[hasbot]

> Front Porch Forum counts nearly half the state’s adults as active members.

> While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.

Reading every post!? Rejecting misinformation! How does that work? Say I post some information but I'm wrong. Does the moderator research the topic to determine I'm wrong and then reject the post?

It's a shame visitors can't view the content to see what the forum is like. Registration requires entering a valid street address.

It'd be interesting to try something like this in the local neighborhood. It'd take years though to gain traction especially in sleepy neighborhoods where there is nothing much going on.

[dimal]

> What we say is, attack the issue, not the neighbor.

> Wood-Lewis said the beauty of careful moderation is that, over time, most users learn to adhere to the site’s norms on their own.

Seems like these principles alone can do a lot of the legwork. People forget how much culture matters. Individuals conform to the culture of civility or they leave. X and Facebook have encouraged toxic cultures to thrive and so no amount of moderation can fix them at this point.

And if FPF isn’t optimizing for engagement, they’re not trying to get more posts for posts sake. So I’d think the volume of posts requiring moderation is probably lower.

[blackeyeblitzar]

> Does the moderator research the topic to determine I'm wrong and then reject the post?

No, they will rely on their own limited knowledge and their own biases. It’s how things like the lab leak theory got censored heavily on social media by people who had limited knowledge. These types of moderator groups tend to become monocultures who think they’re doing the right thing and can’t see past their own limitations. This article is trying to make it seem like having a monoculture is good. Ironic to see them argue against real diversity.

[beezle]

The moderation is light and generally around the obvious - personal attack/flamewars, spam, or specific rules broken (and they let the poster know what it was). The volume of posts in most areas is not huge - order 15-50 a day, many of them cut and dry lost/found forsale type posts.

[netsharc]

> Rejecting misinformation! How does that work?

If I can guess... most misinformation spread by stupid people are easily debunked. For more complicated stuff, I wonder if a disclaimer "This information is unverified" is appropriate. One can also use weasel words like "As reported on $NEWSPAPER..." or "$PERSON claims...", or "If I can guess...". A lot of news sites do the first two.

In general, a line on every user-submitted input to remind people "The information written by the user may be wrong, reader beware." would probably help to make a better Internet. Weasel phrase: IMO ;-)

[warkdarrior]

The information written by the netsharc may be wrong, reader beware.

(As a side note, such notes will quickly become as useful as the California Prop 65 warnings.)