Even though I’m not a current 9rules member, I still consider myself one at heart. It’s not because of quality content, it’s not because of the feeling of being part of an “elite” blogging group. It’s because of the spirit of coming together, and helping each other out. Listen to each other’s projects, give and take free advice.
Each person joins the network with different goals, and mine was surpassed not by traffic, nor the people I had the opportunity to talk with, but the way we all talked and helped each other direct or indirectly.
When I joined the network it was going through what some people called the “dark days” of 9rules. Their approach as to how they conducted the network changed. It went from being a simple blog aggregator, to a various forums about different subjects, each with their own mini “diggs”.
I don’t remember any day in which I wasted more time on a social website than in one of those days. At the distance of a click, I could read what people were talking about any of the given subjects, even some that I weren’t that interested in. At the time I did criticize the way things were layed out, and considered the interface a bit confusing to newcomers, but I have to admit that I loved the whole experience.
That experience wasn’t “cheap” though, for the network that is. One of the rules that was settled when they launched the new 9rules, was that members would have to participate in the public or private forums. This rule wasn’t set in blood, no member had to take an oath of anything, there wasn’t a limit or a settled number, it was just a simple request that made sense in any way I see it.
Despite it not being written, this is the way I saw the rule:
“We are giving you membership in our network, your site will be starred in the given categories it belongs to, you will have access to a private forum where you can obtain business oportunities, discuss projects, get help, give help, from some the best people we could select that showed interest in joining us. In exchange, we want you to participate a bit with this community we’re giving you access to.”
The way quite a few users saw the rule was:
“You can wear the leaf, but you’re forced to write original content for us, become our slaves. You are basically selling your soul to the devil, and becoming a blogging slave to 9rules.”
I remember very little of what happened between the days of that 9rules and the current one, because I completely disconnected from the blogging world and dedicated myself to a far less rewarding, although extremely fun, experience: World of Warcraft.
When I returned from my hiatus I saw that 9rules had gone back to being what it started out to be. Only a blog aggregator with a private forum for it’s members. And the forums and “digg” sites spread out to become the Chawlk network. Which is basically a shattered version of 9rules version Ali. Suddenly all the things I liked about 9rules were spread apart, and the activity on all the communities I used to love faded into a ghost town.
If I were to judge 9rules’ evolution throughout the years, I’d say that before Ali they took a step backwards, with Ali they took three steps forward and one step back, and with the latest version they ended up basically where they started, with the difference that a lot of it’s original and core members moved on due to the decisions they made.
I still love the network, and there’s nothing more that I’d like to see than the original concept of Ali brought back together, just with a better structure. I really think that the two can co-exist, just not in the way they were before, because a lot of bloggers felt like their content was being pushed aside, while the notes (forum topics) received more spotlight. Although I also felt that, it wasn’t strong enough to push aside my interest for all the different topics being made, it was a really addictive experience.
Where else in the Internet could you find a discussion between a food journalist, a games programmer and one of the founders of Deviantart?
The founders will never be able to come up with a solution that pleases everyone, and at one point I did believe they realized that. So I was quite surprised, and a bit disapointed, to see that they went back to the original 9rules network idea, instead of evolving the social aspect of the site and not fragmenting it.
I don’t think they did wrong by listening to our opinions. I do think that the network back then was dense and a bit confusing, but in their attempt to fix that they spread it too thin. I still hope to see it one day restored to it’s former glory.