silly? you know that being silly is not allowed.
nah, man. no offense taken, sorry if it came off that way.
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Do we, ultimately, want to pull in people from the net?
I do.
A blog seems like a good way to do that.
Iâm imagining all sorts of problems emerging from decisions concerning who gets to publish what and when, who gets paid, who creates content for free, finances blah blah blah and before long weâll have our very own top-down authoritarian crisis!
A not-for-profit blog that somehow leverages the best contributions without excluding or over-promoting anyone. Is that possible?
What kinds of media and or events could we create to promote the blog? Do we want to? If we do, whatâs our mission? To communicate the emergent will of a bunch of Anarcho-Marxists? Do we even want media penetration?
These questions are all long-term stuff but Ima just throw this out here and see what happens. Like I always do. 
Oooh and we could get on to Jeff about the stack store!!!
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While Iâm not calling the poll closed, I think the results are worth reporting and considering at this point; basically itâs 75% for a blog, 25% for BBS as the front page. Near as I can tell the âSomething elseâ is the idea of reformatting some of the BBS in to something that looks like a blog, which I really think is the same as having a blog. Or am I misunderstanding this, @ficuswhisperer @noahdjango?
In reviewing the comments I havenât seen any strong objection to having a front page blog, though some like @adonai might want to skip it and go straight to the discussion, which I suppose could happen just like it did on BoingBoing - just bookmark the bbs instead of the front page. Or if this is part of the discourse system, it sounds like having some sort of filter would be possible.
Iâll leave the particulars of which tools to use to the people like @LockeCJ and @noahdjango who understand those things better. Worth discussing, for sure, since the right tool is very important, but thatâs a technical question of âhowâ based on what works for the way that we want to display our information.
Barring any strong objections that I may have missed, or that havenât been voiced yet, I think we should move the discussion to the who and what of the front page.
Who: Should everyone be able to post, or should it be limited to a certain TL? should there be an editorial board? or perhaps a core team of âeditorsâ who are responsible for driving most of the content, while leaving the option for others to post as well?
What: Exactly what kind of stuff should we be posting? Iâd suggest that we have a general guideline like âanything worth talking aboutâ (a kind of mission statement) that drives it, but also some guidelines or general categories that weâd like to cover, ie politics, science, gadgets, or whatever - something that starts to define the âvoiceâ of the front page.
Thoughts?
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speaking personally, not really.
but it would be fine if they came, I think, but actively courting that seems like a treadmill. but if others want to do the work on
- getting them
- keeping them in line
- funding/staffing the website to enable a ton of traffic
then I suppose itâs fine.
eh, call it what you will. I wanted to draw attention to a little-known option for what I thought was a nice and easy way to browse. I thought it would also be easier to implement than making Discourse work with an outside blog platform but I could be totally wrong. It doesnât seem far-fetched to presume that Discourse is designed to readily integrate with Tumblr, WP, etc. I donât know. In my head, keeping everything Discourse is the easy way. This may not actually be true, though.
re: who can post, I think the crucial question is more to do with implementation? Say I get the particular trust level, that doesnât mean I want everything I may post to go to the front page.
I feel like, given what I know is available already in stock Discourse, if we made a category called submissions to post under, our community could lurk the posts there, and the OP could make a poll: Publish? yes/no. if Yes votes minus No votes > X% of total users, then publish. This could be done, like, now. today. no special committees or coding required. we would need to determine/tinker with what X is, though.
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I donât think the writers should be limited to a certain TL. We could have some great writers who donât have the time or are otherwise disinclined to maintain status here.
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So, anyone registered at HMS gets to post to the front page, without condition or approval? Seems an invite for rants and trollsâŚ
I think youâre assuming that the people already here are the only people who will ever be here. I think we need to plan for the future.
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I didnât say there should be no other rules or (dis)qualifications. I just didnât say anymore about editors and other related whatnot because I didnât have as firm an opinion on these aspects.
I think the idea would be that there would be a particular category (âblogâ or ânewsâ) that people use to suggest posts as FPM (front page material) and then that would be promoted collectively or, if TL was high enough, automatically.
