I didn’t know “Spoken for” had a Free for all Friday. It is like a good reward, thanking me for being a reader. The idea is simple; you, the reader, can post anything you wish on that site for a day, no strings attached. This concept should be extended to more and more sites. Imagine reading a newspaper everyday, numerous times a day, and later on being asked to write for that paper. That would be an honor for many. Here I will talk briefly on how this concept can is interesting when one wants to share the beneficial experience gained from the online world. I find it different than other similar “projects” online because this specific one does not have any requirements, requires no link back to the site itself, and can have anyone participate in it.


In real life, you don’t get asked to write in something simply because you read it regularly. When you write an article yourself to be included in any magazine or a newspaper, or anything that can be read for that matter, you have to change your standards to fit the style of that publication. You end up focusing more on getting your writing published, rather than focusing on the writing that you want published. Letting users post should be part of the next phase of blogging; letting users be part of the site by actually being real parts of the site. We already know the concept of guest speakers, or bloggers, but those usually happen when traffic is low or when we simply don’t know what to write. Otherwise, guest speakers work great. However, with guest bloggers, one gets to choose who to write, and thus not everyone has the opportunity to participate.

I used to read my old community college weekly newspaper a lot when I was young [that long ago, yes]. I read it so much, that I started thinking that I can contribute something to it. I wrote a letter to them to be published; the letter talked about the parking on the campus, and certain things that could be improved in the classrooms. The letter wasn’t published, so I wrote another letter after a few weeks. This second letter was worded better than the first, by talking about different things around the campus briefly, and then mentioning the situation in the classrooms very nicely, and then coming back to talking about different things. Once again, the letter wasn’t published. I wasn’t going to give up, since in community colleges you either study all the time, or waste all your time. I wrote a third letter after a few more weeks; in this letter I talked only about the good things on the campus, and how the president of the community college was a very nice person and was always available whenever one wanted to meet him. Even though it was impossible to meet the “president”, and he was definitely not a nice person unless you supported all his policies, my letter was published, and I knew that I would spend the rest of my life getting most of my writing rejected by those who control the publications in many places.

Sure, letting people blog could mean that one simply wants more visitors or content. The concept comes from FFaF, and could be used to drive more traffic than to have something contributed. But considering the fact that “Spoken For”, in this case, already has a good number of followers and an already-great content, I doubt that is the case here. Of course, abusing such a power, as in posting on someone else’s site without any respect to the site owner, can be easy, and thus such rewards can quickly be taken away quickly. However, if it’s responsible and ethical people reading about such things, then their actions will also more likely be ethical. Hopefully one day all sites will treat their visitors and users like they treat their owners, with appreciation. In return, the visitors and users can appreciate the owners of those site for giving them such opportunities. That is the one of the ways we can respect and co-exist with others online. That’s the only way to keep the online world running to everyone’s benefit, right?