Online Communities

From South Korea — ..law enforcement and the government are taking action. Trying to prevent anonymous attacks, the government said in December it would require Web sites to confirm users’ real names before they can post. Many South Korean Web sites already require users to enter their national identification numbers to get accounts, which are verified through a government system. The government says a bill on the real-name authentication will be submitted to the National Assembly in the first half of this year.

Do you want the US to look like this? Then support this law.

Forum owners, users and bloggers, here is a proposed law that could have a negative impact on what we do. A bill sponsored by Assemblyman Peter Biondi would require users to reveal personally identifiable information including their legal name and address in order to post in an online forum. Although this proposed bill may only affect forum owners from New Jersey, we need to put a stop to this kind of this before it even starts.

I am not a lawyer (I’ve taken a handful of law classes) but I interpert this law to include bloggers too, because of the comments system used on virtually all blogs.

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/B…500/1327_I1.HTM

2. The operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish, maintain and enforce a policy to require any information content provider who posts written messages on a public forum website either to be identified by a legal name and address, or to register a legal name and address with the operator of the interactive computer service or the Internet service provider through which the information content provider gains access to the interactive computer service or Internet, as appropriate.

3. An operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.

4. Any person who is damaged by false or defamatory written messages that originate from an information content provider who posts such messages on a public forum website may file suit in Superior Court against an operator or provider that fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required pursuant to section 2 of P.L. , c. (C.) (pending before the Legislature as this bill), and may recover compensatory and punitive damages and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, cost of investigation and litigation from such operator or provider.

Why is this bad? First, because people should not have to give out personal information to anyone in order to post on an internet forum.

Here are some very real negative effects:

- a drop in registration rates which results in stunted long-term growth

- additionally difficulty in kickstarting a new forum, allowing un-registered posts would be out of the question
- abuse by individuals who falsely claim libel to get personally identifiable information on an individual to commit a crime against that person

- a less active internet blog community because of disabled comments or simply users who don’t want to give out information to hundreds of blogs

Thats the bad, could there be any good?

- possibly less liability on forum owners if users post damaging “false” information; but thats no guarantee

I’ve started a thread about this on Chris Beasley’s Websitepublisher.net forums, feel free to add your comments either on this blog post or there.

I want to hold back on this until getting more opinions by people who have a little more legal experience than I do. If my conclusions above are correct I believe that we need to take a united approach and spread the word to our blog and forum audiences.

Despite all of the heat Myspace is under right now, Viacom wants to get in on the action too.

Viacom is planning to get into the social networking game, the company announced this week…Viacom did not lay out exactly how it would replicate its rival’s success with MySpace.com, which News Corp. purchased last year for almost US$600 million, but the company did make clear its intention to create its own corner of the Internet where teens and hobbyitsts could hang out and share information.

Heres how much I’ve spent on my newest message board to date:

1 copy of vBulletin leased License - $85
1 copy of vBSEO - $149
1 copy of Photopost PHP Pro Image Gallery software - $129

Thats $363 so far. I could have done mostly the same thing for free — but I’m no programmer (nor do I like to rely software thats vulnerable to hackers.) Taking the “free” route would actually take up days or even weeks of my time. Instead, I’ve been able to spend that time focusing my energy on making the board grow.

I am not saying that phpBB and other free software is worthless — far from it. This board was originally started with phpBB. I quickly rolled it over to vBulletin when I saw how fast it was growing. If you are considering starting a board (or lots of them) I’d recommend you do the same.

The truth is, $363 is an absolute bargain. The software is regularly updated, very usuable, and has a huge user base who develops plug-ins and modifications. Contrast this with dropping thousands on having custom software developed to do the same thing. On some level I wish I was developing sites ten years ago, but at the same time I’m very happy to be here right now instead.

From the AP..

“..ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff “had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties,” prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog. There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper’s staff could not “keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff,” and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.”

Both AOL and Yahoo have had to deal with this stuff for years now. News Corp will probably run into a few big bumps in the road in 2007 thanks to MySpace. Despite some skepticism I have, I believe that big corporations will do just fine (until a billion dollar class action suit comes along.)

If you run a forum, or are thinking about starting one, check out this new article “The Ultimate vBulletin Optimization Guide” by Chris over at WebsitePublisher.net. In it he covers the basics including vBulletin SEO, getting users to sign up and start posting, and integrating a forum into your site.

I started a new board in mid November and I’m nearly at 600 members, growing at a rate of close to 50 a day. I can tell you that out of the box vBulletin just isn’t going to cut it if you want a fast growing forum.

I’ve been an internet user for over a decade (Jeez, I wish I had thought about making money online wayback then.)

One question I’ve asked myself over the years is how long do online communities last? There are communities which used to be huge which are either dead or are only small reflections of their past selves. There was a time when Geocities dominated the web. Who uses it today? Everyone uses Myspace or some other social networking blogging site.

The same question can be posed about MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games.) Originally this “genre” was solely populated by the text based MUD. Then along came Ultima Online, then Everquest, now World of Warcraft. Interestingly Ultima Online is still alive and kicking — and its doing pretty damn well. Unlike Asheron’s Call, Ultima Online’s owners have cared for their game, provided updates and new content year after year.

When owners neglect their online communities users go elsewere. As pointed out over at Shoemoney, the once titan WebmasterWorld has been overtaken by Digitalpoint forums in terms of traffic. Could this have anything to do with the owner banning Google’s bots from the site and no providing a search function? Perhaps.

If you have built a big community online don’t grow complacent. If you want thatrevenue stream 10, 15, or even 20 years from now your community has to be nutured and cared for.