That’s an interesting idea, though I think an argument could be made that a better model might be to reward members by giving them free “promoted posts” rather than charging them for it. Plus, in a community of 100-150, value of that is small. Assuming the community grows, that becomes more valuable though.
Just to make sure we don’t get off topic though, this discussion is about the content not the revenue side of things (I realize there’s some crossover). For revenue, see Get Your Vapes and Headphones Here thread.
Okay, here’s the poll - who should be able to post to the front page? See above for fuller descriptions.
A note on the last two options, I am thinking it’s either the “dynamic” version, which may see people who come later or who suddenly get an interest could be added later, resulting in a larger group, or the “static” version which involve the selection of the editors now, only from those here already, with others added later only under extraordinary circumstances. This would probably result in a smaller, but perhaps more dedicated, editorial crew.
Everyone (minimal restrictions)
Everyone but with editorial review
Trust Level 3+ only
Application or Election to editorial group (dynamic)
Okay, this isn’t an overwhelming number of votes given that we have 100+ members here, but the trend seems to be that everyone should be able to post to the front page but with some kind of editorial review, which I suppose could come before or after (as discussed above). The second most popular answer is that there would be some kind of election or appointment to an editorial group. So how about we fuse those two ideas in to this;
Everyone will have the option to post to the “front page,” provided the post passes editorial review. Editorial review will be conducted by a group of editors, taken from the membership, who apply or are elected to form such a group.
I think that sounds pretty reasonable. Basic safeguards against someone going off the rails and posting something crazy. But not so heavy handed that people feel excluded.
This. With no safeguards, it’d become too vulnerable to trolls, but we don’t want to exclude good ideas for the crimes of being a new author, or even just bad with spelling and punctuation, but we do want to keep bad grammar and punctuation – and poor research, trolling and flamebait-- off our public facing areas unless we want to be the next reddit.
I concur.
Is it worth having the (optional?) extra step of letting someone post a ‘I’m thinking of writing about XYZ’ to
Minimise 256 veeery similar posts on a hot topic and/or
Prevent wasting lots of writing effort on similar article number 257 and
Enable an ‘Actually, that sounds like it might be ranty/a personal attack/you seem to be upset about discussion X, so why not step away from the keyboard for a bit instead of writing something in anger, that might not pass review’
Such a thing could be public, transparency is good, but I can’t help but think that editorial decisions might be best issued privately, at least initially, to save face/minimise embarrassment on the 'no’s. (no-one _likes_being told “Sorry, no thanks”, even nicely), with the understanding that the person can then share the whole review (no editorialising for effect) themselves, or can then authorise the editorial staff to post the feedback verbatim to a topic if they want to.
[NB, I tweaked this text after the first like, to make it clearer.]
This is a very interesting idea, and would solve a big problem; people posting about the same topic or posting the exact same story/link at the same time. I don’t know how other places do it, but it seems like it could be handled with a topic that would be just for front page drafts/ideas.
I don’t know what fur transparency is, and I’m afraid to google because rule 34.
But as for decisions being made in public vs private, I think public is probably best - it keeps everyone on their best behavior. Most of the time. Could be something that’s a special topic that doesn’t appear in the main board though, or is otherwise somewhat hidden. Ultimately though I think that’s something that the editorial group can figure out.
Possibility of editors checking-out spelling and grammar? Balancing act between significantly changing content / writing style / board article style / time spent by editor per article.
I’d suggest the lightest touch possible, but even the best of us make typos/mouseos/brainos
The existence of the TL3 and TL4 levels looks to me like a provision for sorting out the editorial group question.
TL3 would act as a self regulating lounge that uses their influence to ensure the health of the commentariat in that pool of trusted readers.
Any TL3 members that would like to act as editors could submit themselves to a randomised (or elected), temporary (or tenured) position as a TL4 editor.
TL4 editors should then be able to select from submissions to publish, or publish their own work, whilst also editorially controlling the content they release. This might include editing submitted work themselves, or suggesting edits to the original writer.
Submissions could even be graded by the submitting writer indicating whether they are ok with the board of editors editing their work or if they prefer to edit themselves and resubmit (which would probably incur some kind of time penalty (perhaps going to the back of the queue for publishing approval)).
Obviously some people will have a communally recognised flair and will be long-term trusted by the community as editors representative of the Zeitgeist, which is why I mention permanent (or at least, non-automatically-rescinding) promotions.
Any thoughts on the unnoticed wrinkles to my personal utopian ideals?
On Wordpress you can see pending articles and drafts—you just have to look to see what’s in the queue before you start writing. I believe there’s also a scheduling plugin which specifically addresses this issue. I’m not assuming that we’re going to use Wordpress, but if we do, it has all the necessary mechanics, and I’ve seen them in use.
I have no idea why the BB crew have such a problem with this, but it’s possible that they’re just not taking the time to read their own blog.
Thinking about this a little bit more, does anybody else feel the temptation to suggest some kind of nuclear-fail-safe option?
Like, some kind of permanent promotions we instantiate right now, at the beginning, to ensure we are never brigaded and taken over by some concerted attack? Some kind of last resort that can step out of the shadows in our hour of need to wield some kind of mighty power, perhaps a TL5 promotion that can cut down the swathes of imagined hordes attacking our utopia!?
But really, isn’t the notion provocative?
And deadly!?
Does anyone have any familiarity with game-theory as it pertains to emergent political theory? I know we all know at least a couple of peeps who know some deep, defensey type stuff. Not quite sure how applicable those notions would be to political vibrancy though… for given definitions of vibrancy…
It kinda seems that making ourselves vulnerable to that kind of attack, however fanciful it may be, is the crux of the creation here.
I mean, even America has been despoiled by the Orange smudge.
I still say making a poll at the end of a submitted article to vote on is less of a headache than creating an editorial board, but I’m fine with an EB if that’s what people are more comfortable with.
I think of something like the Hugo awards, taken over several years ago by, effectively, Trumpists. A failsafe against such an event might make sense. Though honestly, we’re not exactly a homogonous group here as it is…
The way it is done at the NYTimes is they use a content management software that has data entry for the reporters. Each article then passes up the chain of editors and approvals, with the last check being the person who flips the switch to make it live to the site. Interestingly, all the big websites have one person who turns all the posts live. I worked for the company that makes the software they use to manage site content.
So, we might try a smaller version: have an editor group that reviews articles and a person that manages the site final content approval just to make sure the content is scheduled thoughtfully.
