Moderation changes

In a week or two I will do a fuller post on the issues around freedom of speech, the terrorist attack in Christchurch and acceptable comments on Kiwiblog. It will be a very long post as it is a complex area.

But as people know I have put comments on manual moderation, as the normal process of waiting for someone to complain about a comment was not ideal in this period.

Having me manually approving every comment is not a long-term solution. But neither was the old system of having all comments appear automatically unless there were complaints about them. Because that means some unacceptable comments stay there.

At this stage I am not changing the criteria for what is an acceptable comment, but will touch on that in a couple of weeks. What I am announcing is a change which will give preference to people who post under their actual name.

I post under my name. I believe doing so encourages me to be responsible. It makes you think a bit longer and harder about what you write before hitting publish.

If you use your real name for comments, you will be given a status that allows your comments to appear automatically. There will be no delay. You’re still subject to moderation after the event if your comment breaches policies, but you will not have any delays.

If you do not wish to use your real name, you are entitled to do so. There are many genuine reasons you may have for that. But it means your comments will be held for moderation until a moderator (currently just me) can view it and approve or decline it.

The idea is to incentivise people to use their real names, but to still allow an alias.

Some people have said they are happy to “own” their comments but don’t want to have their name listed as the commenter as it becomes the first thing which comes up on Google. One can qualify for “auto-approve” status if you link your user profile to a page that identifies you, even if you use initials or an alias.

To use myself as an example, I could qualify for auto-approve status if I comment under my real name of “David Farrar”. Or alternatively I could comment as “DPF” or “Laughing Gnome” and have my user profile linked to Kiwiblog or my Facebook page which identifies me.

At present no-one but me is on auto-approve status. If you wish to gain this status change your user profile (if necessary) to display your real name or a link to your identity and e-mail editor@kiwiblog.co.nz with your username. If I verify you, I will give you auto-approve status.

I believe this change will be an improvement overall, even if not for everyone. As with any change I’ll review it over time.

UPDATE: Also if you don’t want your name linked to your previous comments but happy to do so for future ones, I can remove your e-mail address from your old account so you can use it for a new account.