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Yeah. Â
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sounds good.
I meant to say that a submission could be suggested either by the author or a user who liked it, so I agree there.
Not sure Trust Level should be a rubber-stamp for promotion of FPM. I do think that it is a good idea in theory, but not sure it would game-out positively in every case for every user with the appropriate trust level.
Iâd actually like to be wrong about that, though, because it would be a helpful tool.
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I wonât go any lower than 1.
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Iâll add another question, whose answer may render the âwhoâ and âwhatâ questions inextricably linked: how will we source the content that we post?
Shared links to interesting articles and other media will, in the aggregate, reflect the interests of those running the site and serve as hardy bones for discussion. But a reflection of interests is not itself a voice. Discussion is, though keeping up with discussion takes both time and extra cognitive effort for more infrequent visitors.
We have a huge opportunity here to differentiate ourselves by emphasizing original contentâinterviews, profiles, essays, short fiction, photography, illustrationâthe aggregate of which would be not just a voice but a chorus.
Our community is a braintrust. Off the top of my head, I can think ofâand I wonât name names, you know who they/you areâa historian, a professional chef, a composer, a TV producer, and a fish, each of whom, based on their posts, has enough insight, ideas and/or experience to sustain their own blog. And wouldnât you know it, they want to be here. Lucky us.
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Thatâs an excellent point, and reminds me of the discussion we had on the âa collective blog of commentersâ thread. Many of the people in that thread expressed an interest in the option to post long-form pieces on a variety of topics, as well as ones who wanted to contribute in other ways in areas they were passionate about.
I guess what I was proposing above was forming a core team that might handle the bloggy and newsy stuff, mostly links and articles from other sites, with some commentary from the person blogging it. I see that as the bread and butter, something that is posted regularly (as it was at BB) and that keeps the conversation going. I donât however see that as displacing the opportunity for people to post original content of all sorts as well. I think we need to make sure that weâre giving room for all of that.
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Also, writing profiles, researching stories, crafting essays, and creating illustrations takes a lot of time and work. Our current headcount and level of organization doesnât make it feasible to generate discussion solely from original content. Thatâs not a criticism, just a fact of the current phase of development. Later, possibly maybe, that will become a choice.
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I donât know if a blog is the right format, but I like the idea of a landing page that might link to popular topics, external projects the community would like to share, and even community created content.
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RE: Who can post
On Wordpress permissions can be set so that users can write and submit posts for review. Editors can then decide whether to publish the post, leave it pending, trash it, or contact the author requesting revisions. This seems like the easiest way to do itâanyone can submit a post, but it has to pass muster with at least one of the editors.
I think itâs important that blog posts represent a separate category from comments posts, as the style, intention and audience for each are different. Muddling the two would tend to make the blog posts weak and the comments posts unnecessarily demanding.
RE: Content
Original content is great and should be encouraged, but all original content is setting the bar really high. The best approach might be to design the site in such a way that original content is featured and stays on the front page longer than links to other sites.
With respect to voice, Iâm in favor of letting people post what they think will be interesting to the community and allowing a voice to develop organically from that. Iâd rather see categories/editorial sections established as a way to organize existing content, rather than mapped out beforehand as a way to channel people into specific topics or focal points. Spontaneity and improvisation are necessary conditions for originality.
If we were launching some big online magazine it would be important to establish an editorial voice from the get-go, but as a small, user-driven site with very little traffic, itâs okay if we muddle through for a while. No one will notice.
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Also, why not lots of voices?
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itâs probably best to have a group of dedicated editors for something like that⌠but, it also might be an interesting experiment to have something more open and democratic.
for instance, an open group or category to which nearly anyone can submit. if a submission in that bucket gets enough nominations from higher tl folks - it becomes a featured front page item.
all the various ideas of curated posts, user posts, user projects, and auto generated summaries seem like they could nest side by side with some good web design.
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I like open and democratic, too. What I was envisioning was that the editors would filter out rants, troll posts and advertising and approve anything that conforms to a reasonable standard of what a blog post should look like.
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