Many people who run niche social networks eventually find that the discussions on these sites become dominated by a small group of people posting inappropriate comments. Managing this situation can end up taking more time than you have available, but failing to respond can cause useful activity on your site to drop to nothing as people cannot find information they are looking for or interesting conversations amongst the noise. Moreover, if many of the comments are attacks on your organisation or product, you may soon find that your social network has become a liability.

What to do?

For smaller social networks, you can moderate all account requests and ban users who indulge in inappropriate behaviour. For larger networks with open account registration, however, banning users may do little good as they can simply register with another account.

Here's a set of suggested measures. None of these measures will by themselves solve the problem, but implemented together they will reduce the time that you as a site administrator will need to spend managing problematic discussions. Ideally these measures should be implemented when you launch your site - waiting until problems start to occur may be too late.

No anonymous posts

In these days of form spammers, it is usually more trouble than it is worth to allow anonymous posts. You can introduce a captcha system and moderate every comment submitted, but unless both you and your users have a lot of free time, it makes more sense to require people to register before they can comment.

Clear terms and conditions

Users should be required to agree to a clear statement of terms and conditions when they register. This should be one or two paragraphs long. (No one will read anything longer than that.) The terms and conditions should also be prominently linked from every page on your site.

Appoint a community manager

This does not have to be a full time position. However, someone needs to enforce your terms and conditions and warn users about violations. An unmanaged community will quickly become a chaotic liability.

Limit the display of user-generated content

Make sure that your site editor or community manager has the tools to control what goes on the front page of your site. Do not allow an unmanaged stream of content to appear on your front page or other key areas of your site.

Make a clear distinction between news and announcements from your organisation and individual members, and topics for discussion. Not everything needs to be discussable.

Support self-moderation

Make sure that every discussion has an owner, and ensure that the owner has a full set of tools for managing his or her discussions. Give discussion owners the ability to approve comments before they go up, or to delete them after they have appeared.

Support access controls

Not every discussion needs to be open to every logged-in user. Some can be open only to friends or members of an appropriate group. Make sure that the default access controls are more restrictive than to all logged-in-users.

Support filters

Your members should be able to filter out comments from specific users. Make sure that these users get to see how many people have filtered them out (not the identity of these people, just the number) so they can get negative feedback on their performance. Give discussion owners the ability to block specific users from viewing any of their discussions.

With the proper use of self-moderation, access controls and filters, people who indulge in inapproriate behaviour will soon find that there is little they can do on your site, without the need for a site administrator to directly intervene.

Make sure every comment is reportable

Give your users the ability to report inappropriate comments and an easy admin interface so that the comment can be removed and the person responsible warned.

Introduce comment rating

Sites like Slashdot have elaborate comment moderation systems. However, even a simple system like giving users the ability to recommend comments and sort them in order of most recommended will ensure that good content gets viewed more often than bad content.

Know your enemies

Traditionally, the major discussion disrupters are divided into three major groups: flamers, lamers and trolls. A flamer is someone who attempts to turn every discussion into an attack on your organisation, product or their fellow members. A lamer is someone who posts worthless comments simply agreeing with another user or asking questions that have been answered many times before. A troll is someone who actively attempts to disrupt your site and force the site administrator to spend a huge amount of time managing it.

It is important not to get drawn into discussions disrupted by these people. Although it may occasionally make sense to post a comment suggesting that a discussion is inappropriate, it is better to deal with these people one on one. If you have warned flamers and lamers repeatedly and they have failed to change their behaviour, and the various other mechanisms of your site are failing to drown them out, you may need to ban them. However, be careful not to overuse this "nuclear weapon". Flamers may re-register and make you the main target of their fury. Trolls are almost certain to re-register as wasting your time is the main point of their activity.

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