The Town Square: A Pure Businesslike Suggestion

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Thursday, November 1, 2007

A Pure Businesslike Suggestion

I do intend to leave as a matter of principle.  However, I believe the success of any business is partly dependant upon the business owner being flexible to the needs - and changes - of his venture.

In this case, it seems that unless your intent is indeed to create discord and sadness - rather than a healthy, open forum through which creative people can interact - it would behoove you to make some adjustments to your policy regarding conduct.  Here are a few:

1) Do not rely on one complaint from one member about another member to be the platform from which you base your decisions.  Set your number higher.  How about 5 complaints from 5 individual members?  This is a big site, with lots of people on it.  One complaint should not reflect the opinion of the entire community.

2) Consider a period of suspension.  How about allowing an offending blogger one week with edit-only access to his account?  After that time, if the writer's material still violates conduct, the account could be closed.

3)  Keep in mind that bloggers have "real" lives, too.  Suppose a writer posts something offensive or "spam-like" to his blog, but then has to leave for the day to, I don't know, go to work.  Upon his return to the keyboard, said writer discovers three warnings from Shaycom, goes to his account to fix the problem and finds the account closed.  That is, in essence, what happened this time.

4)  Build a System of Appeal.  Allow the banned blogger to plead his/her case.  Perhaps build a petition system, upon which bloggers can sign for or against the blogger's banning.  Writers come to this site because they have voices, and they want their voices to be heard.  Taking that voice away from us takes the air out of our blogging sails.

I realize this seems like quite a bit of extra work, but given how seldom a beloved blogger is kicked off the network, I imagine the time spent judiciously making your decision would be time well spent.

Thanks for listening.

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