Private vs Public Communication
The way people communicate with us on social media, mainly Facebook, can be broadly divided into private messages or public comments. The way we handle public comments and private messages differs. Only the moderation team can create posts on each instance’s facebook page but users can add comments to those posts or send private messages.
Public Comments
Comments are posted by users on our posts, in our groups and on our pages. They are public — so anyone looking at our page can see them. Things to note:
- Public comments should be answered before private messages, as this promotes transparency, responsiveness and tackle misinformation and hate speech.
- People can sometimes accidentally post messages that they meant to send us privately, in our public spaces. If this happens and you discover a public sensitive message that you suspect a user didn’t mean to post, we need to act quickly to move the interaction into a private space. Send a private message to the user to explain why we are erasing their comment and then delete the comment and continue to interact through messages.
Private Messages
Messages are private and come through into Signpost inboxes. The questions we get in messages can be more varied, sensitive and detailed than comments. Digital Community Liaisons must handle these with great sensitivity, and be ready to seek support from their manager as soon as they suspect they require help in answering them.
Moderating Facebook Groups
Some Signpost instances, but not all, will utilize Facebook Groups to engage with users and build a community. Groups can encourage greater communication exchange between users and foster a more collaborative environment than facebook pages. However, they require clear guidelines and expectations in order to work, and are time consuming. This means the challenges of moderating a Facebook Group are more varied. One of the most important things when moderating groups is to have a clear set of group guidelines in the place from the outset, to manage expectations and group conduct.