Last week I wrote about the sting of real-time product feedback and how Domino’s appeared to be filtering out some tweets that were being displayed in a feed on their homepage. Some commenters pointed out to me that a few of the tweets might have been removed for having offensive or questionable content. While I don’t necessarily think that “projectile vomiting” is inappropriate to display (hyperbolic, yes, but still valid feedback), I can make the case for filtering out a user named “cyberphucker” for a family-friendly website. Still, other comments that were safe for work appeared to be removed, but I won’t get into that right now. What I do want to talk about is when you can justify removing user-generated content. Below I’ve outlined different exceptions where deleting comments, reviews or feedback is justified.
- Profanity. Depending on the type of site you have and the type of target audience you strive to attract, you may not want your pages littered with F-bombs or other expletives. If you have a blog, a good course of action would be to have a comment policy outlined that’s easily viewable and accessible for your users. You can opt to edit comments along with a small footnote like “edited for profanity” and let first offenders squeak by. Repeat offenders can have their comments deleted altogether or can be banned for not adhering to your guidelines. With tweets, reviews and other content you may not be able to edit, you can remove the content but, as with the blog guidelines, make sure you have a comment policy or participation guidelines clearly outlined somewhere on your page or site (e.g., displaying your Twitter feed in a sidebar and underneath it saying “Profane or vulgar tweets will be removed”).
- Offensive remarks. As with profanity, depending on the nature of your site you may not tolerate comments that are misogynistic, homophobic, racist, etc. Make sure you state that this type of content won’t be allowed and are grounds for removal/deletion.
- Spam. No-brainer here — spam comments, whether they’re obvious (“Hi buy Viagra here cheap online”) or slightly more subtle (“Great post! I totally agree that [insert somewhat post-related comment here]” left by “BuyViagra”), can and should get removed.
- Trolls. If you see the same user come in and flood your blog, forum, Twitter feed, etc. with useless, negative remarks that are in no way constructive (e.g., “Your company sucks and so does your product”), that person’s probably a troll and you’re getting no value out of his contributions (genuine feedback, constructive criticism, etc).
- Threats and personal attacks. Something like “I’m going to eat your babies and make a suit out of your skin” probably isn’t helpful. Regarding personal attacks, there’s a difference between “You’re an idiot” and “Upon reading your post, I think you’re an idiot because [rebuttal #1, #2, #3, etc), so this could be tricky as sometimes you can interpret a harsh critique as a personal attack.
If you have a personal blog or want to run your company however you see fit, you can obviously make up your own rules about what you approve and what you reject or delete. I’ve personally left critical comments on people’s blogs that weren’t offensive and have been disappointed to see that they never made it out of the moderation queue — some people just don’t like to be painted in a negative light and will adjust user feedback accordingly.
However, if you’re a brand who prides yourself on listening to your customers and taking their feedback seriously, you have to be able to stomach the not-so-nice remarks. Comments like “This necklace is cheap and broke when I tried adjusting it,” “The new car design is ugly as can be,” “The new recipe made me gag,” “You don’t know what you’re talking about…”, etc., while unpleasant to receive, can actually make you and your business better if you can push aside the hurt feelings and think about what you can derive from these critiques in order to improve your product, your customer service, your researching skills, whatever it is you’re marketing.
What do you guys think? When do you think it’s okay to remove user-generated content, and when should you leave it be? Share your thoughts below!
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29 Responses to “When is It Okay to Remove User-Generated Content?”
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One big thing is false information. Something we deal with on occasion at scribnia. If someone is posting libel, and we know for sure that it's libel, we remove it.
On my blog, in general I'll let everything through unless they dont fall under your points, except trolls. As long as they're not personally offensive, trolls are welcome too, and can make for a more exciting comment stream ^_^
David
Community Manager, Scribnia.com
F*ck this blog. 10e20 sucks. (just testing your spam filter ;D)
Seriously, this is an excellent post & I should probably publish guidelines on Bracketography that follow this advice. Sports fans tend to use 1, 2, 4, and 5 pretty frequently. While I don't mind profanity, personally, I do want the site to be "family-friendly" as you say.
I don't mind ANY criticism of me or my own writing/projections, even if it gets personal. But it does suck when people criticize my writers, who are doing everything on a volunteer basis…any thoughts on how to moderate those situations? I still filter comments for offensiveness/personal attacks but I also want readers to be able to express their opinions…
Rebecca, You hit the nail on the head with this. I agree with each of your points above, but as you mention it can be tricky and is normally at the discrepancy of the person managing the UGC. Some are obviously easy to catch such as spam and cursing (if your site doesn't allow it) but determining what's considered offensive, objectionable or an attack isn't straightforward. If you're the one managing the UGC you have to make the decision and live with it.
