Moderation

Sometimes senior management in organisations gets the jitters about allowing an open, online conversation channel on their intranet or internal social media. The root of this concern is our old favourite, control. If you reserve the right to speak for yourself alone, say in a Business/Management-to-Employee ‘broadcast’ sense, then you have control, largely, over what is said. You can avoid saying anything illegal or immoral. You can avoid disclosing confidentialities or private information. But, most of all, you can control the content and the tone.

The anxiety is that, once you allow everyone to have their say, all kinds of things could go wrong. Firstly they’ll be without the cadre of internal comms writers, editors and creatives who hone the management’s messaging – so it risks being not that good. Second, there’s a chance people will disclose something they really ought not to. Third, they might get rude and offensive to each other in a social media kind of way. But, most of all the fear is of cynicism, scepticism and negativity, I think – the fear of the ‘wrong’ tone, undoing everything they have sought to control. So they want someone to ‘moderate’ what gets published from what people say.

I never believed any of that. I mean, I knew there was the risk of all of it, especially the risk of a disaffected leaver letting off. What I believed was that the far bigger risk was that nobody would turn up – that people just wouldn’t have the time or interest in speaking up (or might self-censor, feeling inhibited because they subconsciously sense that really the senior management would prefer to keep the reins on the messaging).

I was mostly right.

Over several years with a community of several thousand employees I’d say we had to take down about two employee posts per year, and I’m going to estimate there was an average of 5 posts per day. It seems that my experience is similar to that of others who have ‘moderated’ similar forums.

I’d say only one in ten of the posts taken down was actually for a serious reason (offensive rather than actually illegal – I don’t think I ever saw an example of, for instance, anything approaching hate speech or the like).

Why would I take something down and how would I do it? My guide was to apply a common understanding of the law, legitimate business interests and good (good-enough) manners. So I would have taken down anything that would not usually be allowed or tolerated in public speech, or if someone disclosed personal information or business confidentialities. Ad hominems or plain rudeness would go as well (I know not all would agree). Overall, my rule was that a post would stay unless there was a good reason that it couldn’t. My process was always this: Make the call myself – checking where I lacked knowledge of the facts but not deferring the decision. Contact the poster right away to tell them what had happened – if at all possible in person or by ‘phone rather than email. Just explain to them factually and honestly that they post had been taken down, why I had done this, and reassure them (as was the truth) that there were no further repercussions; no reports to management, no records kept. Well, it may have been a different matter had their been an actually illegal post – but this never occurred in my experience as I never expected it to either. And that was true – there were no further repercussions at all. If the person wanted to they could re-post their item with modifications. Once or twice I felt an item was borderline and I would discuss it with the poster and leave it to them to decide whether to edit it – – and I believe they always did. I’d say that out of ten instances, one person got shirty, a couple were embarrassed, a few were disappointed – all were surprised we had this process. I don’t believe there were any complaints about the process or the handling from the posters.

Most people never posted anything but a large proportion of people read a large proportion of the posts and it was one of two most liked features on the intranet by staff in general. Probably twice as many people engaged by replying than starting a topic – but this was spikey with just a few topics really igniting multiple responses. Some people posted rarely but always with good cause. And we had our regulars – probably a couple of dozen of them.

What good came of it? We got a sense of the mood of staff and what topics interested them (state of the bike shed, car parking issues). We got some interesting and some useful news flashes and updates from a wide range of areas about different things. There were appeals for help and there were answers to these appeals. There were reminders. And there was humour – both intended and innocent.

The senior management had a like/dislike relationship with it (something a bit weaker than a love/hate one) but overall, as I said, it turned out not to be too threatening, although, yes, it sometimes shone a light on problems that a more controlling management style might have wanted to suppress, and there could be frivolity, as predicted. But it did visibly signal openness.

And that really is why the knowledge manager cared about it. The channel had some real-life useful applications, but it was never going to be a major knowledge-sharing platform. However, it did signify openness, invitation to participate, no fear of being censored or over-moderated. It signalled what we wanted for a knowledge culture.