Yeah, I'm Out of 9rules Too

In the past few days, quite a few people have tipped their hats, grabbed their coats and waved good-bye to membership in 9rules:

• brokenkode.com
• h3h.net
  seopher.com

• danlockton.co.uk
• www.standardsforlife.com
• baires.elsur.org
• www.i-marco.nl

As those posts trickled out, a couple of people emailed me asking about my involvement in 9rules. That's because in December of 2006, I posted that this site was added to the 9rules network.

I submitted this site because the network was made up of high quality *sites* full of interesting content. I will admit that it was at least in part an attempt to validate that this site fit into that category.

The focus, as far as I could tell from the outside, was on the sites. To apply for membership, you don't submit yourself (i.e. with an email address), you must submit a specific site.

However, after getting the thumbs up, I discovered that there was also a "clubhouse" forum for members. For a few weeks, I stopped in every few days. There were some good conversations, but nothing that was interesting enough to overcome my aversion to forums.

I get that lots of people really dig forums and all of the social, "chatty" features of modern social networking sites. I just tend not to get involved in or excited about those aspects. I've come to see it as just another personality difference.

If I have an idea worth sharing, I put it up here or on one of my other public feeds. The same is true if I have a reaction to something online or an opinion about something. It's entirely up for and open to the public. Anyone who's interested can read AND respond to my ideas.

Forums, particularly closed-off private ones, do not do that. By design, they limit participation in the conversation to those who've been screened and deemed worthy.

After that initial few weeks, my involvement in the forum tapered off. It did, indeed, feel like the clubhouse it's name predicts. No big deal, I thought. After all, the network is about quality content on a bunch of sites, right?

While it may have been once, it clearly isn't anymore:

"If you feel you are contributing by your entries being shown, 9rules is no longer a good fit for you…"

Ironically enough, it appears that the decision to require participation in the clubhouse, took *place* in the clubhouse, pretty much self-selecting population essentially banishing those who aren't present to argue.

To me, this whole medium is about opening up the channels of communication and for expressing oneself. I thought that recognizing those sites that fostered that by virtue of high quality content was what the 9rules network represented.

Clearly not.

Personally, the point is probably moot as I didn't actually get the email in question. That's because I was apparently dropped from the network at some time between July 1 and July 6 of this year and didn't notice.

I don't recall seeing any notification or requesting that I step it up in the forums. That's not to say that one wasn't sent. It's entirely possible that one was sent, but caught in my spam filters.

Regardless, when I redesigned this site, I apparently had already stopped actively considering this site part of the network as I forgot to put the logo in the template. Of course, that happened on the 10th, with a couple of posts in between that were posted before the theme switch, but not included in 9rules aggregation.

So, while I didn't actually have to make the choice this week to let this site remain in the network or not (as it was apparently made for me back in July), if I *had*, I would have certainly taken this opportunity to remove it.

It's sad to watch a community put up walls and pull activity inside those walls in the *pursuit of* community.