So, what do you think?

[jondontran]

Hi Admin,

I am doing research on the case of beinggirl.com (P&G) and quite interested in how they can make its content fresh and evergreen, and also eliminate "trash" on the forum.

See my research cited below:

Guiding and facilitating discussions online:
Early in its history, BeingGirl.com had an open forum that P&G hastily shut down when it discovered that teens were posting lots of inappropriate remarks. After that experience, BeingGirl.com was limited by the company to a
bulletin board format that controlled peer-to-peer interactions by screening all posts before they went live. Today, BeingGirl.com is once again embracing community, with a focus on keeping content fresh. Visitors who want to participate in a community must read relevant articles before they can join. The result: Today, 100% of daily posts on BeingGirl.com are consumer generated, which frees up P&G to focus on developing the evergreen content for which the site is known.

Implication for USGuide:
1) New members must read all the posts marked MUST READ, for example. If they read all the MUST READ posts (not only the regulations, but also the "basic knowledge" posts, they can really join the forum.
2) All members on the forum can vote TRASH for the irrelevant post... This post can be recognized by its onwer.


So, what do you think?

[lkamn]

We already have STICKY which is somekind of MUST READ but tailors more to readers' own interest.
Anyway, with the fact that many new members still post basic questions, I think this idea may solve the problem.

I am not for second idea because the topic may be irrelevant to someone but extremely important for others. It may be irrelevant to current readers but, again, extremely important for readers in the next years. Also, our forum's members are educated, I mean people who think about studying in the USA, it is very not likely that TRASH will be a problem.