As we have all seen, comments on articles and blog posts don’t always seem to stay on topic, especially when the subject is something that brings out passion in people. One of these topics, more so in Boston then many places, is baseball. Taking into account the struggles the Red Sox have faced lately, the team is a touchy subject for many Bostonians.
With that in mind, NESN chose Waltham, Mass.-based Mzinga to moderate a new Red Sox health initiative they are taking this year called Healthy Is, partnering with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to provide content.
And yes, it is ironic that this is happening during one of the mot injury-plagued seasons in memory, but is there a better time for them to do this than when health is a key story of the season?
Mzinga is moderating the comments on Red Sox health articles; working to make sure all discussion stays on health-related topics. This presents a number of challenges between deciding what comments to delete — deciding which discussions are moving forward in a way the benefits the community, and which aren’t.
Director of Moderation Services Steve Brock described Mzinga’s mods do perfectly: “Moderators on sports sites fan the flames of community member sentiment while keeping the fire extinguisher handy.“
The roles if moderators fall into many different categories, but Brock says four major ones have emerged:
• Determining the difference between what you can say about a person on a sports team (who is regarded as a public figure) and what you can say about a forum members.
• Determining the difference between an opinion and an attack. (i.e. “Your post is stupid” versus “You are stupid”)
• Determining when baiting turns into harassment.
• Deciding when passion turns into disruption. (i.e. saying exactly the same thing in multiple places over a period of time, an online community activity called “flooding”)
All of those roles can have major grey areas, so moderation can be a fairly arbitrary process. Fortunately, Mzinga does over 5,000 hours of moderating a month, so they had experience with passionate fans before.
From looking at the articles on the Healthy Is section of NESN.com it appears that Mzinga has been able to keep the attacks and harassment out. Unfortunately (or thankfully, depending on your opinion), moderating can only stop negative discussions when they become inappropriate, not when they are simply critical. This is where the NESN Healthy Is discussions have gone for the most part. Neither Mzinga nor NESN can stop these — and ethically, perhaps they shouldn’t. This is the nature of the open Web.
To incentivize health comments on the site, NESN is offering weekly Healthy Is packages to participants, but this seems not to have stimulated enough buzz on the site. This package is not prominently displayed, and therefore has not caught on enough to get healthy discussion flowing enough to drown out team criticisms and the like.
The Healthy Is online community demonstrates that even the most experienced moderating company cannot stop a campaign that does not catch on, and draws criticisms at its base.
What do you think of NESN’s Healthy Is campaign? What are other challenges you’ve faced in moderating online community discussion. Please let us know in the comments section below.
