NetModerator™
“Addressing the demands of child protection... and other "real-world" issues which early adopters had hoped to leave behind will become an increasing challenge for operators.” Steve Prentice, Vice President, Gartner, Inc. “Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast,2008”
Significant Challenges for Virtual Communities
Creating a safe environment for millions of youngsters is a priority not only for Virtual Worlds but also for Social Networks and MMOG’s. However these online services face significant challenges along the way to achieving this goal.
- For the youth audience open chat is a strong expectation and a key differentiator
- White lists are too restrictive and black lists too difficult to implement and maintain
- The pressure placed on moderation teams is rising as they endeavour to police ever-increasing volumes of dialogue
- The language and slang used in chat environments is constantly evolving
- Valuable time and resources have to be diverted to deal with these “hygiene” issues
Until now no effective solutions from outside the industry itself have been available to tackle these challenges
Our Solution
NetModerator brings together Crisp’s three component technologies into one simple user interface that provides moderation teams with a complete overview of the short, medium and long term threats facing the young members of their community.
- The RMF handles short-range threats by uncovering low level code of conduct breaches and blocking inappropriate content before it reaches its intended recipient. It is capable of handling huge numbers of conversations at the same time. This leaves moderation teams free to focus their energies on more serious offenders and means that clients do not need to scale up their moderation resources at the same rate that their membership base grows
- Once the RMF has processed a line of dialogue it forwards the data to the ECA which undertakes a more detailed sweep of each conversation in search of medium-range threats. The ECA detects not only inappropriate content but also the first warning signs of cyber bullying and predatory behaviour. For example the it can reveal when one correspondent is trying to make direct contact with another or when someone is revealing personal information which may compromise their future safety
- The ERA also receives forwarded conversation data from the RMF and scrutinises the messages for abusive behaviour. Sexual predatory behaviour for example is purposefully subtle and long-term in nature. The ERA assesses over two hundred elements of each individual relationship in order to uncover the underlying behaviours that predators cannot hide. The ERA enables moderation teams to better predict when unhealthy relationships may be developing
- All three technologies feed information into our user interface which organises information into a readily digestible format for moderation teams. This enables them to, for example, prioritise alerts or take an overview of top offenders within their community. Alternatively NetModerator reporting can be merged with a client’s existing moderation interface