how do I delete a topic or question?

Will user be notified of this? I'm fine with marking things for review, but how do you actually know that it's a duplicate? I don't see an option for that in your dialog. Something like "Other" would seem better. I also hope the user does not get any negative points in the system for that.

That's a new detail - so I have to mark both topics?

Is this somewhere in a FAQ? I'd prefer to have a bit more control over this, some sort of administrative menu where at least I could clearly indicate these issues, even if it would require your affirmative action in the end.

I would like the ability to have full control over the questions in my company topic. Can this please be added ASAP? If I feel that one is not appropriate, I would like to be able to delete it myself.

There is not one yet. We may need to pull our company from this service if we don't get that level of content control. That would be a bummer because your website looks great and all of the other features are awesome.

I'm all for openness, also. My main concern is the speediness of action if someone posts profanities or if a competitor poisons the threads. Can you ensure me that these things will be dealt with right away?

@eric: While I agree with, embrace even, your principles of openness and transparency, as one of the voices of our company, Zenbe.com, it is most definitely *my* opinion about those principles that matters, not yours. If we want to censor and edit our users with Orwellian abandon and incur the resulting wrath, that is our decision, and we'll pay the consequences, not you.

Even for the most open and transparent companies, there are plenty of reasons to remove, edit, or redact content. Duplicate topics is the most benign example. We may need to update obsolete information, correct factual errors in announcements, remove sensitive information published by accident (by us or particularly resourceful users)... the list goes on.

The way I see it - and correct me if I have this wrong - GetSatisfaction is a specialized forum tool, little more. You are competing with literally dozens of other forum and blog products that we and other companies can choose from. While you might have the semi-interesting twist of offering forums for users to talk about a company before the company has joined your service, if the forum Amy created for us is any indication, this "twist" isn't attracting (m)any users. The reason being that until a company decides to endorse or "sanction" GetSatisfaction as their official forum and drive traffic to your site, you guys are just a 3rd wheel that hasn't been invited to the company<->user party. Thus, you end up being the only forum product out there that doesn't allow administrators to remove or edit topics(!)

Zenbe already has a thriving online community (http://forums.zenbe.com), but the free-form nature of BBPress is making it difficult to scale our ability to support our users. Thus GetSatisfaction looks like a great tool for us - I love the API and voting system, the widgets look cool, it's a clean interface - it solves a lot of the problems we're struggling with. I'd really like to recommend to our company that we adopt it. But any tool that comes with a built-in moderation system of, "Email Eric and he'll decide whether or not it conforms to his hand-wavy 'Switzerland' philosophy", is well... frankly, that's beyond ridiculous. :(

Bottom line, ability for administrators to remove and edit topics and comments (and pretty much all content) is a must-have.

Thor, thanks for the timely and well thought out reply. It's obvious that GetSatisfaction strives to be more than "yet another forum tool". The feature set and vision are evident, and I'll be the first to commend you for that.

I'll also be the first to agree that the notion of a company "owning" their customers is outdated and dysfunctional. That's certainly not how we view our users. But there are cases where having the ability to moderate and censor forum content in a timely fashion is critical. For example, go into iTunes, type "Zenbe", and then click on the one result you'll get to open the detail page for "Zenbe Lists. If you look at the user reviews, you'll see that the first two reviews are damningly negative ones. They also happen to 100% incorrect (they are out-of-context quotes from an old Terms of Service that we corrected within hours after realizing there was a problem). But users believe them to be true and are marking them as "helpful" in breathtaking numbers, which keeps them at the top of the list of reviews.

This is a situation that I expect any sane person would say warrants some sort of editorial intervention. But because we have to rely on a moderation system that is (dys)functionally identical to what GetSatisfaction offers, and because Apple is overwhelmed by support requests from other developers, we are left with no recourse.

