Sony says it’s going to improve LittleBigPlanet’s moderation process after a number of user-created levels were deleted without any kind of explanation.

The whole business of overseeing LBP user-generated content to ensure that it causes neither offence nor copyright infringement has been fraught from the outset. The forums are rife with woeful tales of lovingly created levels dumped without so much as a by-your-leave, while other obvious candidates for removal prevail untouched - recreations of Mario and Sonic levels etc.

But remakes of existing videogames don’t seem to be the focus of the moderator’s axe right now. Moreover most of what’s been taken down thus far has been done so because, er, we asked for it. According to global community manager Sam_Protagonist on the official US Playstation blog:

“The small percentage of levels moderated have been done so after the community has reported them using the Good Grief tool. We never moderate levels that have not been reported in this way.

The vast majority of moderated levels were due to offensive material, however we are evolving the way moderation happens to ensure that creators are made aware of why their level was blocked. More to come shortly.”

So that’s that, and here’s hoping for a more transparent and fairer system for all in the near future. Until that happy day arrives Mr. Protagonist has a few impressive LBP stats demonstrating that LittleBigPlanet‘s not so small after all. Check ‘em out:

Total number of user generated levels =177,657
Total number of comments = 1,093,491
Total number of times Story levels have been played online = 36,661,881
Total number of times user generated levels have been played online = 22,463,892
Total number of levels played online = 59,125,403