5 things Clash of Clans can teach you about UGC content moderation

Community management lessons from the epic combat strategy game.

Everything you need to know about user generated content (UGC) content moderation, you can learn from Clash of Clans.

In this Supercell game, public areas are under the protection of profanity filters and community moderators.

And, in private spaces it makes more sense to let people simply police themselves.

There are a few reasons why this top-down approach to UGC content moderation works.

Let me show you why.

Community management sends a message

At Supercell, that message is love.

Instead of using asterisks, employed moderators use a combination of community management and automation tools to replace swear words with symbols like ♥♥♥, keep kids safe online and help users follow the forum rules.

Parents have more support than they think

As you’ll see in this Parent’s Guide, child safety online is a big deal for companies like Supercell games, Apple, and Google.

In fact, completely new industries now exist to help make sure that parents have a voice when it comes to modern issues surrounding:

• privacy and internet safety
• cyberbullying
• social media
• screen time

Social networks are like the wild west

Still, the Supercell moderators aren’t super heroes.

And like other authority figures, they can’t be with kids all the time. This is important because players frequently use the in-app messenger Clan Talk just for the sake of asking clashers for their usernames on other sites!

Moderating sites like Kik, Kakao, and Instagram isn’t easy. At least, I assume that it is difficult because gut-wrenching stories like this one keep popping up.

According to Josh Buxbaum, an expert at WebPurify a company that designs APIs for UGC content moderation, most social networks refuse to take responsibility for facilitating how media gets distributed on their site. Until that changes, it’s up to us to take matters into our own hands.

Users need to moderate themselves

The good news is, most clashers moderate themselves.

When setting up a clan, a player decides what sort of behavior is acceptable or not. He or she then designates an ‘elder’ who serves as the groups’ administrator and moderates other players. Typically, what happens when someone fails to follow the rules is that a public message is issued to the clan. For example, a reminder is sent out that this clan does not tolerate swearing, insults, or any other behavior that isn’t nice. If the player makes the same mistake twice, they are “kicked” (banned from the group and free to join another clan that tolerates this kind of behavior).

Sound familiar?

It should. This is the same community management that goes on in real life and off line.

Users are just people

It’s easy to forget that the users who upload content online are just people.

A few months ago, my husband and I arranged to meet a family on their vacation at Disney. We had lunch at a Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant, compared our lives with and without kids, and marveled at how a silly game was able to bring us all together.

You see, the dad, my husband, and three kids (ages 13–6) are in the same clan together.

The kids were originally drawn to the clan because they got treated with respect (the 13 year old was recently voted in as an elder), the dad was really into the positive vibe, and the mom enjoyed that the kids were learning real lessons about interacting with people in a group.

And that’s pretty much everything you need to know about UGC content moderation you can learn from Clash of Clans.