Article on web board moderators in The Chronicle. Thank you for all you do -- it isn't easy putting up with this bunch. Thank You Clutch, Jeff, Brian, Keeley, and the gang! http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/tech/608880 July 20, 2000, 12:03PM Traffic control -- Chat room moderators play role of party host, master of ceremonies By SALLY McGRANE -- New York Times How do you make sure that Ringer and Joanna get to discuss the worst episodes of the television series "Charmed" without getting spammed by trolls -- hatemongers, teen-agers spouting profanity, p*rnography hucksters and the just plain rude? At Mighty Big TV, a Web site that dishes up sarcastic recaps of television shows, as with many Internet forums, the job of keeping online debate coherent and spam-free falls to discussion board moderators. In the online world, portals, Internet service providers, consumer goods companies, sports teams and sites dedicated to everything under the sun have areas where people can exchange ideas. According to Jupiter Communications, an Internet market research firm, more than half of all major sites use some sort of chat function. Discussion boards, where people post thoughts on a particular topic or question in long-running conversations that can span hours, days or weeks, are a popular conversation-enabling format (others include real-time chat rooms and private or semiprivate club rooms). The job of a discussion board moderator falls somewhere between virtual playground monitor and online cocktail party host. Moderators have to prevent abusive, anonymous writers from using the boards as graffiti walls and make sure that, say, vendors of teeth-whitening toothpaste don't use discussions to promote their product. Moderators also deal with subtler challenges: they try to ensure that people posting messages have interesting conversations. They have to smooth ruffled feathers when one person offends another. They have to urge the overzealous to tone it down without killing the conversation. And they have to remind people to use spell check. Sarah Bunting and Tara Ariano founded Mighty Big TV (www.mightybigtv.com) last September, after meeting on another discussion board. (They worked on the site for more than a year before meeting in person). At Mighty Big TV's "talk back" forums, visitors can discuss things like Ally McBeal's hair (there is a forum topic called Hairiffic) and weigh in on their least favorite participant on "Survivor." Bunting and Ariano read every posting on the site -- about 300 a day. "We have pretty strict rules of engagement, in terms of what we allow to be posted," Bunting said. "You can't attack someone ad hominem, we don't allow too much cursing, and anyone espousing a bigoted viewpoint is booted. There's zero tolerance for hate speech." When they decide to boot someone, Bunting and Ariano use software that erases all messages by the offender. People sending hate messages "aren't told they're being booted, they're just booted," said Ariano. On the other hand, "if there's a user who's annoying the regulars, we might send an e-mail -- `please check spelling, don't attack the old guard.' People usually settle down. The regulars correct the newbies, and it's usually not something where we have to step in." Mighty Big TV has a core of 150 to 200 people who keep the site on their screens all day, Bunting said. Ariano makes no bones about what it takes to keep the conversation on a discussion board at a desirable level. "You have to be actively elitist," she said. "In a room in the real world, you can control who comes in. On the Internet, anyone can wander in, and if you let someone who has nothing interesting to say stick around, they get comfortable, and they never get any smarter. If someone comes in and says, `N Sync Rules,' then forget it." One reason Mighty Big TV has successful message boards, Ariano said, is that the community members know that there are people actually running it. "It's not a faceless entity," she said. "Sites with no moderators have no conversations. In our case, people know who we are." On the other hand, sometimes even moderators have to take time off, and when they do, trouble can start. Bunting recalled a time when both moderators were on vacation, and someone with an obscene handle, or online name, signed on. "So little Mr. Puerile started spamming the site with lurid and not particularly anatomically accurate things he was going to do," Bunting said. "But the regulars flamed him and ignored him." When the moderators returned from vacation, they deleted his posts. Mary Beth Williams moderates the Table Talk discussion boards for Salon.com, the online magazine. She said the site was designed to encourage discussion board participants to read all the other posts on a particular board before they join the discussion. "As a host, I go into conversations and if I see something interesting, I try to be really responsive," she said. "I find positive reinforcement works better than negative reinforcement." Discussion boards develop into strong communities, and fostering this community is part of Williams' job. "We've had a lot of people go through really major stuff in their lives, and they get through it with the help of people on Table Talk," she said. Moderating, she said, is "not just a job." "These are real people with real feelings," she added. "It's not just a case of `did somebody say a bad word,' but an issue of the subtleties of what people are feeling." Williams also sometimes has to deal with people who become obsessed and spend inordinate amounts of time on the discussion board. "Sometimes I send an e-mail saying gently, `Maybe you should try turning off your computer for a few hours,' " she said. At eDiets, an online weight-loss site where members pay monthly fees and can turn to one of 36 discussion boards for advice and support, Shelly Waltman, manager of community services, said she and her staff sometimes join the discussion groups under other names to encourage discussion or response to members' questions. "Basically, one of the jobs of the moderators is that if someone is posting and asking for a reply, they answer," Waltman said, "so that everyone has at least one response. I will sometimes go in under another name to write encouraging notes to people, but 95 percent of the time we're doing it under our own names." Seeding discussion using other names can lead to trouble, though. Karen Ahn, who writes Mighty Big TV's wrap-up of MTV's "Real World" and moderates the discussion boards pertaining to the show, used to be a moderator at another Web site. Part of her job was to go into the site's discussion area secretly, using a fake name, and start conversations. Another moderator once approached her alternate identity and asked if she wanted a job -- as a moderator. "You can get that `ignore the man behind the curtain,' Wizard of Oz feeling," Ahn said. "By the end I was putting in weird acronyms that would spell out nasty things. I was so aggrieved at having to post messages that I knew couldn't spark any genuine dialogue, since I wasn't a `genuine' community member -- I was being paid to post! It all seemed so cynical and ultimately self-defeating." The situation in which a corporate employee moderates a discussion board can create an odd power dynamic, she added. "You elect yourself lord-mayor. These people didn't know me, they didn't elect me to monitor their discussion -- it was just because I was a salaried employee that I had control." Moderators point out that a key difference between the online world and the offline world is that online there are no facial or verbal cues. "There have been times when I've said something I considered light-hearted and it's been taken the wrong way," Williams said. Sometimes, without face-to-face interaction to keep people in check, tempers can flare. Then it is the job of the moderator to calm things down. Waltman gave an example from the eDiets site: "When people type in capital letters it really gets to some people. We have to go in there and say, `Are we really here to discuss capital letters?' " Bunting said the moderators' power can be seductive. "You have to be willing to incur the wrath of the users," she said. "But you also have to rise above the pettiness. You can't get in that last dig and then close the thread." ------------------ Stay Cool...
