Who Watches The Watchers?
Photo by Amsk
The beauty of Yahoo! Answers is the way it empowers users to connect and collaborate. Through this knowledge-sharing service, anyone can post a question about any topic under the sun and anyone who can relate and can give their two cents about that topic can answer it. It’s a simple and effective system that works.
However with such a setup the Latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” comes to mind. Who watches the watchers? Or, to relate it to what I’m talking about, who checks if all questions and answers posted in Yahoo! Answers are reliable and valid? Nobody wants a website full of spamming, trolling, venting, and the like. Message boards or forums are known to have been victims of such, that’s they have full time moderators to act as gatekeepers. With a service like Yahoo! Answers (which is neither a message board or forum), the same problems will surely be faced, but it will take more than one moderator to handle it.
Community Moderation to the rescue!
Thankfully there’s Community Moderation, a system that allows trusted Answers users to work together to report and remove content that breaks the Community Guidelines and the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Traditionally on Answers if a question or answer broke the Community Guidelines or Yahoo! Terms of Service, an Answers user could report it. This report is reviewed by a real person and a decision is made whether to keep it up or to delete it. This system is still in place.
However, Community Moderation works in parallel to the old system. Once a report is submitted to Yahoo!, Community Moderation automatically measures the contributions and reporting history of both the reporter and the person being reported. Community Moderation then determines whether it can remove the reported question or answer directly from the site based on community input or whether further review is needed.
So how do I build a good reputation?
First and foremost, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the Community Guidelines. If you’re interested in reporting bad content on Answers, it’s very important that you’re accurate. When you feel you have a good idea about what’s acceptable on Answers as you begin to report content, you will build a good reputation and gain influence.
On the other hand, misuse of the new system will result in a lowered reputation. A low reputation means that the power to report and remove potential abuse is diminished, and may even risk suspension.
The community is very important to the Answers team: without it the site is nothing, so we have set up protection mechanisms to filter out specific targeting of one user by another. Similarly the system promotes accurate reporters, giving them more influence.
How accurate is Community Moderation?
According to our current analysis 94% of reports removed by Community Moderation were correctly removed. Occasionally it makes mistakes, which we would strongly encourage you to appeal, but on the whole your efforts in reporting are making a massive and accurate difference to the site.
By the very nature of the system, incorrect reports are occasionally going to happen. If your question or answer is reported, we’ll send you an email stating that it has been removed. If you feel that the system’s decision was incorrect, first read the Community Guidelines to check. If you think there’s a strong case, click on the “Appeal” link in the email to submit an appeal. This will be reviewed by a Yahoo! employee. If we agree, your question or answer will reappear on Answers, and the member(s) who reported you will have less influence when they report potential abuse in the future.
I would like to strongly emphasize the importance of appealing, once you’ve read the Community Guidelines and are certain your content has been removed in error. This is because if your appeal is successful, not only will your content be reinstated but your reputation will be boosted and those that reported you will lose reputation.
As you can see, the guidelines coupled with Community Moderation serve to maintain a Yahoo! Answers community of trusted shared knowledge instead of unreliable useless content. This community will only be a fun, safe and relevant place to be if its users keep it that way. And by involving users and empowering them to look after each other, then the question of “who watches the watchers?” is in fact answered as well. 
