Should Spot be an open or closed community?

Hi everyone!

In 2015 we started the Spot Schiphol Community as an open community. The idea was that all Schiphol workers should be able to read about what's happening in the Schiphol area, without going through the hassle of creating an account. Only if you want to be kept up to date via our newsletter, participate in an online discussion, contact a fellow community member or sign up for one of our free events, do you have to create an account.

Because our platform is open, our content is currently shown in the Google search results. While a lot of new members still find out about us via Google, these past few months I've also been getting some emails from existing community members who do NOT like to be found on Google.

I've been thinking more and more about the option of "hiding" the community part of our platform (discussions, profiles, etc.), making Spot a "closed community". I've listed a "pre" and a "con" below, but would love to hear your personal thoughts on this topic as this could mean a lot for the future of Spot.

An advantage of a "closed community":
- Members know only registered members can see what they're posting and might feel more free to say what they want in a closed community.

A disadvantages of a "closed community":
- How will new members know what they sign up for if they can't see any of the activity before signing up? Will new members sign up at all?

Please know that whatever the response will be, I cannot promise this is going to be implemented within a day/week/month (or at all). But I'll promise to take everyone's feedback into account! :-)

And..... GO!!!

Annick Oosterlee

Community Manager
Schiphol Real Estate
View profile

10 comments

I'm one of those members who emailed about NOT wanting to show on Google results :) For me it doesn't have to be one or the other. You can see Linkedin privacy settings as example, or even other social media. There are different options you have here; for example showing the content and hiding the names (eg. 'Private member'), showing only part of the content (which would bring more users), and so on. I do think it's important to offer this an option to members (whether they want their names and pictures to be publicly shown). This only respects their privacy and wishes, and does not necessarily limit the new registrations or publicity of the platform. In combination with the right marketing/networking approach, I'm sure new members will keep on signing up. Hope this helps!
I do not mind having an open community (to prefer it is somewhat different) since I do not have the illusion that everything I do or don't cannot be traced back anyway. What E M suggest however is a good option.
You can have an open community, but not let the discussions be indexed by Google or other search engines. I would prefer that too.
Annick, I prefer an open community because I don't mind if other people can see what we're posting.
I prefer an open community as the goal of the community is to connect. People who are potentially interested in this community might not find us if it is closed. Furthermore you can always send private messages if you want to discuss something you don't want public. You could also opt for some private channels which are only available after login or give the option for a nick name instead of a real name.
I think an open community helps to make the site more accessible and articles can be public. But the discussions preferably kept within the community.
Thanks everyone for your valuable feedback! Because you have expressed a lot of different opinions, the next few weeks we'll look into the possibilities of giving our community members more options. To be continued... Thanks again! :-)