After Violation but before Sanction: Understanding Volunteer Moderators' Profiling Processes Toward Violators in Live Streaming Communities

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-18-2021

Abstract

Content moderation is an essential part of online community health and governance. While much of extant research is centered on what happens to the content, moderation also involves the management of violators. This study focuses on how moderators (mods) make decisions about their actions after the violation takes place but before the sanction by examining how they "profile"the violators. Through observations and interviews with volunteer mods on Twitch, we found that mods engage in a complex process of collaborative evidence collection and profile violators into different categories to decide the type and extent of punishment. Mods consider violators' characteristics as well as behavioral history and violation context before taking moderation action. The main purpose of the profiling was to avoid excessive punishment and aim to integrate violators more into the community. We discuss the contributions of profiling to moderation practice and suggest design mechanisms to facilitate mods' profiling processes.

Identifier

85117950592 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1145/3479554

e-ISSN

25730142

Issue

CSCW2

Volume

5

Grant

1928627

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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