Moderating Trolls in the Comments Section

We all know what it’s like to look through the comments on a video on YouTube or on a news site and find comments that are particularly nasty or offensive, but have you ever wondered what it is like for people who moderate these comments? An article on Mashable attempts to answer this question in an interview with Alex Chrum, moderator for debate.org, a site where people can discuss controversial topics. As you can imagine, trolls attempt to post comments with racial and sexists slurs, among other things, and Chrum is the one who decides what gets published and what doesn’t. Moderating these comments takes an emotional toll. When Chrum left work every day to go home, she was in a depressed mood. She would try not to think about the offensive comments when she was at home, but she took some of them personally because they were particularly offensive. Eventually, she found a way to not take them personally and to segment her life so that she would think about work when she was at work and think about home when she was at home. This is probably why, if you are a journalist who wrote a particular story, it’s not good to read the comments. Let the web team handle that stuff so you don’t take it personally. I don’t think I could be a moderator because I get annoyed with some of the comments I see on YouTube videos. I don’t know if YouTube has a system for moderating comments, but even if some more offensive comments don’t get published, I still see from time to time automated trolling comments, saying things like, “Don’t stop reading this comment because if you do, a ghost will come into your room and chop your head off. Re-post this comment to 3 other videos and you will find the love of your life.” I mostly see these comments coming from accounts that don’t use the person’s real name; it’s just a username. I guess this is why Google made everyone use their real name in comments. Since they have made this a requirement, the trolling comments I have seen have decreased, but there are still a lot of trolls out there getting away with it. I don’t typically post a comment on a video unless I am feeling very strongly about the topic of that video, and when I post, I don’t express my opinion in an offensive way. I speak my mind and say what I want to say, but I don’t curse, and I don’t use racial or sexist slurs. For example, if I see a video about children in a treatment center getting yelled at, and if I feel like this is wrong, I will post something like, “This makes me sick. I can’t believe anyone would think that this is okay.” People can disagree with me, but I am not going to start a flame war. I just chime in on the discussion and leave. If people reply to me, great. If not, that’s okay. If a troll replies to me with a stupid question, I ignore them. I am helping the moderators by not being a troll, and I would encourage others to do the same.