Jeff Atwood has been writing recently about his popular Stack Overflow site, and his thoughts on who really owns the content of social network websites, and what a users bill of rights might look like. These ideas are relevant to any web forum, and worth discussing here.
I think you should be asking yourself some tough questions:
- What do you get out of the time and effort you've invested in this website? Personally? Professionally? Tangibly? Intangibly?
- Is your content attributed to you, or is it part of a communal pool?
- What rights do you have for the content you've contributed?
- Can your contributions be revoked, deleted, or permanently taken offline without your consent?
- Can you download or archive your contributions?
- Are you comfortable with the business model and goals of the website you're contributing to, and thus directly furthering?
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001295.html
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