I’m not sure, if I ever wanted to run any kind of virtual community at Internet… (Kirnu) Here’s few thoughts related to the subject.
Content
You should decide, what kind kind of content do you want on your site. You should be able to define and inform, what kind of content is wanted at your social news site and what kind of content is not wanted. Your statements represent your values, so it would be a vise idea to define your values first. If you wish to get articles from different cultures, you should be able to live with them too. If you wish to have a web site for certain political group, tell it to the users.
Community
Your web site attracts people. You may like some people. You are likely to get valuable members and “less valuable” members. You may even have to block some members from your community. The value of the members depends on your web site values. If you appreciate traffic, users which bring your traffic are valuable etc.
Control/Moderators
Control mechanisms, including moderators, can be used to support your values and to get and maintain the kind of content and users at your website, which you like to have. Moderators are an important group and should be chosen carefully. Ability to consider, objective behavior and cool mind are good features for moderators. You should avoid choosing moderators, which do not go in line with your web site values. And of course in real World, moderators values will not totally go in line with the social site.
Tolerance
How can you prevent, that someone on the other side of the World, would not accidentally write something, that hurts someone’s feelings on the other side of the World. The answer is, that your cannot. The solution is not to block every possible situation, where someone might be insulted, but to learn to tolerate more.
Censorship
When it’s about free media, nobody wants to be considered as a censurer. Illegal material has to be removed, of course, but how much can you “support” the “quality” and what kind of mechanisms do you use to do that. You can build automatic rules, which will decrease the visibility of articles containing certain content or keywords. But where goes the line between editing and censoring.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Raymonty // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I like this article and I would like to add one more thing - “Freedom of speech” on the Internet. I am an Ex- Viner who is a strong believer in freedom of speech. I would like to invite the “chickens” of newsvine to debate me. What say you Babel Fish(spyman)?
2 Raymonty // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Pasi ~ To get things moving, maybe you could post an article in newsvine saying that the Eagle of the Internet, Raymonty wants to debate the “chickens” on newsvine using this web-site,Cyberantweb.com. All are invited including the fat mother hen ? ? ?….
3 Pasi Hakkarainen // Apr 26, 2008 at 8:57 am
Raymonty
Seeding own articles at Newsvine are forbidden. But with the “Share This” feature, you can seed it to several social media sites.
4 Pasi Hakkarainen // Apr 26, 2008 at 9:03 am
And about freedom of speech. I never marked or deleted a single comment at my Newsvine column, because I can tolerate everything but illegal material. And now all my comments at Newsvine are deleted because of what?
Then about Weblo. There was a danger, that it would turn to be pure nude/porn site, but with few quite friendly actions by other users, members started to clean up their own content.
Sometimes friendly comments have better effect than censorship.
5 Raymonty // Apr 26, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Pasi ~ Some how we have to get the chickens off of their nest and get them to make comments on your web-site.
Write article titled,”Ex-Viner”(Raymonty/Seedplanter) debate for real men and woman. Babel fish and the” fat mother hen” are invited also. Write article and I will make comments here and you can post comments to newsvine.
6 Raymonty // Apr 26, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Pasi ~ Go to newsvine and make comment on, Redruby - “Sex-Starved Wives” article. Ask her if she wants to hear what Raymonty(the old dog) has to say. I will make my comment here and you can copy it to her article.
7 Pasi Hakkarainen // Apr 26, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I’m still quite unhappy with the fact, that all my comments are deleted, so I’m not in the mode to make any comment at Newsvine.
8 raymonty // Apr 26, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I know what you mean. Newsvine is a strange place. I don’t think that you can get your comments back.
9 Web 2.0 & Groupware // Jul 22, 2008 at 10:57 am
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