Flicks Comments and Ratings
When we were designing the Firefox Flicks video viewing site, one of the early requirements was that we provide a mechanism for individual video feedback. The goal was twofold: first, and most important, we thought it would be a great way for our Flicks participants to get some constructive feedback on their videos. Second, we thought it would be a good way to gauge our community’s reaction to specific videos and to rank their favorite videos.
Unfortunately, the comments have turned overwhelmingly negative. The increasing number of insulting and downright cruel posts have led some of the Flicks participants to email us asking that their videos be removed completely. It also appears that the majority of comments of this nature are coming from people outside of our Flicks and Spread Firefox community so they don’t offer any real way for us to measure the responses from the Firefox community. We’ve been working to try to moderate some of the uglier comments (removing posts filled with obscenities, etc.) but right now we don’t have the tools to keep up with that.
We’re going to be working on some new tools that integrate feedback and advocacy, along with the process for determining where and how we push Flicks ads beyond the Flicks site, into our existing community marketing site, Spread Firefox. In the mean time, the anonymous nature of the commenting system, the volume of rude and insulting commenting from outside of our community, and requests from some of our Flicks creators are enough incentive to remove the current commenting system until we get something better up and integrated into Spread Firefox. We’re leaving the ratings system for now and we’ll continue to monitor that for abuse and strike those ratings that are being added fraudulently.
