Archive for November, 2007

One of the biggest things that completely irritates me is ‘out-of-bound’ content on my websites. The internet is jam packed with communities that deal with almost any kind of topic a person can hope for, yet it never fails for some person to request a flowers section on a war website. And I’m just using that as an example. The truth is I came across a post today on a community website I have been administrating at for about two years now.

We have, like most large member based communities, a section dedicated to site dealings with the community. This is where members can ask for help about the site or share idea’s on how to make it better. The community deals with technology, programming, hacking and the like. We have sections for electronics, windows, linux, and even gaming. So whats the problem? The post in question was from a member asking for a ‘Gearhead’ section of the forums, a place where members can talk about mechanics, cars, and the like. Please don’t get me wrong, I love cars and racing, but it makes no sense to request a section like that on a website that deals with computers and computer technologies. I like to call it ‘in-bound’ or ‘out-bound’ content.

‘In-bound’ content is material collected, or written, produced etc… that is consistent with the websites apparent theme, or genre. ‘Out-bound’ content is all the opposite. Everyone that uses the internet should know one really good example of ‘out-bound’ content! We call it spam. Now I know a simple member request usually isn’t considered spam, but if it’s not in the context of what the site is trying to advertise or display why even have it or ask in the first place? I know, I know Web 2.0 all about community and everything is getting built by the ‘end-user’, listen everyone pr0n is pr0n, but you don’t usually see busty red-head anal pr0n content in a black on white gang bang pr0n website.

If you run a medium to large community forum website, and you are subject to this kind of behavior, I suggest creating a rule that specifies that a user can suggest a change only after a certain amount of time, or by post count, which ever you prefer. It’s hard enough that administrators have to fight spam daily.