User generated content - benefits and pitfalls

July 28, 2006 – 7:29 am

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The emphasis now is on setting up websites where a ton of user-generated content is made. This can be a great thing, for a number of reasons, but with user generated content comes certain responsibilities. When people are allowed to generate their own HTML, potential pitfalls include:

1) Users self-promoting - the normal obnoxious self-promotions - you generally shouldn’t have to do much with this type of post, it should fall on its’ own weight
2) People doing illegal things - these will need to be dealt with much quicker and harsher, because they threaten the whole system
3) Copyright violations - there’s no good reason to encourage copyright violations - although many places do because it’s the most popular content.

All of these situations, and others will arise with a “Web 2.0″ website where users are generating much of the content. So any emphasis on building the community also involves building tools which can detect and punish the “bad users”, or at least the people who can topple the entire system. It’s important to set a policy early on and to stay on top of it.

99% of your visitors will never do anything wrong, and for that reason, you don’t want to offend them with policies designed to affect a very small portion of the website population. Keeping a powerful toolset in the hands of a group of SuperUsers who care most about the community just might be the best policy.

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