On our own behalf: This is how we moderate your reader comments

2023-11-08 14:54:11

Media on our own behalf

This is how we moderate your reader comments

As of: 1:59 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes

Holger Melas, Head of Community, has been taking care of reader debates at WELT since 2008

Quelle: Getty Images/Tiyas/Digital Vision Vectors; Claudius Pflug; Montage welt.de

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More than 6.5 million reader contributions this year alone: ​​WELT’s comment function is one of the largest and most liberal among German media. We explain how our moderation team works and why this is not censorship.

Many readers use the comment function very intensively and particularly value being able to express their opinion on all articles, videos and podcasts. And around the clock, 365 days a year.

While other editorial teams have the opportunity for critical debate with their readership drastically restrict, we decided on significantly more direct exchange. This is how all editors use one Author profilewith which you can participate in reader debates and respond to questions and tips.

I’m most happy when your suggestions even result in new articles. We also offer live video chats on current topics, in which our experts address and answer questions asked in the comment function. The next one will take place on November 14th, 2023 from 3 p.m. Then domestic policy expert Ricarda Breyton and investigative director Tim Röhn answer your questions about the EU migration crisis. In the exclusive WELT Talk event series, you can even discuss things directly with us in a video chat at eye level. Compared to the national competition, you can only find this with us.

Freedom of expression without censorship

As a liberal publication, we naturally attach great importance to freedom of expression. But with up to 30,000 reader contributions submitted daily, there are also challenges. The moderation team is guided by these Regulate and unlocks an average of 90 percent of all comments chronologically.

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This is largely done by an algorithm that analyzes content, for example for aggressive word choice or extreme amounts of exclamation marks, in order to detect insults, incitement to hatred or other violations. If he finds no evidence of rule violations, the comment appears almost in real time.

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In principle, there can be no talk of censorship at WELT, because by definition it always comes from a state or a monopolist like Facebook. We are neither. If political censorship were actually taking place, there would hardly be millions of critical reader contributions among the thousands of WELT articles.

However, if the algorithm detects potentially toxic content in a comment, it must be checked by a moderator. And in view of major news situations like those in Israel or Ukraine, there are understandably a lot of articles that are bursting with martial wording and therefore have to be checked “by hand”.

We chose this process carefully because we don’t want to remove a comment without a moderator reading it. Since, in contrast to the public broadcasters, we have to earn our money ourselves, the capacity of our staff is limited – if the WELT subscription is not to cost a multiple of the current price.

AI systems and toxic debates

Even the most modern AI does not interpret everything as it was intended. For particularly opinionated articles or obituaries that provoke highly emotional discussions, the algorithm remains switched off and the moderation team judges by hand.

Therefore, in large news situations with tens of thousands of articles, there can be significant congestion and delays. Even if discussions that are initially moderated automatically become too toxic, we have to switch off the AI ​​systems, which can lead to waiting times.

There are also time distortions when an extremely large number of posts arrive in a short period of time and the comment backlog becomes so long that we are forced to remove articles from manual work and return them to the algorithm.

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This sometimes creates the confusing situation where the algorithm that is switched back on for a text immediately evaluates new posts, while comments that were previously made in the manual moderation phase are stuck in the queue until the traffic jam has been processed.

The resulting misunderstandings and complaints displease us as much as you do, but they cannot (yet) be avoided. However, we are working intensively on improving the systems, including finally for the community area of ​​the News App!

It would therefore be nice if these tips lead to a little more patience and understanding for our small moderation team and if you would like to participate even more actively in our debates. We look forward to hearing your opinion this survey or you can share it in the comments section of this article.