Tak Kendrick’s People are people; users aren’t what they used to be is an excellent continuation of the theme Scott Schnaars started with his ZDNet guest article. Here’s his perspective on “user” thinking:

This kind of thinking then perpetuates the user/sysop hierarchy (wherein users submit to the will of “all powerful” sysops), which we find to be a very un-wiki notion as well as being against the collaborative nature of so many social networking communities.

These terms are fine when you’re talking in technical terms, but shouldn’t be used beyond a technical conversation where you’re hammering out the architecture of a software product and denoting the difference between, for instance, content and infrastructure or users and groups. Proper context is important.

Content is too widely used outside of the technical realm where it makes sense. One really shouldn’t be cranking out “content” – that indicates they’re just producing a commodity in large quantity. It’s better to use descriptive terms like articles, reports, guides, and commentary that give people an appropriate idea of what to expect and a better judgement of its value.