We are glad to announce that we will be launching the much awaited “Content Filter” and “Block User” features on Minekey shortly. We are hopeful that this will provide greater freedom and choice to the users to control what they would like to see and who they would like to interact with on Minekey.

Content Filter blocks content that has profanities and sexually explicit material that may not be suitable for general viewing. Users who do not have any objections viewing such content may turn off the Content Filter from settings page. We made sure that the experience remains close to the current experience for users who turn off the Content Filter. Our general suggestion to users is to refrain from posting profanities and sexually explicit material to the extent possible. We do understand that some users strongly feel that profanities should be allowed, as they help express thoughts more naturally and freely and do not have substitutes, and we respect their view point. However, we wanted to ensure that users who do not like to see such content should have their choice taken care as well. As a first implementation, we have chosen the filter words specified by content safety organizations. However, we would like to monitor the usage and feedback over the coming weeks to iteratively add or remove words to the initial list. Please send us your feedback and suggestions to us at community AT minekey DOT com.

In a large and diverse community like Minekey, people are bound to have differences of opinions. We advise our users to be tolerant and respectful of other people’s opinions, but we have found that this difference of opinions can sometimes lead to trolling, personal attacks, harassment and cyber bullying. We strongly advise our users to refrain from any form of personal attacks and cyber bullying since the laws in most countries around the world have started to deal with it strictly. As some of you may be aware, in the recent MySpace cyber-bullying episode the person charged guilty was sentence.

We are introducing Block User feature to provide you the power to prevent specific users from trolling on your opinions. Block User feature allows you to restrict certain users you choose from viewing your profile, commenting on your opinions or writing notes on your profile. These users may only be able to vote on your opinion if they see it on the recent, most discussed or most voted tabs on the opinion board or if such opinion is shared with them by their friends. When such users visit your profile, they will only be able to view your limited profile and will not be able to view any of your content from your profile. Further, blocking a user will immediately remove you and the user from each other’s followers list until you unblock.

We would also like to inform you that we are also working on Content Rating which would enable users to rate content on Minekey and hence provide greater control to collectively determine the type of content they would like to see more often. We are also working on implementing a User Reputation management system which will take into consideration the user’s reputation, abuse history, content rating on Minekey and will restrict certain privileges. We hope that these features will help collectively determine what’s good content and good user behavior on Minekey and reduce the moderator involvement in deleting content and disabling user accounts. We hope to be able to roll out these features later this month.

We believe these features provide adequate controls to users to feel safe and comfortable in expressing themselves freely on Minekey. We would like to seek support and cooperation from all users to make Minekey more fun and friendly. If you have any suggestions or questions, please email us at community AT minekey DOT com.

Why were the fake profiles banned?

Minekey’s mission is to connect real people through real conversations. To date, over two million people have participated in discussions on Minekey, and over 90% of them have used their real identity. This has resulted in greater bonding and connection among the users compared to any other online community. We would like to preserve this value. Therefore, we encourage all our users to use their real names and pictures on Minekey.

Is it OK to use an avatar and an alias if I am not comfortable using my real identity?

Our goal is to provide an environment where users feel safe and comfortable to express themselves freely with their real identity. We are working on providing greater degree of control for users to choose the content they would like to see and the people they would like to interact with on Minekey. We are also working on providing greater privacy controls to our users. However, if some users are not comfortable using their real name and picture for their profile then it is OK to use an alias and a picture that does not violate the Community guidelines. Using profanities or other user names in the alias, or using obscene profile pictures purposefully to provoke other Community members and moderators could result in disabling of a user account.

How do you identify a fake profile?

Our moderators keep a close track of what’s happening on the Community and often rely on user inputs to track fake profiles. During the past few weeks we received several complaints about some users who were using fake profiles to harass others. While some users found some of these fake profiles entertaining, our moderation team found them detrimental to the overall Community and hence disabled them.

Why were people banned from Minekey recently?

Last week we announced our initiatives on profanity filter, block user and content rating functionality to give more control to users on Minekey. A few users didn’t like these new changes and sent us requests to disable their accounts. A few other users over-reacted to Minekey’s announcement, and posted pornographic material and excessive amounts of profanity to provoke the moderators. Such content severely violates Minekey Community Guidelines and is considered illegal in several countries around the world. Therefore our moderators took immediate steps to disable the user accounts.

Have these users been permanently banned or would they be allowed to come back?

For most users we give a second chance if they agree to comply with the Community guidelines. A few of the banned users contacted us and apologized for their behavior and some of them requested their accounts to be re-activated immediately. We have re-activated their accounts under an agreement that they comply with the Community guidelines.

Users may get in touch with us at “Community AT Minekey DOT com” and request us to enable their accounts. Re-activated user accounts will not have the opinions entered previously; however, votes, comments and followers will remain intact.

Why are the opinions of the banned users deleted?

If the user’s opinions are not deleted, they may be discoverable through search engines. Abusive content and behavior attracts attention of regulatory agencies and puts the Community and the users at risk. Therefore as a precautionary measure the opinions of the disabled accounts gets deleted immediately.

Why didn’t Minekey moderation team respond to opinions and comments posted by the users?

