The Fiction of Moderation

Many sites, be they writing or social media, claim they practice "moderation". I put the word in quotes because the dictionary definition of the term and its practice on various sites, are dissimilar.

To read an item before publication, to prevent hate speech, obscenity or nonsense is what the term should mean.

On many sites, contributions are not actually moderated. The term is used to perpetuate the bias of those who own the site. Moderation is to prevent the publication of other views, regardless of its truth or value.

On paying sites, 'moderation' is a euphemism for 'Delay'. This is to prevent the item from being published and the contributor from earning.

In a typical version of 'moderation', once you post an item it becomes 'pending'. In normal situations it pops up in less than an hour. No one serious about writing, would object to the honest moderator. .

The word 'honest' needs to be emphasized..

There were sites in which a moderator became an over active editor. Changing words, titles, even language so that the finished product is NOT what the writer wrote.

This kind of interference is to be excoriated.

If one had been hired to write an item and is well paid, and the item submitted to an editor so named before publication, the writer can expect that the work will experience some 'tweaking'.

Unless the 'tweaking' is correcting misspellings or too much spaces between paragraphs, the writer should be consulted before extreme alteration.

This is not done.

Today most sites which have moderators expose their bias.

These moderators hold unchangeable opinions and use their position to silence others. They support those who support their views and block writers who express their own views.

No matter what an Unliked writer wrote, no matter how good, it will be pushed to the bottom, never featured, if even published.

In some cases the writer 'advertises' on various other sites, networks their item and will, be roping in thousands of hits. But the Moderator would sooner die than allow it to be featured.

Writers who match the opinions of the owners/moderators can spew garbage, but will be put at the top of the list.

This is reality.

On sites which want to limit earnings or 'punish' disliked writers, publication will be delayed.

Years ago, there were a number of writing sites. Writers would belong to many of them. This means they have various options.

When one site takes an abnormal length of time to publish, the writer posts the item elsewhere.

So an article is submitted to Site A at 10 am, it is still pending at 12. It is posted on Site B at 12:10 and appears by 12:20.

By the time Site A gets around to it; unless there really isn't any moderation, it will be rejected as plagiarized.

The bottom line is there are sites that do not want to pay writers.

Whether the sites are badly managed, whether the business model followed is unsustainable, there is a need to Not Publish Work.

The site can't say; 'Yo! We can only afford to publish six items a day..."

The site can not advise; "We have a serious financial problem so can only publish an item from a contributor when previous items have earned Xc."

The site adopts a slow moderation style, so that one contributes, the item is 'locked in' so that one can not edit, delete or even read the item, until if/when it is published.

Writers who were aware of this trick and the different demands of length, may publish the full article on slow site where it requires a larger number of words, then publish shards of the article on other sites which demand less.

A bit of editing, title, a few words, one can have virtually one article on five different sites.

With Biased Moderation it is not unknown for contributors to have their work rejected. On some occasions, the writer will be banned.

On social media sites with various sub-sites, each managed by a different moderator, it is easy to find a similar sub edit and post there, or start your own sub site.

Simply put, there is nothing wrong with the item, the problem is the bias of the moderator. So relocate.

As now is not the time of writers market. Where once there were many honest sites to choose from today, the market is tiny.

Yes, moderation is important to block hate speech, hoaxes, bad writing. But in most cases, it exists simply to block publication.