A Few Summertime Updates.

byKyle

2.4M followers

Updated 9 years ago

First off, I want to point out something that is very near and dear to us. The community here at Wealthy Affiliate.

Over the past 10 years Carson and I have worked relentlessly towards the creation of something special. A true community that cares, and one that is there to help others that need a hand. It’s a community that offers help if you need it, knowing that this commitment to support will ultimately lead you to more success within the online business world.

Our vision will not veer from this and with every update we are constantly pushing towards something better, a better service, a better platform. We want to keep WA a safe environment for people to learn how to build a business without worrying about flame wars, without the annoyances of constant spam/solicitations, without upsells, without worrying about asking questions.

When a community of this size is formed, there are definitely people from all walks of life and that come with different opinions and ideas. This can sometimes lead to pretty powerful relationships, friendships, even sometimes love. But, it can also lead to conflicts, disagreements, and illicit behavior that is negative.

This is normal and sometimes healthy, but when it surfaces into something that adversely impacts the tone of the community we do need to interject. We take it personally as it exemplifies all the principles that we are against and foundations that WA was built from. Because of this I wanted to offer a few changes/improvements that we are going to be implementing moving forward.

Charities for Memberships, Please Refrain

The WA family is one that is very community centric and naturally we look out for one another. So it is only natural to want to help someone out when they cannot afford their next months dues or perhaps next year.

This happens more often than you think between friends and people that have built relationships/friendships through networking here at WA. If you want to help someone else, there is no place for creating a charity here at WA. This only makes everyone else that may be in a similar situation feel left out and completely unsupported by the community.

We have always been advocates of getting started online with a bootstrap budget hence why we have not raised our prices here within WA although we continue to pour millions of investment and all of Carson and my waking hours into the platform here at WA.

Please, moving forward if you want to help someone out, do this between you and them and do so in a private manner. Charities and promotions of any form have to stop.

These sort of activities, although are done out of empathy and the kindness of one’s heart, can spin out of control very quickly. If we allow one charitable cause, we have to allow them all which would pose a lot of issues here.

I have updated the blog posting rules to state this more explicitly.

==> Posting Rules Here at Wealthy Affiliate

We are going to have something in place as well within WA that is going to allow for “sharing” that will eliminate the need to create threads for this sort of thing. If you want to privately help someone out in need, you are going to be more than capable of doing so without it becoming a massive exhibit within WA.

Kindness is a beautiful thing and it is amazing to see people helping everyone every day here within WA.

Reporting Spam = OK, Reporting People You Don’t Agree With, NOT Cool

We don’t like spam and we don’t tolerate it. There are enough communities out there within the online space that are full of spam, promotions and absolute rip-offs.

So when you do see something of this nature within WA, it is absolutely fine to report spam and we do encourage it in scenarios where people are blatantly and continually attempting to promote their wares.

Spam reports can ultimately lead to someone losing posting privileges to prevent promotions and blatant attacks from spinning out of control. It is there for a reason and it works well to keep the community safe, but we don’t want it to be abused.

We are going to be creating more layers of technology around the spam reporting system and a human element as well that validates appropriate activity within WA. If people report others because they simply don’t like them, we will know.

There is nothing more frustrating than to lose the ability to communicate because people have reported you for something that (a) your were unaware was not allowed (b) you were teamed up on by others.

If you ever have an issue or you see some sort of behaviour you don’t like taking place, please get in touch with myself or Carson. Not everything constitutes a “Report Spam” as that button is there for a very specific reason. It’s there to prevent spammers/solicitors/unethical folks from the community.

Updated Blog Posting Rules for New Members

Before I get into blog posting, I wanted to mention that 95% of everything posted here at WA is really awesome content, really enjoyable to read, and is content that I look forward to interacting within each and every day.

However (in particular when brand new to WA), a lot of folks naturally think it is OK to come here and drop an affiliate link or drop a blog post that is pure promotion. That is behavior that was developed through other low quality, highly promotional communities (almost all of them) that allow for this sort of thing.

This needs to be addressed and we are going to be doing so through the addition of rules that people have to read before making their first post here at WA.

The blog here at WA is to be used for documenting your progress online, to seek feedback and to let people know about current events in their industry. Blogs at WA allow for folks to post about successes they have experienced...basically anything relating to their creation of their Internet business.

By making the posting rules more apparent right from the get-go, this will lead to a much higher quality community that is free of much of the spam that is posted throughout a week (albeit it limited, it is still there).

SiteComments, A HUGE Success

Feedback and use of the brand new SiteComments platform has been nothing short of a amazing thus far. People absolutely love using this platform and the initial use of this platform by far has exceeded anything that we have launched to date.

Real, high quality engagement has never been more important to your website quality, trust, and your overall rankings within search engines.

===> Access the SiteComments System Here

Also, with any launch of this size there are going to be a few finicky little bugs that weren't caught through our testing procedures. Thanks to all of you that reported any issues within the platform.

All the bugs have been resolved within the platform (last of the "fixes" rolled out minutes ago) and we have some awesome new integrated components of this system coming in the near future.

Be Kind to Others, It Feels Good

When you go to sleep at night, there is nothing better than to know that you have lived that day putting people first. There is no better feeling than helping someone out, making someone’s day by putting a smile on their face, and knowing that you spent that day being as kind to others as you would want for yourself.

We are a family of awesome people here. AMAZING people in fact, and it is Carson and my personal promise to everyone that our focus within WA moving forward will only be to build on this in every positive way possible.

Thank you for being YOU and thank you for listening to my state of affairs here. More changes are on the way to only make this a better place for all of us.