Take Advantage Of Blacklisted Words in Comments!

ohaple

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Hey guys, been a while since I made a guide. I thought many of you might benefit from this: improving positivity and reducing spam through blacklisted words, plus general comment guidelines for creators.

Here is the video if that is your thing, or scroll to the text guide below.

Using YouTube Blacklisted words:
  • In my experience, comments containing profanity are typically negative. By removing these automatically from your channel you can improve viewer experience (by not exposing them to foul language) and your personal experience (by reducing negativity in the comments).
  • First, we will go find a blacklist. There are many lists on the internet that have been premade to flag profanity and hate speech.
  • Now that you have the words list, you need to add it to your channel settings. Go to https://www.youtube.com/comment_management to view the page where you can add blacklisted words. Copy and paste the list into that field.
  • Once you save your setting, youtube will flag any comments with any of those words.
  • TIP! Sometimes positive or helpful comments will include these words like "S%#t, that was a great video!" Check https://www.youtube.com/comments often. Flagged comments will be in the "held for review" tab. Look through them once or twice a week to make sure good comments make it on your channel.
Other Comments Best Practices
  • ANY comment will help your videos rankings. That said, we need to find a balance between rankings, and an overall positive atmosphere on your channel; here are my tips to do this.
  • Spam commenters; "I have just started a channel and would really appreciate if people came and subbed to me!" Leave these comments alone. Often, Google will catch these and flag them. If they don't catch it, don't delete them or reply to them. These comments don't hurt your viewers or yourself, but do help rankings.
  • Hateful or impolite criticism; delete these comments, and block the user if it is particularly bad. These comments might look like, "this guys has no clue what he is talking about, people like this should stop posting to youtube and go die" or "god you are ugly, never show your face again"
    • These people are not constructive. They are just angry. DO NOT take their comments personally or seriously.
  • Decent criticism; leave these comments and reply to them. Take the comment to heart, and consider fixing it through an annotation or future improvement. These might look like; "Good video, but you mentioned that the TV had X feature, but this feature isn't available on these models." or "Audio hurt my ears at X"
  • Positive comments; these are your core fans that will come to many videos. Reply to them as often as you can manage (small channels should respond to EVERY ONE). These might look like; "Great video, subbed!" or "Man, I can't get enough X, cool video." or even sometimes they will be as simple as "FIRST!" ("first" comments seem like spam, but remember this is just a fan who is excited to be in on the ground floor of your video).
Many of these are common sense, but I see many channels falling into these traps. As content creators, we are emotionally attached to our content. It can be very tempting to try to defend yourself to haters. DONT DO IT! That said, reward your best and most positive fans with interaction. Many viewers feel special when they get a response, because the trend on Youtube from big channels is no response at all. Even if you are a small channel, you are a star to a few of your viewers. Blacklisting comments can just make this all easier and allow people who are uncomfortable with profanity (often young viewers, sensitive viewers, older viewers) to interact positively and comfortable in your comments section.

Be sure to share any stories, questions, or suggestions below!
 

Pancake

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Meh. I don't really want to restrict people from swearing because my videos are pretty much 90% swearing. The only thing I don't allow is "puncake"
 

sparrowtm

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I don't mind swearing on my channel at all. What I do mind are racist, homophobic and sexist comments. I use f*****g bloody damned many swear words every day, but I can't stand bigots. My banned word list looks accordingly, and is quite efficient at filtering these comments out. I approve of OP. ;)
 

ohaple

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I don't mind swearing on my channel at all. What I do mind are racist, homophobic and sexist comments. I use f*****g bloody damned many swear words every day, but I can't stand bigots. My banned word list looks accordingly, and is quite efficient at filtering these comments out. I approve of OP. ;)
I agree. I do not mind profanity as a general rule. The main thing I notice is that 90% of comments with "s#!t" or "f@g" or similar are hateful or negative in a harmful way. I check my flagged comments daily, and allow any comments that contain non-hateful profanity. For me, context is most important when it comes to profanity. These blacklists reduce the hate and immature commenters by a large margin. Best of luck with your channel!
 
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