To me, life’s always been simple: Black & White. Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. Unsurprisingly, I see no difference on the Internet.
There are people making it better and people making it worse.
To me, BA Expats (marketed: Buenos Aires Expats – Online Community of Expatriates and guide to living in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is one of those who moves the Internet backwards.
By disallowing members of their forum community to post certain keywords (like their investors competitor names) they withhold information from the community. How can you be a “Buenos Aires Expats guide to living in Buenos Aires” when you don’t even allow the people who live here to share their experiences with each other openly? Stop lying.
I asked about it on the forums and how did they react? Well naturally, they canceled my account. Lame.
I’m all for capitalism, but moreso than anything, when you run a website with an online community you must be open to the communities discussion, allowing free-flow of information. These are the members that make up your community. If you want to tout your business and not allow others to do so then that’s one thing, but if you’re not allowing the actual community to share with others their experiences… Then to me you’re not helping, you’re hindering.
Tags: argentina, ba, baexpats, bsas, Buenos Aires, expatriots, expats
Hmm…just saw your ‘roommate’ thread on that forum…saw that you’re around my age and from the same city (missed out on the Olympics, I see), so I looked up your profile and hit up your site just to see this post! lol
Please keep updating this blog if you can, if only to prepare and encourage/inspire/motivate me to make the move to BA myself!
Good luck and hope BA treats you well!
ML
Ha! Hi Marquelle, yeah it’s unfortunate. As corporate as the info is on the site, the Forums were (I thought) quite helpful and unbiased… I don’t blame them for making money, I just can’t believe how moody the admin was over my questioning why one bar was taboo to post about? Call it like it is, if you are a revenue generation site, then claim that.. but marketing yourself as a “Buenos Aires Expat Guide” and having an ulterior motive is weak.
fuck em. start your own site and steal their visitors.
I too am appalled at what has happened with that site. I recently tried to go back to connect with people living here and found my account cancelled without explanation.
I certainly hope that another site might be started to replace them.