The End of a Dream: Couchsurfing's Fall

It's a good read about how not to treat your user base when focusing on growth.

If you toss away big chunks of user edited content, you don't stand a chance of retaining those users. Since the users making content are your key users (the 20% so to say), you are actively destroying your small world by estranging them.

A nice balance is in HBR on how TED [1] reacted to the scandals concerning TEDx. They empowered their network while also increasing quality.

[1] http://hbr.org/2013/04/when-ted-lost-control-of-its-crowd/