We're trying to reward quality content and hide the "poor" quality. This kind of filter is a more reliable. I think we need to do a better job encouraging voting. As Xomba grows so will voting. We have other ideas on some new things that are down the pipeline. This change is more like a foundation for what's to come. I do agree with your point about the black hole. I'll be interested in everyone's feedback once we get the new site up. Everyday, we get closer and closer. I feel confident we'll have something soon. Maybe a screenshot next week once we move into testing.

Xomba will never be exclusive. Other sites that have tried that have failed miserably. Others who communities have become exclusive are failing. Who am I to say what is quality? Jeremy and I leave our opinions off the site. We believe in rewarding quality content through voting. Another reason we are adding the "favorite this" feature. Now we do set fundamental rules for what is acceptable on Xomba. Word length and such. As far as money vs. readers go. Well, that's up to you. Do you write to be read or do you write to make money. Veg's blogs were a big success as far as readership goes. PM spam. We are making it to where IMs are going to be friends only. So you can send an instant message only to friends. (We almost canned the feature altogether.) Private messages (the inbox on the left) will still be open to whoever can send you a message. The amount of spam isn't that much. Do you know how much spam I get in my email box everyday? Even 1 private message spam isn't that big of deal. Just delete it and contact us with the username. Now we have done a couple of things. The who's online block will only be found on one page. The recent bytes and blurbs are only going to be found on the front page. Article pages will contain related articles, recent articles from the category the current article is in and recent articles from the author. We designed the article pages from the readers priorities. Example: Reader comes to site to read article about vacationing at the beach. They will see related articles (which we currently do now) They will see recent articles from the Travel category (or which ever category the article is in) They will see recent articles from the author. And of course the comments on the article. That's all. They will not see who's online, recent comments on other articles, highest rated, recent bytes and blurbs. However, we have created a top menu for recent xombytes/blurbs and comments. And a member page that shows members online and a member directory.

Gosh you are so right,... I picked up on an article that I transferred to a Squidoo lens. To be honest, it wasn't an article that left me dribbling once submitted but's it's received consistent readership from the start...not any money but lots of readers. I don't lie awake at night with ideas on how to improve it but it's does seem to work, albeit readerwise anyway! I'm not a lover of Squidoo as I think the whole thing just invites a whole load of spam and quality content is not even a consideration, but the whole concept is most interesting!

By making it so hard for writers to join up that they go elsewhere (taking potential income with them), but basic quality control is not a bad thing, in my view. As for those who have good content but are not grammarians (or vice versa), that would be up to the judges.