Alex Gault and Alex Box have transitioned to different roles. While, they will be involved with the overall Community Development activities, they will not be involved in moderation. As mentioned in our earlier blog posts we have a new moderation team in place. As a matter of policy, we have decided that our new moderation team will not be directly involved in the Community activities, so they can maintain an objective unbiased perspective about various issues. This would eliminate the possibility of moderators getting friendly with certain users and will ensure that the decisions are unbiased.

Were there any users behind these measures being implemented by Minekey?

To improve the Product and Community, from time to time Minekey collects inputs from a broad cross section of users through surveys and focus groups. The decision to implement these measures was made at the company level based on these inputs. We were aware that some users would not appreciate these measures. While we do listen to all Minekey users proactively and empathetically, we make objective decisions in the best interest of the majority of our users and do not get biased by inputs of a few. Even though our new moderation team received some inputs from the previous moderators, it is working on its independent judgment without any biases about the user’s history.

How can I participate in some of these Surveys, Focus groups and Beta programs?

If you are interested in participating in one of our future Surveys, Focus groups or Beta programs, please email us at “community AT minekey DOT com” with “Survey/ Focus Group/ Beta” in the subject line. Our Marketing team will get in touch with you when there is a suitable opportunity.

Who are Navigators and what’s their role on Minekey?

Navigators are user volunteers who interact with new Minekey members to help familiarize them about the Community and the Product features. These users are chosen based on their passion and track record of helping new users on Minekey. Minekey team periodically reviews the performance of Navigators and makes a decision to renew their status. If you are interested in becoming a Minekey Navigator, please email us at “community AT minekey DOT com” with “Navigator” in the subject line.

Does it make any business sense to delete content and ban users on a user generated content site like Minekey?

As a user generated content site, we do not like to ban our users or delete their content. However, we have a responsibility to protect the Community and the best interest of all the members in mind. Therefore, we do have to make tough decisions at times about deleting content and disabling user accounts. However, with better cooperation and support from all the Community members and with the implementation of new measures, we believe such instances will be very few.

Do you think these measures will solve all the Community issues?

The success or failure of an online community like Minekey heavily depends on its user base. Over the past 12 months more than two million people have participated on Minekey to express themselves and interact with other people. Several of these users have applauded Minekey to be the best place on Internet to speak their minds and connect with other likeminded people. However, conflicts and personal attacks are detrimental and we must address them to help users feel safe and comfortable as we target the next phase of growth.

Freedom of Choice goes hand in hand with Freedom of Speech. It is important for us to provide the ability for our users to choose the content they would like to see and the people they would like to interact with, so we can avoid conflicts and personality clashes. Putting the right technology and processes is in Minekey’s hand, and we have made these decisions in consultation with several experts. However, the ultimate success of these measures lies in the hands of Minekey Community members. We strongly feel that if the Community members support the right usage of these tools and prevent abuse, we can together build the greatest online community in the world.

What’s the best way to get in touch with Minekey team?

If you come across content or user behavior that violates the Minekey Community Guidelines, please use the Report Abuse links on the Opinion page and Profile page.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us at “community AT minekey DOT com”.
Even though Minekey is a small company, our goal is to provide world class customer service to all our users. Our moderation team keeps a close track of all the activity on Minekey, abuses reported and emails received, and responds to them on a 24 X 7 basis. Sometimes if the volume of requests is very high it may take some time before you hear back from us. However, we try our best to respond to most requests within 24 hours.

What’s the best way to stay updated about what’s latest on Minekey?

Minekey’s blog (http://blog.minekey.com) will be our key platform for communication with our users. From time to time we will also send key updates over emails to the users. Please make it a point to check your email on a daily basis and Minekey blog at least once a week to keep yourself updated about the latest product features, community policies and guidelines. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed of Minekey’s blog through Google Reader or get the latest updates via your personalized home pages such as iGoogle, My Yahoo or Net Vibes.

Minekey Community Bulletin seems to answer most of my questions. Do you plan to publish it more frequently?

Yes. Going forward we will aggregate all the questions we receive on a periodic basis and extract the questions which would be of value to the Community. We will publish Community Bulletins on Minekey’s blog on a periodic basis with answers to these questions to keep users better educated about the policies, guidelines and product features.

Minekey was founded with a vision to provide a place on the Internet where people can express themselves freely. We value Freedom of Speech and preserving it is of utmost importance to Minekey.

However, in a large and diverse community like Minekey, people tend to have diverse opinions and viewpoints. We have noticed that discussions sometimes turn into a heated argument and lead to personal attacks, profanity, hate speech and threats. This disrupts the harmony within the environment and creates tension that restricts free flow of thought and creativity.

To date, over two million people have participated in Minekey. In a survey we conducted for users who were no longer actively participating in Minekey, , “Profanity and Personal attacks” was amongst the top three reasons why they were not active. Our goal is to keep the best interest of the vast majority in mind, and hence, the reason for measures articulated in our previous blog post. These measures are absolutely important for us to maintain harmony in Minekey which would enable the free flow of expression and creativity.

However, when we introduce the profanity settings in the coming weeks, users will have a choice to turn off their profanity filter if they have no objection and view all the content they used to view as usual. Our goal is to provide greater freedom and choice to our users to control what they would like to see and who they would like to interact as stated by a passionate user in her opinion yesterday.

Further, the new content rating system will provide a greater degree of power to the users to promote the content and discussions they would like to see on Minekey.

Let’s usher in an era of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Choice while respecting people and their perspectives, community mission and guidelines.