as small as a world and as large as alone

4:10pm July 7, 2014

realsocialskills:

shakesvillekoolaid:

You don’t owe anyone a platform

realsocialskills:

Two basic facts about the internet:

1. Unmoderated comment forums are terrible. They get overrun with trolls, low quality content, and off topic remarks.
2. If you moderate a comment forum, angry people will argue with you and accuse you of censorship

Moderating isn’t censorship. Moderating is…

shakesvillekoolaid said:

On the flip side, excessive moderating can become suffocating and abusive.

realsocialskills said:

That is absolutely true. It’s possible to be bad at moderating, and to over-moderate in ways that hurt people.

The thing is, if you moderate at all, ever, you will be accused of harmful over-moderating, whether or not it is true.

It’s important to continually think through how you are using your moderating powers, whether they are serving your objectives, and whether they are creating a good platform.

Part of the process of thinking through that has to be understanding that it is literally impossible to please everyone and that you will always be criticized no matter what you do.

Part of moderating means deciding which criticisms to pay attention to and which criticisms to ignore.

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