As the blog grows the comment moderation becomes quite a task. 10 good quality comments are lot better than 100 cheap comments. In the survey I conducted, I realised that most of you were upset about the quality/maturity of comments (thankfully, not so much of the articles!). I promised to regulate the comments/users but there is this thing called ‘time’ which I don’t have much and as a result, either I don’t get to read all comments or end up doing nothing about comments that need to be warned and users that need to be banned. Now, I’ve got a solution, that will never fail.

Yes, I’ve found a solution for comment moderation in BlueChampions. The name of the solution is Kafka. I met this guy on the internet few weeks back and after some deliberations we’ve agreed that he would be the comment moderator for BlueChampions. I’ve hired him (that is, I’m paying him) to be the comment moderator here for BlueChampions. Kafka lives in London but supports Dinamo Kiev and has vast experience (used to play, he says) and knowledge in football and also in website design and control. He has past experience in moderating websites (non-football), so he knows his way inside out.

My simple instructions to him are strictly no abuses or cheap insults against each other or Chelsea club, players, coaches, staff, owner and anything to do with Chelsea. Also no insults or defamation of anything related to Chelsea (c’mon, this is a Chelsea fan blog). That doesn’t mean we can shower Rafa Benitez with all the swear words that we know. Any comment that is of ‘cheap taste’ is to be put under moderation. Anyone making racist remarks will be dumped forever. This does not mean any ban on opposite views – other club fans such as SpanishFry, RedRanter etc have all posted comments and they are all there. It’s not about what you comment but how you comment. Allright, certain things are subjective, but I’ve decided to leave it to Kafka and I’m not planning to spend to anymore time on this.

I asked him about how he would deal with such things. He says he has his own methods – flags, period ban, IP nuke, no-comment ban, no-site ban, bot-ban, php controller and so many other techie stuff that my brain can’t handle. He also talked about something called progressive banning which means a first offence gets a 2-day ban and second one gets a 4-day ban and it keeps increasing with every offence. And yes, Kafka’s made it clear that I shouldnt come crying to him if he bans someone and I’m not fine with it. He has a job and he gets paid for it, so I’d respect his decisions. Why not, he saves me a lot of time and headaches!

If you wonder why I’m so excited, this blog has received about 9,500 spam comments so far in the last 12 months. It’s quite a job, this moderation thing and I’ve spent hours and hours for this. Hereafter, all that I’m going to do on this blog is to post articles, read comments and handle advertisements. Of course, I’m also looking for someone (I think I’ve found him) to handle the advertisements (my agent, you can say) and my email inbox as well, so that I can concentrate only on football. Wow, I’m loving that prospect.

Kafka has been observing this blog for more than a week now. He is also planning to come up with a comments policy! Beware, the big brother is watching you!

{democracy:71}