Quiz: moderate politician statements!

Less Hate, More Speech is issuing a challenge to you: how would you moderate the statements of Romanian politicians, if they were to post them in the comment sections under articles?

Take a short quiz and test your online comment moderator skills on 6 recent statements made by Romanian politicians!*

In the Less Hate, More Speech research project, we analysed both the comments users left on 4 Romanian websites (GSP.ro, Tolo.ro, Paginademedia.ro and Blogsport.ro) and the discourses of political elites and its effects on the citizens. As a result, we know that the speeches of politicians do have an impact, not only through their content, but also through their tone and word choice.

A moderator’s job, as we defined it in the project, was to moderate the writing, not the thoughts a user might have, to distinguish between disliking something or someone and intolerance, and to avoid over-interpretation. Still, the distinction between what should and should not be moderated  is not always easy to make, and a number of comments are what we would call “borderline,” on the edge of acceptability.

Finally, we do not want to extract the passion out of comments, nor infringe on free speech; our goal is facilitating a more civil and tolerant dialogue, and a better interaction among readers in a safer space, which helps both the commenters and the readers of the articles or of the comments, as well as journalists and the heroes of their stories.

Try and see what you would moderate and what not from the statements of politicians,  and let us know the score you got in the comment section!

*Quiz available only in Romanian