There were a lot of smug faces in the twittersphere (can you say that?), and abashed techies over at The Telegraph when they decided to publish live tweets posted to the tag #budget during the week, without thinking the obvious – without moderators you’re basically giving an open space for all – including the malicious – to publish onto your site.

Very web 2.0 in a sense, but not particularly clever for a leading news organisation.

Setting up #tags on twitter to group together tweets is a great idea, and can be used effectively for the purpose that the telegraph had in mind – but with more care, and above all attention.

It’s a common enough mistake to make, though – and easy to do. For example, how many WordPress bloggers out there have their settings configured, accidentaly, to allow anyone who has previously had a comment published on the blog automatic access to publish comments without moderation? (That’s one of the main reasons you receive those seemingly innocous ‘great site’ comments – though we can’t rule out that it’s because you produce great content!).

So commiserations to the Telegraph’s team for their error – it’s a useful lesson.

Tags: #telegraphfail, anti-spam, blogging, do's and don't's for twitter