Skype? IM? The technology is out there, it’s the scheduling that will be a nightmare.
I see. For me, the content is what’s important, so I wasn’t thinking about it as an incentivized practice. I used to really enjoy trying to give my posts song or album names, because I enjoy wordplay, and if you write a decent nut graph then people figure out the point of a post pretty quickly. But then I got some great advice from a friend who told me to pay attention to what stories I bothered to click on and which ones I didn’t. I learned very quickly based on my internet history that ponderous, mysterious, or even simple link titles were beat out in heavy numbers by links that were “attention optimized.” I excluded news from this analysis because I just read my news in a single dedicated sitting, so it did affect the numbers somewhat, but the point still stands.
I absolutely agree it shouldn’t be incentivized because it leads to abuse and pointless posts. But I do think there is a certain organic trend, for better or worse, towards a certain breed of headline for posts that are opinionated or analytical in nature because people respond well to a promise in a headline. “I don’t get the Ukraine Russia thing, and I want to be informed, this article is titled ‘Five things you need to know about Ukraine and Russia.’ Sounds like I might learn something.” I guess what I’m saying is that I’m perhaps a little more sanguine about or tolerant of the genre of headline while knowing from personal experience that it has led to serious disappointment in the past and me visiting Mother Jones less than I would otherwise.
Boom. I like it. This is the kind of thing I’ve had trouble getting people to move on in the past. If we get that far, I think we could develop real momentum.
Rotating editors? Collaborative editing? No major changes without an author’s approval, but catching misspellings and malformed links seems like it won’t be terribly abused. Here’s the thing to remember, it’s a blog with (right now) no budget, not the Washington Post or the New York Times. I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive for quality, but modulate your expectations appropriately.
WordPress has a plugin called EditFlow that might digitally prompt a few rotating editors to request edits from larger numbers of contributors until the contributor’s content is either approved or disintegrated.
OTOH, we’ve gone through three helpers at our nonprofit trying to get it to “work” as it’s needed to work for our scrappy bands of digitally insouciant community and student organizers.
Care to elaborate on pros/cons? I’m looking though ghost right now and their site is mostly hypespeak. I have direct experience with WP. I’m scared of Drupal, but I don’t expect to touch the backend myself with my limited skillset in that regard.
I’m not saying we have to, but are we immediately inviting 100% of all BB commentariat regardless of post history? Regulars? Members? Is this going to be Gmail/G+ style invites on rollout? I’m not talking about specific people, certainly, but this is part of getting organized.
Got it. Yes, it makes sense to do a planning meeting first to schedule a short series of regular meetings with a smaller group during the startup phase. Get shit done and then invite everyone.
Since @waetherman was the person to recommend this course of action. I nominate him as Grand Poobah/MC/Chairperson, unless he declines, but I think we need a single person to direct the decision making process a little and manage the docket so-to-speak. Otherwise we’re going to be stuck in a cycle of people going, “Should we? Maybe… How about…”
I think we need someone to go, “Now we are talking about blogging platforms. Opinions?”
Is the motion seconded? If seconded, who’s in favor?
That is precisely what I meant when I asked who wants to edit this thing. I didn’t so much mean a literal editor, but if the whole thing is steered by a somewhat amorphous committee, shit won’t necessarily get done. I think among us there will have to be a tiny handful of dedicated souls who keep the gears spinning.
But maybe not! Just because that’s how things have worked in my own historical experience doesn’t mean it has to be run by a lean executive crew. I would, in fact, prefer to be wrong about this.
But I’m inclined to believe that @ActionAbe is right.
I could honestly contribute in areas like cooking, outdoor recreation, raw fish / sushi, maybe a bit of tech / security / privacy stuff if you’re planning on doing that sort of thing. I’m curious to see where this goes. I’ve been a bit less vocal on the BBS over the last couple of years due to possible conflicts with employers, but that’s pretty much dead in the water at this point.
I think part of the problem is that we’re all very nice people who genuinely value each other’s input and no one wants to be seen as stepping on anyone else’s toes. We need a process. I think when you said editor, the immediate thought was someone who would look through the articles for mistakes. At least that was mine. But we do need an executive body and someone to manage that body in order to… y’know, execute.
