A Modest Construct

A month late, sure, but better late than never…

Some of you remember that I joined the 9Rules network a while ago. At the beginning of October, 9Rules members got an e-mail advertising a new membership agreement.

After talking it out in Clubhouse, we made participating either in the private member area or my.9rules a requirement, part of the membership agreement. This goes back to the 9rules core because that is the way it used to be except members naturally interacted with one another so a requirement was not necessary [...]

If you feel you are contributing by your entries being shown only, 9rules is no longer a good fit for you, decline the agreement (or do not respond), please remove the leaf from your site and we will remove your site from displaying on 9rules.

I was in the middle of a move at the time, and the news underwhelmed me. Clearly, I thought, I haven’t even had the time to blog very much lately, much less blog and start arbitrarily posting in a forum. So, though it seemed a shame, I ignored the e-mail and passed quietly from the 9Rules world.

When I redesigned my site, I began thinking more heavily about the little leaf I was excluding, and became a little more irritated at the whole thing. A couple of years ago, 9Rules was a “Who’s Who” of the blogging world. It highlighted the best designs and the best content. It didn’t ask for anything else. This is partly why I joined it.

And perhaps it was my generation that finally changed things. Mandatory forum posting? Really? When did 9Rules become a glorified social network? Wasn’t it all about driving users to good content?

Apparently, I’m not the only one who was peeved, as there seems to have been a mass exodus of really excellent blogs in response to the revised membership agreement.

• Broken Kode
• Chris J. Davis
• Standards for Life
• Open Switch
• h0bbel.p0ggel.org
• Wynia
• Seopher
• I-Marco
• Transformatum
• baires.elsur.org
• Dan Lockton
• h3h

9Rules is, of course, free to do as it wants. If this is the direction that it wants wants go, more power to it. But it’s a different 9Rules than the one I joined (or thought I did), and I’m feeling better every day about my decision to leave.