=435

[JewishBoston]

Thanks for posting. Great link.

I especially like "Rambling is the kiss of death."

[Daniel Rosenthal]

Hi Patty,
I saw your profile on LinkedIn and then saw this great resource for Boston Area Jews (and friends of Jews). So, I am not in Boston - actually, I am in Israel. I'd like to connect directly and see how we can best assist each other in our various business enterprises.

Best regards,
Daniel Rosenthal
Co-Founder, Makor Capital Ltd.
www.makorcapital.com