Photo / Kaitlyn Baker, Unsplash
It takes a unique set of skills to be a comment moderator for a mainstream news website. Good general knowledge and sound judgement are compulsory. The ability to speed-read helps. And a hide like a rhino is a definite advantage.
Of the hundreds of comments our moderation team handles every day, most are constructive. Our readers have strong views, but they know the rules and they're happy to follow them.
We like strong views, from all perspectives - that's why we introduced a comments section for Premium subscribers in early 2021.
A small proportion of comments are not constructive, however, and a small proportion of those are downright confronting. Moderation is not a job for the faint-of-heart.
Over the year or so since we introduced comments, we've fielded a lot of questions from our readers about how the system works. We asked Stan, the head of our moderation team, to take 90 minutes out of his busy schedule this morning to answer your questions.
• Thanks for your questions. We've closed submissions so Stan can get back to his day job. Apologies if your question didn't make it through - we had too many for one person to answer in 90 minutes. We'll run another Q&A with Stan next month.
