HealthUnlockedModerating content and users

Moderation

Community guidelines

Best practice

Recruiting help

Dealing with conflict

Self harm or suicide

Spam report and filter

References & resources

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ModerationAdmins can pin posts or questions to make them more visible and accessible to all community users. Pinning might be used to highlight your community guidelines or any other important information. Read How to pin a post.

Report of abuse emailsThere is a ‘Report’ button next to every piece of content in the community. This gives any user the ability to flag inappropriate content. A notification email is sent to each community admin as well as the HealthUnlocked support team when any user reports something.The report of abuse email contains the full content at the time of the report. It can be used for reference if the content is edited before you get to it. Read content that should be reported, how to report content, how to deal with the reports of abuse and how we deal with reports of spam.

Edit/delete contentAdmins have the right to edit or delete posts in order to protect the community. Technically an admin can do this without explanation, but you can message the user to explain why the post had to be edited/deleted, possibly providing a link to the community guidelines. Delete content that is abusive, offensive, malicious or deliberately misleading. Edit content to remove personal contact details, inappropriate links or bad language.

In MemoriamIn the unfortunate event that a user passes away, we have developed a feature that enables their profile page to remain on the site as a memory, but their account is deactivated. If family members enquire about this feature, you can advise them to contact support.

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Pin posts/questions

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Moderation

Restrict usersOccasionally, problems with users or particular situations arise that may require intervention. Admins have the ability to restrict users who do not abide by community guidelines.When you restrict users you remove their posting and responding privileges on the community. The restricted user will also not be able to message your community members, unless there is an existing message thread between the user in question and a community member. They will still be able to contact admins of the community. Read How to restrict a member of your community?

Suggest a banSometimes users that have been restricted will not stop even after being warned and being placed on restriction. If you have a case like that you can contact the HealthUnlocked team to suggest a ban. We will also ban any user who joined HealthUnlocked for wrong purposes (e.g. commercial advertising, spamming, trolling). A ban completely and permanently blocks the user from all of HealthUnlocked, erases all the content already posted, and blocks the user from signing up again.

Admins have the right to turn off replies on a post, this can help to stop conflict from escalating or to prevent any new replies on an old post. The function automatically notifies the user and advises them how to contact an admin if they would like some clarification. To avoid causing confusion, once replies have been turned off neither the post or the replies can be edited, though they can be deleted.The tool can be used temporarily, therefore you can turn replying back on after some time.

Turning off replies

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Community guidelines

Define the purpose of the community

List the things that users can/should do

List the things that users cannot do

Provide contact information

Ask users to help by reporting

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It's important to post and pin clear guidelines in your community to ensure the space remains a positive and engaging environment. You can either use our guideline template, or create your own guidelines for reference on your community.

Here are a few points to consider when elaborating your own “house rules”:

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For a guideline template, please visit our Community Guideline template page

Best practiceSet the tone - Model the attitude you want to see on the community: warm, humorous, thoughtful, tolerant, understanding etc. If we wouldn't allow users to post in a certain way, we shouldn't be doing it ourselves.Empower - Nurture relationships with members. Advise and support, never judge or dictate. You can offer incentive badges and invite them to take an active role in the community, e.g. ambassador.Be neutral - Always aim to reduce conflict as quickly and quietly as possible. Take fact-based actions and avoid taking sides or getting emotionally involved. Always stay neutral, turn off replies if conflict is building and look for evidence that the community guidelines were breached.Recognise your prejudices - You won't get on with or agree with everyone. If you feel that your own personal views will inhibit you from making a fair judgement, ask another admin or HealthUnlocked to take over instead.

Facilitate (not dominate!)Be cybrarian - Find, organise and pin good resources (e.g. community guidelines, welcome post, information for newbies) to help your users. Be supportive - Remember that the community is a learning environment. Acknowledge personal experiences and make corrections in a positive way. 1 admin per situation - To avoid making users feel ganged up on, ensure only one admin is dealing with an issue/responding to a post at one time.Private message - Use private message to discuss issues with users. Publicly shaming members on a post can easily inflame and heighten issues.

Create a great culture

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Best practiceShare a problem - share cases with other admins from your community via private message if you are uncertain about what to do and discuss the best and fairest solution.Be just, not strict - understand that interpretation of what is (or not) abusive/ aggressive can be subjective. Remind users of the guidelines, before deleting every questionable comment and remember that everyone is speaking about their own personal experience, which may be different to yours but still valid.

Engage with your communityReply, like and follow others - promote engagement by being engaged yourself. Replying is particularly important because people who get quick responses when they first join are more likely to stay.Offer badges as reward - you can incentivise community members by giving them a badge (e.g. ambassador, pioneer) on the community. Celebrate community milestones - when the community reaches 50 / 100 / 200 followers you can post about it to highlight how the community is growing, for example. It helps followers see they are part of something special. Create new polls - voting on polls is an easy first step and the information gained from them helps followers learn about each other and the community. Many will participate in polls before they even consider taking part on conversation.

Clever crowd control

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Recruiting helpRecruiting more administrators, moderators or ambassadors will be necessary as your community grows. You can contact potential candidates individually or publicly post about the opportunity.Here are a few points to consider about a candidate:

Makes regular (and knowledgeable) contributions

Naturally helpful (eg. uses the report function)

Has a good use of language

Has a tempered and supportive personality

Has free time available to help

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It’s best practise to introduce people as an ambassador before promoting them to moderator or admin. If you would like some help identifying a good candidate, get in touch with the HealthUnlocked support team.

