Preemptive Moderation: Biting the Hand That Feeds You

This isn’t exactly the post I intended to write after being away for a couple weeks, but since I still don’t know what that post would be, this will have to suffice.

My Frustration

A few minutes ago, I posted attempted to post a comment to a blog I read regularly. It’s a very popular blog, and with good reason: The writing is solid, the news is current, and the content is varied. And until very recently, commenters were welcomed. I’m not sure when it changed, but my attempted comment was greeted with “This comment is awaiting moderation” (or words to that effect).¹

What “Blog” Means to Me

My concept of a blog is of a vehicle for communication—two-way communication—between myself and my audience. Anything I put between myself and my readers that in any way inhibits or delays the free interchange of ideas, by its very existence, narrows the opportunity for continuing such intercourse. So at Kestrel’s Aerie, you won’t find captchas, or math problems, or any aggressive preemptive moderation.²

I view anti-spam measures in a completely different light than I do anti-troll measures. I employ the first, but not the second, and I do both as a service to you, my audience. If someone wants to come here and be a complete asshat, fine. The probability of a loyal reader (or two or three) taking such a troll to task before I can respond are high. Fortunately, the Aerie has been troll-free since its inception; however, I’m experienced enough in the ways of the Internet to know it’s only a matter of time before that changes. I’m not concerned, though: After all, I have the ultimate defense against trolls. It’s the “Delete comment” button, and I am trained in its use.

“Wait a sec, Kes! That’s…[insert horrified gasp]…censorship!” Why yes…yes it is! After all, this blog is my property, and I have the right to defend it as I see fit. Look at it this way: I own a home. I have the choice of erecting a fence (and there are several styles of fencing available to me) to keep you from seeing my well-maintained landscape (and to keep your dog off the lawn), or I can simply clean up the crap if you let your dog use my lawn as an outhouse. Pretty much, I trust you to police your dog.

What’s Preemptive Moderation?

Of course, there are different kinds of preemptive moderation, and it can reasonably be argued some are worse than others. For instance, captchas simply make you go a bit out of your way to post your comment (a thousand blessings on each and every Blogspot blogger who has disabled its onerous captcha option!). On the other hand, there are other blogs that erect a huge stone wall between you and the blog’s comment threads in the form of active moderation of all comments before they appear. Strangely enough, it seems more large blogs, with scores or hundreds of comments each week, do this more than smaller blogs. A case in point, of course, is the blog on which I commented earlier today.³ I doubt I’m alone in thinking my future comments there will probably be considerably fewer in number than in the past.

So why do bloggers throw up these roadblocks? I’m sure part of it stems from experiences with trolls, or comments that turned into arguments, which in turn got fairly nasty. Clearly, one way to avoid such unpleasantness is to stop such comments before they appear. But how does this differ from my practice⁴ of editing or removing offensive material? In law, this is akin to “prior restraint,”⁵ which is an attempt by a government entity to disallow or prevent expression of thought before publication.

What’s the Cost?

You may be thinking this all sounds reasonable (especially if you write a blog that employs such methods! ), but consider this: How much time do you think a blogger spends going through every single comment, trying to decide if it’s spam, or troll-bait, or an advertisement (which, in my view, is spam by another name)? Wouldn’t it make more sense if the same blogger could reduce that time to less than one percent of the time previously spent? It certainly does to me!

There are 1,700+ comments posted on this site. I would guess I’ve had to actually review perhaps 300 comments (and that guess is on the high side) to determine that yes, it really is spam or no, it was a false positive. And of those 300, the false positives (i.e., comments flagged as spam which were in fact legitimate) number perhaps 30. By the same token, less than 30 comments have actually posted to this site that shouldn’t have been (spammers are getting more creative!). On the other hand, Bad Behavior alone blocks well over 500 spam comments—every single week!

Clearly, I expend a lot less time and energy dealing with comments than someone who preemptively moderates. That gives me more time to do other things—such as write walls of text!

The other price you might be paying is one of credibility: Who’s to say what comments are not seeing the light of day? Of course, as I stated above, that’s certainly your right. On the other hand, it does bring into question just how self-serving your comment threads might be. And just to be clear, I am NOT ascribing any such motive to anyone: I get that preemptive moderation is an anti-troll measure, and no one detests trolls more than I. However, others may not be so understanding.

Where’s the Beef?

Pulling this all together, my primary issue with preemptive moderation is, at the very least, it inhibits the free, open, and timely interchange of ideas between bloggers and their readers. The best and biggest blogs to which I subscribe require no more than I do, in order to comment. Even the biggest and best WoW blogs (not the same as the blogs in the preceding sentence) should follow suit.⁶