dburry.com
David Burry's Personal Home Page
Topic: Community
Charging Admission for Reducing Community Vandalism
about 1 year ago
Does charging money for basic useful community membership help or hinder the community in general?
I've noticed a few online communities charge money for membership, specifically to reduce vandalism of the community (bad behavior, language, etc), as well as to support themselves. The theory I've heard from marketing is that those undesirable types of people will be less likely to be willing to pay, and that those who do pay will be more likely to value their community and keep themselves and others from destroying what they've paid for. While those theories do have some merit, I question if this is the best for a community in general.
To see what I mean, let's try out the same principle in a real life example: Suppose you have a church building that is being vandalized by some of the attendees each week. They keep putting graffiti up on the walls, pestering nice people with foul language, etc... What should be done about it? Here are three options I can think of:
(a) charge admission at the door.
(b) ramp up security: add cameras to catch people in the act, and create a security team to haul offenders out quicker.
(c) same as (b) only additionally create teams who target these "undesirable" people and try to witness to them too, by befriending them and showing love and caring in a non-condescending way, listening and talking to them, etc... yes, even if they've been dragged out for causing a raucous during the service! It's the old "giving you this spanking's going to hurt me worse than you" approach, instead of the vindictive angry parent approach.
While (a) might appeal to the people doing the budget, and (b) and (c) are a lot more effort and expense, I strongly suspect most people would ideally much rather do (b) or (c) than (a) if in any way possible. This is because (a) would *drastically* reduce the number of people attending, and might also have the tendency to change the atmosphere somewhat from an open, welcoming place to the direction of a small group of people that don't associate with outsiders.
I believe the same principles apply to online communities. So in my opinion, charging admission at the doors of the community is not the best way to have a nice safe community. Yes, it works, but it drastically reduces the size of the community and also tends to create an atmosphere of "us-and-them" mentality, which separates the haves and the have-nots. I think it's better to just increase development on tools to make it easier to deal with offenders as they happen, and actually go out and try to witness to them by the way too....
I've noticed a few online communities charge money for membership, specifically to reduce vandalism of the community (bad behavior, language, etc), as well as to support themselves. The theory I've heard from marketing is that those undesirable types of people will be less likely to be willing to pay, and that those who do pay will be more likely to value their community and keep themselves and others from destroying what they've paid for. While those theories do have some merit, I question if this is the best for a community in general.
To see what I mean, let's try out the same principle in a real life example: Suppose you have a church building that is being vandalized by some of the attendees each week. They keep putting graffiti up on the walls, pestering nice people with foul language, etc... What should be done about it? Here are three options I can think of:
(a) charge admission at the door.
(b) ramp up security: add cameras to catch people in the act, and create a security team to haul offenders out quicker.
(c) same as (b) only additionally create teams who target these "undesirable" people and try to witness to them too, by befriending them and showing love and caring in a non-condescending way, listening and talking to them, etc... yes, even if they've been dragged out for causing a raucous during the service! It's the old "giving you this spanking's going to hurt me worse than you" approach, instead of the vindictive angry parent approach.
While (a) might appeal to the people doing the budget, and (b) and (c) are a lot more effort and expense, I strongly suspect most people would ideally much rather do (b) or (c) than (a) if in any way possible. This is because (a) would *drastically* reduce the number of people attending, and might also have the tendency to change the atmosphere somewhat from an open, welcoming place to the direction of a small group of people that don't associate with outsiders.
I believe the same principles apply to online communities. So in my opinion, charging admission at the doors of the community is not the best way to have a nice safe community. Yes, it works, but it drastically reduces the size of the community and also tends to create an atmosphere of "us-and-them" mentality, which separates the haves and the have-nots. I think it's better to just increase development on tools to make it easier to deal with offenders as they happen, and actually go out and try to witness to them by the way too....