More generally, I would just like to say that I am quite enjoying your blog (I have just come across it via a link you posted on TechRepublic), and that I find your work to be intelligent, well written, and edifying.

I am sorry to hear that you had to leave 9rules, or 10rules, as the case may be. It sounded like quite an interesting site from what you mentioned. Unfortunately, it is all to often that going to the christmas party is actually a requisite at some places of employment, and that is one metaphor that came to mind in the course of reading your article.

Thank you, for all your thoughtful articles. I hope to continue visiting your blog in the future, time permitting.

I really enjoy this blog. And now you’ve performed a public service by letting me know that I needn’t bother looking into the content at 9rules. Thanks!

But any good writing takes a lot of time reading and researching. While the forum could be a time sink sometimes, it also allowed the opportunity to pose lazyweb queries related to things I needed and almost all the time I got what I was looking for. But I couldn’t have benefited from it if I didn’t invest in the first place.

And for the record, my intention isn’t to argue the point; just to understand better.

As you say, not having taken the plunge to get involved with the members-only forum, I don’t have any experience to base my supposition on, but I do know that time spent on my blog will potentially reach a wider and more diverse audience than time spent on members-only forums.

I don’t doubt that participating fully in the forums is great if you enjoy it, and I’m sure forum discussions and that kind of community-building have led to some great outcomes and ideas for blogging, etc, but, personally, it’s not what attracted me to try to join 9rules in the first place. What attracted me was the content of the blogs involved, and the opportunity to discover high-quality writing, and in the process (hopefully) have some other people discover my writing; 9rules fulfilled those desires very well.

I’m not sure there’s actually any correlation between time spent on interactive banter within a closed community, and creating worthwhile blog content that people want to read: it would seem that time spent on one precludes spending time on the other.

Considering you never interacted with the closed community (the member’s only forum) before the change in terms of agreement, I want to know what experience you have to figure that one precludes the other.

This “shake out” seems* to be seen as negative mostly* by people who didn’t participate much anyway.

*I am hedging a bit since I don’t know the whole list of who is not accepting the new agreement.

As Brian, and yourself, I also rejected the new membership agreement.

Seems we are very much on par here.

Continued success with yours.