In this case, we have no avenue to resort to because Apple, well, they're Apple and they hold the keys to the iPhone kingdom. But when it comes to _our_ community, we do get to decide what forums to adopt and sanction as the official arena in which we communicate. You can rest assured, in no uncertain terms, that we won't make this same mistake twice. As I said before, I'd love to migrate us over to your service, but given what we're currently going through with Apple, this issue may prove to be a deal breaker.

I don't say that to apply pressure to you. You guys have a free product and are free to pick and chose it's features and direction. (Actually, it always seems a bit absurd when a user says, "we have to have this feature or else".) I just thought you'd appreciate an outside perspective, one that may or may not align with other companies you're dealing with.

Finally, a quick, "oops", for saying Amy created our forum. That was just (yet another) communication breakdown on our side of things. (Sorry, Amy!). If only I could edit my previous post...

Hi Robert,

Thanks for offering your thoughts on GetSatisfaction! I'm sure Thor will have some further comments, but I wanted to step in with my opinions as well.

Regarding your example about iTunes: The failure there is not in the lack of moderation, it is that apple has restricted your ability to respond. You don't have that problem with GSFN. If such a review were to be posted on Get Satisfaction, you could respond when you made the fix and feature its answer at the top of the topic. It would then show up in the search results as "Solved".

Outside of Spam and blatant abuse, I've not been shown any reason for deleting or editing history that couldn't be better served by conversation. Get Satisfaction can be better about surfacing updates and changes (such as marking a topic as duplicate and providing navigation to the canonical topic), but I don't think censorship is the solution.

I have to agree 100% with Scott's assessment of the breakdown in the iTunes example. I also agree with how that same situation would play out in the context of Get Satisfaction.

Robert, I thank you for continuing *this* conversation, and I hope that we've been able to show you that a suitable alternative to censorship and absolute control is a viable option. Censorship also has a nasty tendency to be noticed by your most astute users, and used as ammunition against you.

I suspect we both understand where the other is coming from at this point. Censorship is a double-edged sword, no doubt, but as a company it's really nice to have control over which side of that sword gets used, rather than handing control over the sword to someone unfamiliar with you, your product, or your users. In the Apple scenario we would ideally replace them with a "obsolete TOS quote removed", but I'd happily settle for deleting them outright with no explanation. Would I take a good hard look at why I'm doing it and what affect it has on the trust of our users? You bet. A couple users might notice, they might even say something about it on iTunes. But weigh that against the 1000's of bad impressions those reviews have created... it's a no-brainer decision.

Scott, we have essentially implemented the solution you propose on iTunes, "featuring the answer at the top of the topic". Check out our app description - the first paragraph is, (paraphrased) "Hey, we've fixed this!" The results? Negligible. Over 200 users have marked these incorrect reviews as, "helpful", since we added that to the description. Realistically, probably all we've done is call more attention to those reviews. :P Sometimes you really do need a simple "delete" button.

[Bleepity bleep bleep!] Who do I submit moderation requests to? I need to change "ideally replace them" to "ideally replace the reviews" in my previous post. (And, no, I didn't do that on purpose just to prove a point. It's an honest mistake.)

[*sigh* My apologies for another long winded post here, but this 15-minute edit feature really calls out for a bit of commentary. BTW, Eric, I was aware of this feature, but 'didn't help when I noticed the typo 4-hours later.]

I "get" the motivation behind the 15-minutes-of-editing window - oftentimes one doesn't notice typos until after a post appears in it's final form so it's nice to make quick after-the-fact revisions. But it does beg the question, "Since you allow edits for 15 minutes, why not 60 minutes, or 600 minutes? Why not just allow a person to edit their posts any time the see the need?"

That is, of course, a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious:
"A post is a part of the transcript of this 'conversation' we're having. Revising the transcript after the fact may be misleading and confusing".

But if the answer is that obvious (it is that obvious, right?) than won't everyone know this? And if everyone knows this, why bother enforcing it, why not trust users to to use their best judgement?

By enforcing this artificially rigid notion of what is and is not acceptable behavior, you are taking away useful and much-needed tools. This thread would be much better off had I simply made the required edit, above, rather than cluttering it up with my revision request, and Eric's subsequent comment.

