Pelmorex Media Inc. owns some of the most popular weather-forecasting websites, apps, and television networks, including The Weather Network and MétéoMédia. With millions of weekly users, their websites faced unwanted trolling that has traditionally been too time-consuming and costly to manage with moderators.
As a result, they eliminated the comment section altogether. But knowing the impact that commenting has on audiences, content creation, pageviews and attention time, the team at Pelmorex was committed to finding a solution that would allow them to bring commenting back.
“We are extremely proud at The Weather Network and MétéoMédia to now be able to offer a safer place for weather enthusiasts to connect and share their love of nature and the environment.”
—Head of Digital, Pelmorex
Keep Your Brand and Users Safe with Automated Moderation
One of tools they employed on The Weather Network and MétéoMédia is Viafoura Automated Moderation, which uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to automatically categorize and eliminate trolling, spam and online harassment. This technology is programmed with over 6 million variations of every word, so it is able to determine the subject matter and the sentiment behind words and phrases written by users.
If the system encounters a new word or sentence that it is unsure of, it flags the instance for a moderator to review. As a moderator approves or rejects new words, through the power of machine learning, the algorithm learns new rules and gets smarter over time.
Pelmorex and their users will benefit from other community moderation tools, such as flagging, user muting and the dislike button. User muting will allow users to personalize their experience by avoiding unwanted communications from certain members. The dislike button will allow users to express their dislike for a comment, without having to flag a comment (which requires a moderator’s time and resources).
Increase Pageviews and Attention Time with Engagement Tools
Their users will also have increased opportunities to engage with the content on The Weather Network and MétéoMédia, with follow features, real-time commenting and user profiles. These engagement tools are designed to give users the quickest and easiest way to interact with one another and with website content, thereby increasing their interest, pageviews and attention time.
- Commenting: Users can add comments, images and videos to the comment section in real time; users can easily share their favorite comments to social media
- User Profiles: Users can create an identity on their websites by adding their information, interests, custom name and avatar
- Follow Features & Notification Feed: Users can follow their favourite community members, authors and sections to never miss an update in their Notification Feed
- Browser-Based Push Notifications: Allows their websites to deliver timely weather alerts even when users are off-site
- Social Share Bar: Customizable share bar that allows users to share articles in seconds
- Community Moderation: Moderators can give timed user bans and set flagging thresholds; users can dislike and flag comments and mute other users
- Automated Moderation: Detects and eliminates spam, foul language, abuse, personal attacks, and other uncivil comments on websites and on social media
- Audience Insights: Captures the impact of engagement on metrics like pageviews, attention time and loyalty in real time
Pelmorex’ Head of Digital, Carrie Lysenko, is excited to offer new functionality and value to encourage more users to register and engage with their brands. She adds, “We are extremely proud at The Weather Network and MétéoMédia to now be able to offer a safer place for weather enthusiasts to connect and share their love of nature and the environment.”
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