I’ve implemented blogs in past workplaces before, and I’m currently working on a pilot project to implement one here for the Office of Research. One thing that I firmly believe in is enabling comments on posts and not putting any barriers in the process. Except those that are used in blocking obvious spam of course.
The same primary issues comes up when discussion turns to blogging and comments. What if someone says something bad, this is a corporate blog and so we have to protect the image. Inevitably comments seen as dangerous and something that must be controlled.
While I agree that a corporate blog has to maintain its image, I believe that making everyone sign-in before they can comment, or implementing comment moderation on all comments, or any number of other strategies are inhibiting the commenting process.
What I’d like to see a corporate blog do is open up lines of communication between members of the organisation. It’s an opportunity to work around existing political and structure based categories. Everyone should have the same rights and abilities to comment. Hopefully this will then allow a community to build around the site and as a result communication becomes more effective.
I can’t argue against someone posting a comment that is “bad”, it may indeed happen. But I don’t think that stifling communication based on the fear of something that may happen is a good idea.
My suggestion would be to implement a simple, easy to read, comment policy and monitor all comments against this policy. The policy can address things like offensive language, personal attacks, and other offensive content. If a comment is found to breach the policy, it can be removed.
Perhaps one day the fear of the unknown commenter will be replaced with optimism that a comment from someone that you can’t identify will prove beneficial to the organisation. I can hope at any rate.
In the end when you are introducing any new project, system, website or process compromises must be made. Change is a scary thing for organisations and if by compromising on one issue the project keeps moving forward, make that change. Ensuring that the change is noted and a recommendation for revisiting the decision at a later date is made may mean that you can reverse the decision later.
February 7, 2008 at 11:23 am
Where do people get the idea that there are a whole bunch of malicious web surfers out there who are just waiting for the opportunity to take down their organisation by writing a ninja flame blog comment? In my experience, people who flame in comments or say ‘bad’ things often just make fools of themselves. I think in these discussions with the manager or web committee, it would be revealing to ask for examples of what a ‘bad’ comment would like, who would write it and why.
February 7, 2008 at 5:49 pm
From someone who has been working on a ‘corporate’ blog for quite some time now - Yay! if we get any comment at all (apart from spam). A corporation can make a reputation for itself on its ability to respond appropriately to negative feedback, and by being open to receiving feedback of any persuasion.
I agree that a policy available in advance can be a big help after the fact - you can refer the commenter back to the policy - but there’s probably not much chance that they’ll actually read it before hitting that submit button.
March 7, 2008 at 7:25 pm
[...] To comment or not to comment March 7, 2008 — techxplorer I stumbled a post on the Freakonomics blog today entitled “The Growth of the Schwag Commentariat“. It is interesting to me because I’m working on setting up a new corporate blog at my place of work and commenting, or the possible lack of commenting is one of the things on my mind. Particularly as I have to work against what I’ve called before the Fear of the anonymous commenter. [...]