Might users abuse editing and moderation tools? Sure, in theory. But that's not the important question. The important question is, "WILL they abuse these tools? And, if they do, does the resulting harm outweigh the benefit the tools otherwise provide?"

All of this has me wondering, "Can you really cultivate a culture of 'transparency and openness' if you don't trust your users to do the right thing?"

I don't think that it's too much to ask to allow a business to be able to control official communication done in their company's name.

You're asking companies to use your site as an official forum of communication with their customers while denying them control over the content. That's like a web hosting company telling their customers that they can't control the content of their own website. That's a ridiculous notion!

Are you a content dictatorship or are you a hosting provider?

I understand that these are the principles that you have decided to build this website around but it's not right for you to label those who disagree as censors and evil corporations who want to deny the voice of their customers.

We're going to move our support back to forums based communications because we're not ready to hand over that kind of content control to sysadmins who are not employed by our company and have no contractual obligations to uphold our high standards for support content.

We believe in openness and only remove or edit posts for reasons of profanity, software piracy, spam, or competitors advertising their products. This is something that we have staff on hand to do.

It is not in any companies best interest to outsource this responsibility to a website who has not signed a quality of service agreement and offers no control of content to the business owners.

I'm sorry to say it but this policy will keep most companies from signing up here. If I knew that was the case, we wouldn't have. I take responsibility for that because it is clearly documented and I just missed it.

I wish you good will with your website, but it's just not what our customers are asking for and not of any benefit over typical forums. It's just different.

Part of the problem here is that we are casting the two sides of this issue in extremes. Nobody here has any interest in being a heavy-handed dictator/moderator. The disagreement is about how the functionality in question is going to be used. For my part, the only reason I am being so tenacious is that 1) it's an interesting philosophical discussion and 2) lack of good administrative tools for managing content is a giant pain in the ass. :)

Thor, I get that you're trying create something more than an incrementally better forum tool. I think it would be great if GSFN could actually succeed at becoming a communal middleground for users and companies. But if you want to be successful at this you need to give everyone a reason to come to your service. Right now, the only reason why Zenbe or it's users would use GSFN is if the tools you provide do a better job at solving our problems. (Right? Or is there another reason I'm missing?) In that sense, for now at least, you are "just a slightly better forum product". The good news is you mostly succeed at this - I really like what GSFN offers - but GSFN comes with this attitude bout the sacredness of content that ignores the practical need that companies have for making sure they can moderate their forums when needed, and for users and companies alike to make small, benign edits on a regular basis.

I believe the solution here is not a technical one, it's a social one. Instead of crippling your system to prevent objectionable behavior, put checks and balances in place that provide a more equatable balance of power between users and companies. Give companies the tools they need to moderate their forums, but do so in a way that doesn't leave customers helpless. For example, only allow moderation by companies that have agreed to certain standards of conduct. Then allow users to hold a company accountable by allowing them to grade a company on how well it performs against those standards.

By itself, this grade won't be much of an incentive, but if GSFN were to, for example, make the grade data available to industry trade journals (e.g. "GSFN's best and worst customer support report on techcrunch.com"), I'm betting this would act as a powerful motivator.

I'm sure there's plenty here that hasn't been thought through, but you get the general idea. This sort of social engineering would seem to offer a number of advantages over your current approach:
- Companies get moderation control
- Users get a stick with which to beat ill-behaved companies
- GSFN doesn't have to burn a lot of energy acting as moderator
- By creating a "GSFN Grade" brand, you bring more to the party than just a better forum tool. You create a potentially highly-sought after stamp of approval for companies. Especially if you can grow it into a well-recognized metric for how good a company is at supporting their products. Think of it as consumer reports for online customer service. :)

Anyhow, Thor, hopefully you find this useful. I've found myself spending a fair bit of time mulling over what you're trying to accomplish and how to make that align with the needs of our company, our users, and GSFN. This is the best I can come up with (for now, at midnight, after a 16-hour workday. So maybe that's not saying much. :-) )

I'm sorry, I probably was being a bit too harsh. It was some of the things said here that let me to that point of view, though.