I personally think the criticism is good for the soul. But some people don't really know how to give useful criticism, they prefer to put the person/company/product down instead. If you do it in a responsible way without being a jerkface, your comment (or whatever) is probably not going to get edited.
Thanks for the post. This topic is close to my heart.
I half agree about the troll part, but if he's saying the same thing on every post and essentially spamming the same message over and over again, that's grounds for removal.
I also thought about adding "false/wrong information" but figured those can get rebutted via a response comment. It's up to the site, though — in your case you remove libelous claims and statements, and I think that's totally fine.
Hi Rebecca,
Well thought out and I agree with all 5 reasons for deleting comments. Do you have an example of a blog that has a well crafted comment policy or participation guidelines? I don't see one on this blog – (maybe I'm just blind?). As a long time reader of your blogs, I know you have a pretty open policy but you probably do delete spam (#3) and trolls (#4).
I recently read a post by Danny Sullivan on his "Beware of Dog" spam deletion disclaimer. He talks about it here – http://daggle.com/beware-dog-spam-sign-1574
Aside from the humour, I like that it pops up when you click to make a comment. It's in your face and you know up front what the comment rules are.
Close to your stupid, dumb heart. ;P
I kid! I know that you're in charge of a lot of the UGC management duties at SEOmoz, and it can get taxing to manage a large community, so I'm unsurprised that you have an impassioned stance on moderation protocol.
We really should put together a comment policy for our blog. We do have a pretty open policy and have so far only had to delete spam comments because our current comment plugin doesn't make it obvious that comment links are nofollowed, so we get a lot of sneaky spam attempts.
Was that a personal attack? Do I need to talk to your admin about editing that comment?
Lol, I meant the "stupid, dumb heart" part.
But you're right, the difficult part is that you don't know when that's going to happen. So you can be working along, happily doing whatever it is that you do, and all of a sudden a post heats up and comments erupt, and you have to do what you have to do.
Makes life more interesting though!
How valid are the critiques against your writers? If it's something like "So and so needs to check his facts" because someone used the wrong quote or used an incorrect date or stat, I think that's valid. If it's something like "This writer sucks — worst sports writer ever" and offers nothing really constructive, that's probably deletable. Whatchoo think?
We have one over at SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/dp/blog-disclaimer
Haha, not an attack, just that I know how you feel having moderated that community. Every once in a while you have to deal with a flare up or some heated remarks that are unpleasant but not really "offensive," so you're at a crossroads about what to do.
It's so tempting to make inappropriate comments on a post like this, especially after midnight when my judgement is less. Instead though, I'll hold myself to saying this is an excellent topic and one I'd love for you to explore more
. The internet remembers and misunderstands, and I'd rather make embarassingly dumb comments in person when only 'friends who know me and will either a) get it or b) forgive me' are around to hear ;D.
p.s. Re: Trolls – Forums have some good IP ban tools, either built in or available as add-ons. Maybe those should be ported to blogs (hint 10e20's next piece of linkbait hint wp plugin cough hint)
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be careful with #5. If that happens you are much better off putting it into moderation and making sure there are no legal actions, before ultimately deleting it.
You make some really good points, I find that whenever some content looks spammy or purposely interrupts the flow of the community… I remove it!
Good point.
Well said Rebecca.
Being able to take criticism has played a huge part in my growth.
Criticism can be one of 2 things: helpful advice or a mean-spirited barb meant to incite a rise. If it's the latter, that's what edit buttons are for on blogs, why the block button exists on twitter, and why the online world is so much fun
You don't have to acknowledge online trash.
Good to see you have returned to your roots Rebecca. Being on the cutting edge of "Talk Naughty" to me.
I agree with you.
As you allude to, constructive criticism is good. But if your blog is tied to your website selling a product or service and you have an idiot that just wants to tell all your potential customers not to buy from you because they couldn't figure out how to use it… I have no problem removing it. But that falls to common sense which apparently is in short supply.
[...] Success Jan 7, 2010 by Rebecca Kelley | Social Media Marketing Okay, I know this is my third Domino’s post in about a week, but pushing aside my love of pizza, they’ve actually been quite relevant to [...]
Thanks for sharing the article!
[...] becomes questionable. So at what point do you remove the content? Rebecca Kelley of 10e20 gives us several reasons to pull the plug on unscrupulous [...]
[...] becomes questionable. So at what point do you remove the content? Rebecca Kelley of 10e20 gives us several reasons to pull the plug on unscrupulous [...]
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what about posts referring to you as Jennifedr Tilly?
Ha, only you post those.
[...] becomes questionable. So at what point do you remove the content? Rebecca Kelley of 10e20 gives us several reasons to pull the plug on unscrupulous [...]
thanks for posting your ideas, great!
[...] Marty even inserted a short and general disclaimer about aimClear Blog etiquette as a separate comment. This was out of respect for Harrison and our readers. We do this in the rare occasion when we feel compelled to remove user generated content. [...]