Jonathan should be concerned about creating the public perception that AR management doesn't think things through and simply makes it up as they go along.  If member feedback was enough to completely alter their approach so quickly and dramatically, obviously they should have solicited more input from members prior to publishing their plans.  If I had chosen to sponsor a neighborhood based on the promise that Localism would have quality content rather than spam, I would view this announcement as a "bait and switch" on that promise.  As for eliminating moderation, Albert Einstein said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  This approach was tried before and it failed miserably.  I'm curious to know what has changed that would lead anyone to believe it will succeed this time.

Bryant, AR already tried the "trustees police the prisoners" approach.  The trustees got accused of favoritism, which is going to happen when your policies aren't clear and your moderators are exposed to personal scrutiny. 

Ideally AR would use the sponsorship money to hire moderators who have no connection to the personalities on AR and no conflict of interest in terms of competing with them in real estate related fields.  Those moderators would enforce the rules by bumping posts back to "draft" and citing the rule that was broken in an anonymous email to the member.  The member could then 1) modify the post and resubmit it, 2) delete it, or 3) complain to a higher authority. 

The higher authority should consist of a panel of three moderators where majority rules.  That's above and beyond fair and it's not difficult to program (checkboxes for various rules and a suspend button which generates the email and cites the checked rules), but it takes the will to accept being accused of censorship.  For Localism to work, it has to be censored moderated.  As long as the rules are the same for everyone and their is a review procedure, no one can raise a legitimate complaint with the process.

If you want to monetize Localism, you have to think about consumers first and members second.  You can't please everyone, so you need to ask "what is going to help my members use Localism to generate more business?" and act accordingly.  Sucking up to members won't impress consumers.

Jo, you're right, it's probably to get the top neighbor spot.  The upshot is that when consumers find them through Google and see an advertisement or a bunch of stuffed keywords and cynical links, they will probably click the back button and look for someone else.  Lousy content doesn't generate quality leads and consumers are getting much smarter about how they search the internet.

Elaine, the only way I was able to remove my posts from Localism was to delete them from my AR blog, but obviously you would need to keep copies of them and repost them (without checking Localism) if you still wanted them to appear in your AR blog and/or your "outside" blog. 

Alternatively you could send a list of posts you wish removed from Localism to Bob Stewart.  I believe he offered to provide that service several weeks ago since a mechanism to allow you to remove your own posts from Localism had not yet been implemented.  Any update, Rich?