Cameron wrote, "Robert, I thank you for continuing *this* conversation, and I hope that we've been able to show you that a suitable alternative to censorship and absolute control is a viable option. Censorship also has a nasty tendency to be noticed by your most astute users, and used as ammunition against you."

When I read this, I saw a backhanded slap at Robert implying that he was asking to be a censor of his customer's voice. Perhaps, I was just reading this wrong. :)

I apologize if I misinterpreted this statement.

I hadn't taken Camaron's comment as a slap, but I can see how you read it that way. If I wanted to be upset at anything it's at his implying I don't understand the repercussions of mucking about with your users' content. I think it's indicative of an assumption their making about my inability to appreciate the value in good user-company communication. The same assumption that's leading them to make bad decisions about what tools to give me access to.

As for "censorship", let's be honest here, you and I are both asking for tools that can be used to censor our users. Not because we want to censor them, per se, but because they are vital to letting us provide well-maintained forums in an efficient manner. And... well... because there may in fact be occasions where we feel censorship is warranted.

Censorship is not the completely black and white issue GSFN is making it out to be. Sure, if abused, it can be bad for our reputation with our users, but sometimes that's a necessary trade off. Actually, as long as we don't abuse the power, most users will understand and appreciate the rare occasions when we do take action.

I respect and admire GSFN's stance on how companies should treat their users. But the solution is not to neuter the tools you a company is accustomed to having. It's to empower users in such a way that their opinion becomes an especially compelling motivator for us. This is the basis for my "grade" idea above. Not only will you stop frustrating companies that feel they need a certain level of control, you'll be providing a cool and unique service to users, companies, and the industry as a whole.

Exactly, I wasn't attempting to be inflamatory. I was simply pointing out that the coin has two sides. I also don't hold the belief that every single piece of content must be preserved as sacrosanct.

There are certainly appropriate times to change or remove content, most commonly spam or profanity. I'm glad we're back on the right track towards thinking about creative solutions to offer value to both sides without simply enabling unchecked access to editing or removal of content.

Out of curiosity, how quickly are you guys going to handle a situation like this:

A customer posted a question on our forums and pasted output that exposed their registration information on accident. The longer that post remained in tact, the more likely it was that we were going to lose money to people using it to register their own software. We saw it and edited it out immediately. It would have been very bad if it was up there long enough for Google to index it into it's cache!

How long would it take your company to do the same edit in these scenarios?

We've had a number of incidents like this over the years.

I hope that it would happen faster that it's been taking to answer this question! As you can see, there are some very valid reasons for a company to make edits to their forums and official means of communication.

I hope that you understand that I'm not trying to rock the boat. I totally agree with your views that a company should not censor their customers to eliminate embarrassing complaints. I've seen this happen on Apple's forums a lot and it is very frustrating.

I think that you're going to need to give some moderation powers to the companies that you're attempting to entice to use your service.

It would be acceptable for you to allow edits with a system injected notice stating that it was edited. If the user didn't like the edit, they are more than welcome to complain to you guys and you can inject yourself into the situation.

Wouldn't that resolve the issue of unchecked censorship while still allowing the needed control of content to a well intentioned business?

FYI, just created a related topic:
http://getsatisfaction.com/satisfacti...

This is such a great discussion. I really appreciate the time and care that everyone has put into their replies.

I agree, mdy. Especially when self-reflecting on what initially was a quick decision being baked into our (GSFN's) psyches. Robert certainly brought up a lot of great issues and we're re-working how we deal with the revisioning of conversation in the future.

I have two test posts from when we where trying out the product. Now we have purchased a license and I could delete my other test posts, but this one is a duplicate and I can ́t seem to remove it from the home page of our support page...
http://getsatisfaction.com/hours_of_w...

I had a customer post the same question twice about 6 minutes apart. I hate to just remove it isn't inappropriate, crass commercialism, etc.

What is the best option here?