Because they get a kickback from doing so?
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One of the issues I had when I modded a long running site was that there were people who were creating interest in their own work by their many generous contributions to our discussion. Many of them had their own small businesses - mostly hobby businesses - and there was a problem with them not getting to full on promote within the community where they had built up a reputation through participation. Just to site one example, we had in our community a chiropractor who gave a lot of great anatomy information on yoga, and she had a LOT of people interested in her from our discussion board. She is now selling cars.
To me, Iād rather have a platform to promote community memberās stuff than Amazonās stuff.
For example, on BoingBoing we had @nemomen whoās Hedgehog art is a little business concern, but he also entertained us all with his great Hedgehog art. Iād love for him to be able to just go at promoting his business as long as it was in a way we felt was not totally obnoxious.
Why not have the occasional sponsored blog post where he gives a little something hedgehog extra to us and drive some traffic to his site?
I actually created this model for my own business and have a Shopify store.
Anyhow, just throwing that into the mix.
For my own business, I own the platform; not sure how itād work here.
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Thatās an interesting idea, though I think an argument could be made that a better model might be to reward members by giving them free āpromoted postsā 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 donāt get off topic though, this discussion is about the content not the revenue side of things (I realize thereās some crossover). For revenue, see Get Your Vapes and Headphones Here thread.
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Okay, hereās 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 itās either the ādynamicā 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 āstaticā 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)
- Selected group only (static)
0 voters
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Okay, this isnāt 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 āfront page,ā 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.
Thoughts?
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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.
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This. With no safeguards, itād become too vulnerable to trolls, but we donāt 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 ā and poor research, trolling and flamebait-- off our public facing areas unless we want to be the next reddit.
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I concur.
Is it worth having the (optional?) extra step of letting someone post a āIām thinking of writing about XYZā 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 āActually, 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 reviewā
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Such a thing could be public, transparency is good, but I canāt help but think that editorial decisions might be best issued privately, at least initially, to save face/minimise embarrassment on the 'noās. (no-one _likes_being told āSorry, no thanksā, 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.]
7 Likes
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 donāt 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 donāt know what fur transparency is, and Iām 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 thatās a special topic that doesnāt appear in the main board though, or is otherwise somewhat hidden. Ultimately though I think thatās something that the editorial group can figure out.
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Sorry - I killed that typo in the edit. Still laughed at the joke, mind. 
Oh, sure - Iām just thinkingā through the issues ahead, because that how my neurology works. If Iām steaming too far ahead, thatās cool.
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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.
Iād suggest the lightest touch possible, but even the best of us make typos/mouseos/brainos 
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Here you go.
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Rule 34 polar bears
ā¦in a snowstorm, while blinking.
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One last question/idea for the editorial committee - promoting impressive topics/content from the other categories?
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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?
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On Wordpress you can see pending articles and draftsāyou just have to look to see whatās in the queue before you start writing. I believe thereās also a scheduling plugin which specifically addresses this issue. Iām not assuming that weāre going to use Wordpress, but if we do, it has all the necessary mechanics, and Iāve seen them in use.
I have no idea why the BB crew have such a problem with this, but itās possible that theyāre just not taking the time to read their own blog.
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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, isnāt 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 thoughā¦ for given definitions of vibrancyā¦
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.
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yep.
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 Iām fine with an EB if thatās what people are more comfortable with.
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So you want our own version of the perminent un security council?
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