A Plea For Proper Spelling

By Sanya Weathers

The most recent issue of Time Magazine has an article about Quora, a Web 2.0 site that appears to be a remix of approximately one billion existing sites and services with no visible monetization channels. The article (which is otherwise indistinguishable from an advertisement for Quora) even admits this. But the author’s central point was that Quora is better than the rest because of the community. He states that the site “is a Lake Wobegon-like place” on the internet, where everyone’s intelligence is above average and the experts answering the questions are actually experts. If you ask questions about startups, their founders may well answer, etc.

At any rate, this level of thoughtful, intelligent engagement is making the community a good place to be, which sets the product apart from its many, many predecessors and competitors.

Those of us who do community for a living have suggested an active and engaging community as being good for attracting and retaining users for… well, a while now.

But let me take this opportunity to suggest that we can all replicate the Lake Wobegon effect without asking the shiny stars of Silicon Valley to post on our forums. One thing the author of that article missed, probably because he is not a community specialist, is that MOST early stage communities consist of bright, motivated, articulate contributors. This lasts until the population explodes. But it’s not the population size. It’s what the population gets away with. The symptoms of decline vary somewhat, but there’s always one huge flashing sign that things are going downhill:

You’re n00bs start too talk LIKE THIS LOLLOLOLOL and if u try 2 stop it they get like umadbro?

Too much of that, and most of your good contributors will just…leave. A few good ones will stay, but they’re mostly the ones who derive pleasure from being the smartest one in the room. They aren’t interested in building a community or enjoying fellowship, they enjoy being superior. The ones who stayed out of a genuine desire to educate and enlighten will burn out pretty fast.

The thing that kills me is that this is not inevitable. I’m speaking from experience, here. All we have to do to keep this cancer from eating the heart out of our communities is to delete any posts that read like text messages from illiterate bonobos. No, you won’t lose any mass market appeal. Most of the people using “u” instead of “you” know perfectly well how to spell the word. They’re just being lazy – because you as the forum owner are letting them. Peer pressure works for a little while to keep the barbarians outside the gate, but the ultimate responsibility is yours.

You do need to hire mods for this, and you need to train those mods to tell the difference between harmless typos, people still learning English, and the aforementioned bonobos. If that’s the price you have to pay to have a community that’s an asset, and a forum/social media channel that attracts high quality people? Pay it.

If you assume that a mass market forum is doomed to be overrun with the lowest common denominator, you’re setting yourself up to do nothing, and that lack of action will doom your community. Set your expectations high, and don’t be surprised when people rise to meet them.