We are currently using Tender on FederalRegister.gov and have a need for moderating public discussions. I've spoken with a few others and this seems to be something that is needed by more than just us - especially in the government/open government realm.
The primary need results from needing to protect the private information of our users. This arises from the fact that our site feedback mechanism (Tender) is different than our content feedback mechanism (official comments on documents to Federal Agencies). Less technical users can be confused by the two mechanisms (which we are legally unable to change) and will occasionally submit personal information like medical and social security information.
The secondary need arises in Agency adoption. Being a Federal Government site it is necessary to make sure that inappropriate content does not land in a public forum. It is much harder to deal with this requirement when moderation is not available.
We are currently working around this issue by using private discussions and converting them to the knowledge base. Unfortunately we are currently unable to be as transparent as we would like (and who doesn't want a more transparent government!) with this work around.
Moderation would be a huge selling point in government and open government circles!
#1 Posted by Courtenay Support staff on 23 Nov, 2010 09:03 PM
Hey Bob,
What exactly do you mean by moderating in this case? Isn't that just the same as making private discussions, and setting them public?
#2 Posted by bob.burbach@gma... on 24 Nov, 2010 12:02 AM
Hi Courtenay,
As you can see from an earlier discussion here (https://help.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions/753-human-moderati...) that is definitely a possibility.
However as Will pointed out it is possble but, "it might be misleading to users because the category would see it as private when submitting, and might not understand that it will be switched to public. It's just misleading"
Given that we are dealing with users that inadvertently enter person information we need this to be as straight forward as possible.
Does that make sense?
#3 Posted by Karl Fogel on 24 Nov, 2010 07:48 PM
Just to concur with what Bob is saying:
There are a lot of situations where one wants to clearly tell users that they're creating a potentially public discussion, but also wants to moderate to make sure that the small percentage of users who didn't understand this aren't penalized by having inappropriate things displayed publicly.
There's no way to know in advance how sophisticated a given user is. Having moderation ability is crucial when dealing with a heterogenous user base -- too many people make too many mistakes for it to be otherwise. On sites that deal with, e.g., medical or financial information, the consequences of those mistakes can be quite high, unless there's moderation.
Just marking discussions as "private" at first and then taking them public later doesn't work, for two reasons:
1) It sends the wrong signal to the majority of users, who are intending to have a public discussion and who know what they were getting into.
2) If we start out telling users their submission is private, then when we want to make something public, we'd have to ask them for permission, because we'd have previously represented the process as being private -- even for submissions where there is clearly no sensitive data.
#4 Posted by Will on 29 Nov, 2010 11:52 PM
And this would be vs the discussion being posted as public and telling them it's being moderated before it is actually posted?
I see the use case for you all specifically as you want to moderate all user comments to prevent the risk of private data. It's just a pretty big shift in the way Tender was designed to function. The private / public option is solely up to the user. In two years of working in Tender I can't recall it every being an issue really where the user did not understand that they were positing something publicly. We put a lot of focus on those option being on top of the form.
#5 Posted by Karl Fogel on 30 Nov, 2010 12:08 AM
Well, I don't think the front-facing UI would change much. People would
still see the public option as "public", it's just that after they
submit, it would go into a moderation queue (and they'd see a message to
that effect).
Or is the problem that the user is supposed to be delivered the public
URL for the discussion right after they submit, and now that would no
longer be possible?
In that case, a solution would be to give them that URL, but just not
publish the discussion to any of the discussion boards. In other words,
those who know the URL can reach it (while it's in the moderation
queue), and letting it out of the moderation queue would just mean that
it is listed along with all other publicly-displayed discussions.
-Karl
#6 Posted by bob.burbach@gma... on 30 Nov, 2010 12:30 AM
Will I understand your questioning of the need for moderation based on
your experience and I will admit I don't know the full extent of the
companies making use of Tender. I would guess that at least a
substantial portion of those companies are focused on a more tech
savvy user.
Added to the lack of tech savviness of many of our users, our site in
particular publishes the official regulatory notices and requests for
comment for the federal government. Unfortunately less savvy users are
more prone to misunderstanding the distinction between site feedback
and official feedback mechanisms and assume they are sending a message
to an official source rather than making a public comment or
suggestion about the site. We need to protect these people.
I agree with Karl that I wouldn't think the user facing UI would need
to change much. The backend implications sound like a bit more work.
Would a private url until moderated be a significant code change - ie
are we asking for a huge structural change here?
Thanks for engaging with us!
Bob
Will closed this discussion on 17 Mar, 2011 10:50 PM.