E-Media Tidbits

avisen.dk Danish news site Avisen has fallen prey to a common problem: destructive conversation.

Last week Ole Wejse Svarrer, editor of the Danish news site Avisen.dk, decided to ban 35 bloggers for the next two weeks. "It seems these bloggers don't have anything else to do, than write derogatory comments," wrote Svarrer before he deleted a number of posts and banned the bloggers. Some of these people had contributed 1000-2000 comments to the site in the last six months.

It seems that Danish blogs have now encountered the same problem that closed down several major Danish newspapers' discussion boards a couple of years ago. The problem is invasion by a small number of hyperactive users who spam the site with comments of little value. These users seem not to be interested in the subject matter, but rather in getting attention.

In my opinion we (the large media corporations) simply know too little about social engineering and social patterns. Running a great blog (or hosting collection of blogs) is much more like running a new hot-spot cafe -- and news-people know very little about it. In Svarre's . he had to kick out 35 guests.

How do we get them all to behave nicely? What should we do to get the formula and the tools right?