1.19 Interactive facilities

You may have interactive facilities on your Web site, for example, e-mail lists, bulletin boards, chat rooms. These also need quality checking.

Consider carefully if you want to offer interactive facilities.

• They can be very time consuming to manage.
  
  
• It can be very difficult to control what information people give and the correctness of that information.
  
  
• You could be liable for any comments posted.

Quality controls on interactive facilities include:

• Experienced members, who respond when incorrect information is broadcast.
  
  
• The use of Netiquette - rules of polite, supportive behaviour on the Internet. Produce a set of rules about acceptable behaviour that users must sign up to before participating. These rules should cover aspects such as:
  (a) only making supportive not critical comments;
  (b) staying on topic;
  (c) no insults, threats, swearing, abuse, obscene comments, and so on;
  (d) no discriminatory comments, for example, on race, gender, age, sexuality, religion, nationality;
  (e) no illegal comments, for example, libel;
  (f)  no spamming;
  (g) no advertising or endorsement of products or services;
  (h) no impersonation.
  
  
• Moderators who help the discussions stay supportive and within the rules. Moderators control what happens in the facility.
  (a) They register new members, tell them about the acceptable behaviour rules, prevent, delete or modify inappropriate messages, and ban offenders from the group.
  (b) Moderators can either deal with messages and offenders after the inappropriate message has been posted, or check all messages before hand. Checking beforehand can be very time consuming.
  
  
• Setting up closed facilities, where registration is required
  

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© Copyright for this site is held by Contact a Family and the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University. Site published February 2003. Last updated September 2008. Review date September 2009.