I've been happily using the still relatively very new Google+ system since the first day it was made available to external users. It is a fantastic communications tool, and one of its great strengths is Google's willingness to make changes to improve the system. This is a continuing process, not a point in time fait accompli.

There are some controversies of course. Notable among these has been the question of real names vs. pseudonyms, which I've discussed previously. I believe that Google will ultimately address this matter in a practical manner, even if likely solutions may not completely satisfy everyone with concerns on the various sides of the issue.

But with Google+ moving from "invite only" to "everyone can participate" status, a serious new problem has emerged that I hope will be addressed very quickly.

In brief, Google+ is being inundated with comment spam, and by "trolls" whose only purpose is using comments to disrupt communications, not to further real discussion on any associated issues.

"After the fact" of such comment postings, a quick inspection of the associated users' profiles and posting histories is typically sufficient to verify their dishonorable intentions.

Unfortunately, Google+'s existing "post-moderation" tools (for use after comments are publicly visible) for deleting comments and blocking users are not only inadequate to deal with such situations, but also exhibit certain anomalous behaviors that further reduce their effectiveness.

Given the massive increase in spam and trolling that is now taking place on Google+, post-moderation has the serious disadvantages of allowing such comments to not only appear publicly for significant periods of time (especially if posted during the night when the thread author is unlikely to be monitoring), but even permitting such comments to be permanently available if thread authors are unable to watch all of their old threads for new comment offenses -- a problem that only gets worse over time.

Google+ needs to provide thread authors with the option of using pre-moderation tools that present submitted comments for approval (or dismissal/flagging as abuse) prior to their being publicly viewable. This would be entirely consistent with the sorts of moderation tools typically available on blogging platforms and even on Google's own YouTube.

Some observers feel that pre-moderation unnecessarily restricts the open flow of information. True, in a perfect world where spam and trolls were not a fact of life, pre-moderation might not be necessary. But in the real world, not being able to filter out such garbage prior to public availability actually has the effect of suppressing information flow on a far larger scale, by discouraging users from creating threads on controversial topics likely to be subjected to such directed attacks.

This is not a merely theoretical matter. I've seen convincing evidence of organized, politically motivated efforts now in place to purposely disrupt threads and render them useless for reasoned discourse.

I hope that Google will address these Google+ concerns, both involving the behavior of existing post-moderation tools, and the urgent need for optional pre-moderation mechanisms, as soon as possible.

Thanks.

--Lauren--