Moderation
Overview
Moderation is the work of checking content posted on online platforms and deleting or hiding anything that breaks community rules or the law.
There are 3 main approaches to moderation: manual moderation, where people check content by eye; automated moderation, where keyword filters or machine learning make the call; and community moderation, which starts from reports by users. These are sometimes run in combination.
Moderation in a question box
In a question box, there are situations where the person answering handles moderation themselves. Large platforms provide spam filters and NG word filters (filters for banned words), but in the end, it's the person answering who decides "Do I answer this question or skip it?"
This "self-moderation" can become a psychological burden for the person answering. They read harassing questions, judge them, and delete them. Seeing unpleasant content along the way is hard to avoid. Mental exhaustion among professional moderators has also become an issue, and handling moderation alone is a heavy load for an ordinary user. The burden of moderation is one of the reasons running a question box gets hard.
Limits of moderation and ways to cope
Perfect moderation is hard. If it's too strict, it filters out even legitimate questions, and if it's too loose, harmful questions slip through. There's no right answer for this balance, and the best solution changes with the nature of the community and how much the person answering can tolerate.
Practical things you can do when running a question box include setting NG words, introducing a system where questions need approval in advance, and asking a trusted friend to help with moderation. It's also important not to carry it all alone. Moderation is labor that tends to be taken for granted, and its burden is something you shouldn't take lightly either.