Tip 2 for creating a user generated content site

Let me summarize my first tip: focus and dominate a single niche category.
The headline of my second tip: use technology and human beings to increase the quality of content.

At Judy's Book, we used a completely automated process for user content generation.  We did this to insure maximum scalability. The problem is that we sacrificed content quality in the process. When I think about user generated content today, I always think about business processes for content generation. I think about how to use technology and management interfaces to maximize the use of human editors. These editors can be users or employees -- it doesn't matter. The important insight is that content quality is hard to achieve without some human touch -- and quality for readers is more important than scalability in the short run (and probably the long run). I know there are exceptions to this insight: Myspace and Craigslist are noteable. However, I'd say both of these companies have limited quality content and could certainly improve the reader experience and user retention by introducing a content editing process that leveraged editors in some way. Just my two cents based upon experience with managing a half million reviews of which a percentage don't add real value to users.
There are lots of other important ways to improving quality of user contributions -- but they will be the subject of another tip in the future.