"Reaction [beta]"
Somebody needs a hug 27 Apr 2006
Just spotted a nice little post on Captology Notebook:
"I had coffee with Kevin Hale of ParticleTree today. He has an active discussion forum where lots of people come to debate recent articles on his site.
Kevin told me that he's had a problem with flamers, who come to the site and start posting angry comments about other people. They get out of hand very quickly."
Here is Kevin's novel solution...
"He pre-filled the comment box with the simple phrase 'Everyone needs a hug'. Turns out that this small step reduced flame postings by a huge number."
I'm sure that Kevin was tempted to introduce a stricter moderation policy. If truth be told, such a policy would probably have been more effective in stemming the flow of flaming posts than offering users a "hug". But enforcement of this policy would have come at a high price. Imagine how much time it would take to sift through the day's comments to remove the flames. Imagine the distraction of having to perform this filtering in real-time as comments are submitted. Imagine the cries of "censorship" from disgruntled users.
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2 comments so far
James 27 Apr 2006 12:51 PM
Everyone needs a hug. ;-)
Etre 27 Apr 2006 01:03 PM
Thanks James - I guess that post was inevitable wasn't it :-)