

How to kill your community  - zen53
http://ma.tt/2009/08/kill-your-community/

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aw3c2
"Design Like NASCAR. The more buttons, widgets, stickers, and visual clutter
the better. I want to see every possible login system including but not
limited to Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Google Friend Connect, and that Myspace
thing. Because of their respective crappy terms of service, use the giant
buttons they insist on. Also include a megabyte of “share this” icons for
every obscure service in every language. People love options! Complexity is
for closers." - check

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barredo
The 'bonus' section is a rant against the popularization of systems like
IntenseDebate or Disqus.

Is really WP so afraid of these?

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mgrouchy
I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with intense debate, considering
Automattic(the company behind WordPress owns IntenseDebate). However, disqus
would probably be a prime target.

I think the issue is that if the services like Disqus goes away, you don't
have the comments anymore either(I believe). With things like IntenseDebate
and Backtype you still own the comments, as they are saved in your database
with appropriate plugins. Also some talk about appropriate SEO, etc. but I
haven't researched that.

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Locke1689
7\. Use blog software like WordPress, which will get hacked in a second if
anyone cares enough to attack your site.

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ryanwaggoner
What about all the large, successful, serious content and community sites
running Wordpress?

And what's the realistic alternative? Many of those sites used to run custom
CMS software coded from scratch years ago by some random development agency
who farmed the work out to a freelancer who has long since disappeared. Seems
doubtful that that's better in any respect.

Edit: Removed my sarcastic tone :)

~~~
Locke1689
I'd honestly say that Drupal is better than Wordpress. Seriously, the extreme
number of automated attacks and security holes in wordpress have made it a
very dangerous game to play. They do fix problems quickly (a couple of days),
but that's still enough time to get hacked.

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photomatt
Running an online system is a responsibility, one which includes keeping up
with vendor updates.

Is it possible to run WordPress securely? Absolutely, we do it for 8 million
blogs, including some of the most high-target blogs in the world like CNN's.

In the case of WP we consciously take a perception hit versus some of our
competitors by not batching security updates every few months but putting
fixes out there immediately, even when there's no public disclosure.

I think this worth it though it can be painful in cases like this comment
where people have permanently internalized their negative perception of the
platform.

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brandnewlow
Hey, Matt,

re: your point about requiring a login to comment. Isn't that good for
community building? If MetaFilter let just anyone leave a comment, that would
kill it off pretty quickly. Having some barrier to entry can add value, you
just need to find the appropriate one for your community.

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photomatt
It depends on the context people are interacting with the site.

A blog is "owned" by the author, and comments are from guests who aren't
invested enough in the site to register, but who still make up the core of the
community.

On a forum, or Metafilter, or Hacker News, the content is produced and owned
by every participant who will likely interact over and over and in the process
build up their localized reputation and profile on the site as part of their
ownership. I think that any of these could be done effectively without
registration, but it's not as common.

(I think partly because there are business reasons for registration -- it
makes it easier to opt-in people. Even people without the business reasons
follow the convention.)

