They Said WHAT??? Moderating Content On Your Resident Portal
Posted on Fri, Mar 12, 2010
If you read this blog, you understand that ActiveBuilding is a big advocate of encouraging residents to participate in the community through our customized Resident Portals. Some ways residents are participating are by posting topics to the community’s Message Board, completing their public profiles, and/or adding service provider recommendations and reviews. We strongly believe that resident participation increases the value of your portal, assists in creating a stronger community, and improves the relationships between the management teams, the residents and the neighborhood.
But let's not ignore the fact that when people have a place to voice their opinions, they use it! That’s why we at ActiveBuilding have made sure to give you (the management) some control over the content they post. After all it is your brand and it is in your best interest to make sure your Resident Portal is a civilized, fun and social place.
When first talking to new communities about the ActiveBuilding service and the “Social” element it provides to the residents, the initial concern management expresses is about letting residents communicate and voice their opinions. Of course residents can always use websites like ApartmentRatings.com where they can post almost anything they desire anonymously, but ActiveBuilding is much different! We provide an environment with the right balance between an open portal that encourages residents to participate and content moderation controls to satisfy the property manager/owner needs.
With ActiveBuilding every property can set its own moderation policies. After all, each property is unique. We allow property managers to decide what type of content they need to monitor closely by approving it before it goes live (with our message board content approval module) while allowing other types of content to be posted immediately (for example, Market Place Listings). In addition, we provide a notification system to allow managers/moderators to receive real time notifications by email or text when new content is posted in certain section of the portal or by a certain unit. To assist the on-site team we also developed an automated filter to catch profanity and specific words (such as "Rent" or "parking") giving the moderator even more authority to come to a decision on which posts to approve and which to deny.
What is your experience with content moderation? Do you feel comfortable enough to let your residents post content freely? Does your Resident Portal provide the tools you need to sleep well at night? Use the comment section below to share your thoughts with us. If it’s good we might approve it…:)