This Community Ambassador guide is a great resource to share with new ambassadors in your community.

Recruiting help

You can simply send a private message saying how much you appreciate the support they naturally offer on the community and ask if they would like to admin/moderator/ambassador. Here is an example of a message to send:

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How do I invite someone to be an admin / moderator / ambassador?

Subject : Your help on [community name]Hi [username],I am getting in touch to let you know how appreciated your contributions to the community are. Myself and all the other admins really like how supportive and helpful you are on the [community name] community. If you are interested, we are currently looking for an [ambassador/moderator/admin] and would love for you to join the team. The role will require dedicating a few hours a week to [fill with relevant activities in your community]. Let us know your thoughts! Independent of your decision, please keep this invitation confidential.

A moderator badge also gives a user the ability to edit, delete and pin posts, as well as restrict users from your community. It differs from the admin badge in that a moderator will not have access to the admin section of the communityAmbassador badges and any badges aside from the admin and moderator badges will appear beside the username, but will not give the user access to any administrative or moderation rights.

The admin badge will allow access to the admin section, will give a user the ability to edit and delete posts of community members and will also include the user on the admin newsletter list.

What do the different badges mean?

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Dealing with conflictManaging conflict in the community can be challenging. It’s important to avoid taking sides and always reference the guidelines.

What if you think someone is not being genuine?People sometimes join online communities for the wrong reasons. If you spot someone that might be lying about their experiences, but haven’t breached any guidelines, the best thing to do is to ignore their posts. We recommend keeping an eye on their activity and if there is any concern regarding their behaviour, please contact the HU Support team.

TrollingWhen a user joins HealthUnlocked to post inappropriate or abusive content, it may be considered as trolling. Quite often it is unclear whether the user is a troll or not. In cases you suspect trolling, check the date the user was created on his/her profile page. If the user was created recently, it is likely to be a troll. However, there are cases when a user is genuine, but has a conflicting personality and can clash easily with other community members. The best way to deal with this is sending the user a private message referring to the community guidelines and the HealthUnlocked Terms of use and to observe his/her behaviour. If you are in doubt, please contact our HU Support team.

What are acceptable reasons for suspending a user’s posting privileges (restricting)?• Clear (and multiple) violations of our or your community guidelines

• A continued pattern of personal abuse or bad language

• Spamming or posting of inappropriate content

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Dealing with conflictHow to approach conflict between users?You can individually message users involved in conflict to reference/quote community guidelines. If you decide that further action is necessary you can explain what will happen and why it will happen. You can edit/deleted content and suspend posting privileges (permanently or temporarily). Here is an example of a message to send:

How are members notified of the restriction?

Subject : Your interaction on [post title]Hi [username>], I am getting in touch with you about your interaction on the post [post title], where negative comments were deleted to protect the community’s positive atmosphere.As an admin I need to remind you of the community guidelines: [link]Please consider this as a warning and keep in mind that the [community name]’s admins will take further action (suspend your posting privileges) if the incident happens again.

They will be able to login as usual, but when they attempt to post they will receive an error message saying they don’t have permission to do so. As mentioned before, the restricted members will also not be able to send a private message to other community members, unless the message thread between the users already exists. They will, however, be able to private message the admins of the community to discuss their restriction if needed.

What should your users do if they think someone has breached the guidelines? The best thing to do is to ignore the post/reply and report. Users that respond to abuse are likely to contribute to the negative atmosphere and engage in conflict (also breaching community guidelines).

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Self harm or suicideHealthUnlocked does not currently provide a safe environment for professional medical advice. Discussion that involves any apparent intention of self-harm or suicide suggests the need for professional help and advice. Such discussion also presents a risk of distress and possible triggers to other vulnerable visitors to the community.

Therefore, the principles are:

For more information and advice on moderating high risk content, please refer to this guide here.

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• Remove the content as quickly as possible • Contact the individual(s) concerned with compassionate advice to seek professional

support and signposts to relevant services.

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Spam report and filterHealthUnlocked takes care of protecting and cleaning all the communities from spam. For this reason admins don’t need to worry too much about reports of spam, but you might want to remove spam posts straight away and point the HealthUnlocked Support team to spammer accounts.

Spam filterHealthUnlocked has a spam filter in place that indicated whether a piece of content is likely to be spam based on the text, location of sender and device used for sending. If the content is determined to be spam, the post is blocked.The filter also looks at the number of posts created, relative to the account age for all new members (ie. typical behaviour for a spammer is to register and create many new posts immediately). The filter sends a warning to the HealthUnlocked Support team and we will investigate the account to determine their validity, taking action to ban accounts where necessary.

What about users that share links to their personal content?Sometimes genuine users start repeatedly sharing external links (eg. a personal blog). In those cases, you should try to use a personal rule of thumb. For instance, you could consider it spam if more than 1 out of every 10 contributions by that user contain a specific link. If that is the case, you might want to let them know this behaviour is seen as spam and give them a second chance.

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References & resourcesHealthUnlocked help articles: support.healthunlocked.com

UK Government Digital Service. Community development handbook: www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-development-handbook/community-development-handbook

Millington, Richard. Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities. FeverBee 2012.

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