For the people who don't know, I am the owner of this community. You can usually tell because it says "Owner" right next to my name up there. When I set this community up I set it up in a way to prevent spammers and other people from just using it as a link dumping ground to boost their view numbers. I set it up to where each and every profile has to be approved for membership.
This means I (and presumably the moderators) go through each and every Profile requesting access looking for a number of things:
[1]- Are you a living breathing person?
[2]- Are you a motorcycle rider?
[3]- Do you just share the same content to every motorcycle related group you can get access to?
[4]- Do you have a love affair with the Share button? In other words, do you only rehare other's content?
[5]- If yes to any of the above, do you respond to comments on your posts or create an introductory comment to your share?
These things, and I'll admit, hunches, are what I look for when previewing each and every Profile here and by these rules, I'd say about 2/3 of the requests for access I see get denied.
I take many factors into account, some of which are:
1 - Do you have a profile picture or just a blue ghost? (Blue Ghosts are just denied. I don't even look further. If you can't put something in the Profile picture then you're obviously not social media savvy)
2 - Is your profile filled out? Does it say you're a bike rider or does it just say where you live, what you do and what sex you are?
3 - Do you post motorcycle related content?
Etc. Just look at the About Community section to the right.
One of my biggest pet peeves on social media, though, is people who post content without explaining WHY they're posting that content. To me that means you're not interested in a discussion nor do you have an opinion, you're just posting because, why not. Or maybe you're posting to drive views to your blog/website/albums/etc. That's fine. I don't care if you want to create a webpage or a blog or whatnot, but sharing a link to that content still needs to be predicated by an introduction to why people should go take a look.
This is a Community, after all. Not a bulletin board at some church or in some dormitory. We're all here to share our common ground, to talk about the love of motorcycle riding. And I think, for the most part, we've been pretty good about it.
However, as the community gets bigger, I'm starting to see more and more people who seem to be link-dumping. They're just tossing content into this Community and hoping it sticks.
Since we have been a small intimate community I've been pretty lax about moderating this behavior and when I finally called one guy out for link-dumping I he told me he didn't see a "rule" against it anywhere.
Fair enough.
So, here's your rule: Content that is shared to this community needs some sort of introduction. I don't care if it's a picture, a video, a blog post or a share of something you shared elsewhere, it needs an intro as to why you're sharing it here.
This intro can be something simple: "here's a few pictures from my ride yesterday" to something much more dramatic. It can be: "aw, dude, check out this wreck on this video" or "I wrote a blog post about tire pressure, check it out."
To be honest, I don't care what it says, as long as it says something.
There are hundreds of motorcycle communities on Google+. We may not have the most members, but I do think we have the most interactions with each other (in general). I'd like to keep it that way.
Like I said before, this is your community, your bike night in a parking lot somewhere. We're all here to talk motorcycle riding. But if all you're doing is handing out flyers and not participating in discussion, I'm going to ask you to leave.
Here are example of what I and the moderation staff look for when evaluating which Profiles get admitted into the community and which don't. These are real world examples from actual Profiles who requested entrance into this community:
[A] Although it's motorcycle riding content, they're just posting the same content repeatedly to get views:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105314718216594838380
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115765935365597962315
[B] Posts content without introduction as to what/why it's posting:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114954648336745360872
[C] Newest post is over a year old and even then, wasn't a prolific poster:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107900753600221764606
[D] No posts and nothing in their profile about being a motorcycle rider:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107395261512610449446
https://plus.google.com/u/0/118112062182069893101/about
[E] Follows motorcycle related communities, but doesn't post about motorcycles, riding or anything else for that matter:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/117224837601039636160
[F] Nothing at all - No Posts, no Profile, no Nothing:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101420459878743741349
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109615529514224115454
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112505969438444764635/about
[G] New to the Plus, but doesn't have anything in their Profile about being a motorcycle rider:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/118075786149089805107
I'm going to pin this to the top for a while so everyone has a chance to read it. Questions? Comments? Concerns?
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