Transparency in 2012

This week the Telegraph edited and deleted critical comments on an iPhone 4 article, prompting a storm of criticism. Separately, Starbucks’ Facebook page was hijacked with offensive messages, which Starbucks deleted without acknowledging what had happened.

Both cases point to the same issue: organisations don’t yet understand what transparency requires of them.

Olivier Blanchard put it well:

Deleting a comment because it is “inconvenient” is a big no-no. You can’t do that in this space, as Nestlé found out. However, deleting a comment because it is purposely offensive and malicious is absolutely fine. I wouldn’t bury the deletion though. It doesn’t hurt to state that one or several comments were deleted because they were offensive and violated the rules of acceptable behaviour.

Here’s my point: transparency in 2012 will mean documentation of every action. You can’t just change anything anymore.

The Wikipedia model – where every change, no matter how miniscule, is documented – is going to become the standard. If you really must moderate, you need to document the moderation. Acknowledge the incident. Don’t just delete and pretend it didn’t happen.