Aug 24 2007

Scheduling

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Welcome to a brand new day.

We’ve arrived at some common consensus about the fact that we’re going to strive for some goals in our Front Page postings.

Front Page posters will remain active for 90 minutes to respond to comments (with mulligans)

I can see I’m going to have to explain mulligans for the golf impaired.

Umm…  When your $5 ball shanks into the water you tee up another and say “mulligan.”  Negotiation of mulligans is a very important part of the game.

If you can’t you can’t but if you consistently abuse your priviliges why do you have them?

Every Front Pager has committed to at least 1 diary a week.  Some are prepared to do more.  It’s not a lot to ask really, two and a half hours (not that I’ve ever thought I could compose anything diary worthy in an hour).

We’ve kinda sorta decided on a stucture for the day.  Jerome a Paris has advocated a Morning News Diary.  A bunch of people thought it would be nice to have a daily schedule.  I have decided to combine them and put that up around 7:30 am Eastern.  My diary discussing that is here.

Turkana suggested a Best of the Blogs/Top Comments post.  Evening is a good time for that.  9 pm ET is 6 PM PT, just when people are getting home from work.

Hmm…

I think we’ve started an outline-

* 7:3O/4:30 AM Morning News Digest/Upcoming FPs (for lack of a more original title)
* 9:00/6:00 PM Best of the Blogs/Top Comments Round Up

These are critical, bi-coastal times that represent when people get ready for, arrive at, leave work, and when they are looking for entertainment.

dK reserves them and programs them all and so should we.

What are critical times?  I say morning, noon, and night so in outline here they are-

* 7:3O/4:30 AM Morning News Digest/Upcoming FPs (East Coast Pre-Work/Early Work, Insomniacs)
* 12:00 Noon/9:00 AM (East Coast Lunch, Left Coast Work)
* 3:00 PM/12:00 Noon (Left Coast Lunch)
* 9:00/6:00 PM Best of the Blogs/Top Comments Round Up (East Coast Bored, Left Coast Home From Work)
* 12 Midnight/9:00 PM (Insomniacs and Bored People)

If you want to attack dK 6 am is a perfect time, the recs are all old and people are desperate for novelty.  Ask Jerome.

So you see how it goes.  As a site we’ll have to decide how to program the three slots that are empty-

1. Noon
2. 3 PM
3. 12 Midnight

But this is not really about that, it’s about you as Front Page Diarists fulfilling your commitment.

Site content should be fresh every 2 to 3 hours.  The above level of activity represents the bare minimum of an active site.  In reality there are at least 12 time slots a day without crowding.

In reality some are less attractive than others and Front Pagers can easily share because the attention is really unlimited.

We are encoraging regular time slots to build traffic on a low traffic blog (at least at first).  People need to know when they can expect their ekitude (the correct answer is all the time).  We are going to co-ordinate that the way they do with the Rescue Rangers- a private blog.

So say we all.

Let’s look at that on a typical day (all times EDT)-

1. 6:00 AM EDT Early Bird Front Page (Lucky you)
2. 7:30 AM Morning News Digest/Upcoming FPs (Site, shared already)
3. 8:00 AM
4. 10:00 AM
5. 12 Noon (Site, could be shared by a Promotion or an FP)
6. 2:00 PM
7. 3:00 PM (Maybe Site, shared already)
8. 4:00 PM
9. 6:00 PM (East Coast Go Home, Left Coast Mid-Afternoon, could be shared by Site)
10. 8:00 PM (Olbermann!!!, don’t expect me)
11. 9:00 PM Best of the Blogs/Top Comments Round Up (Site, shared already)
12. 10:00 PM
13. 12 Midnight (Site, could be shared by a Promotion or an FP)
14. 3:00 AM (Site- Insomniacs)

Midnight to 6 is pretty Wild West, and I suppose I owe you something for suffering with me this far-

So are all our holsters limbered up?

There are 10 slots each day, 70 for the week.

I want to develop an idea of who wants what when.

Subject is not so important, I want to know if you are willing to commit to a time.

Remember that 90 minute response time before you answer.  Remember that it’s every week unless you get a mulligan.

There is lots of slop in this schedule for enthusiasm, but as we grind it out over the long term are you willing to march with me?

buhdy asked me to post this-

Contributing Editors

* Armando
* breathingstill
* Cronesense
* exmearden
* Jay Elias
* Jerome a Paris
* kestrel9000
* ksh01
* LithiumCola
* melvin
* Nightprowlkitty
* noweasels
* occams hatchet
* On The Bus
* OPOL
* pfiore8
* pico
* pinche tejano
* srkp23
* Unitary Moonbat

Admins
* buhdydharma
* DDadmin (On The Bus)
* ek hornbeck
* soapblox
* Turkana

So Say We All.

57 comments

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  1. It is what it is.

    1. at Ten PM

      I’m on the West Coast so I can help with the late night stuff too.

      • pico on August 24, 2007 at 21:28
      • #

      I’ll be crossposting my literature series sometime in the early afternoon.  I try to aim for 7pm EST at dkos, but I can post earlier or later here depending on what’s necessary/available (I usually finish writing them a day ahead of time anyway).

  9. Oh wait.  We’ve already covered that.

      • pico on August 24, 2007 at 19:02
      • #

      I’ll volunteer for a Wednesday slot.  Not sure what I’ll do with it yet (an LGBT roundup, maybe?), but I’ll think on it this week. 

      My only consistent responsibility on Wednesday is from 8pm to 10pm EST.  Should I go earlier than that, or later?

    2. 3PM timeslot (EST). The only caveat is that occasionally I get scheduled for a meeting at 1pm (PST), so that last half hour of monitoring comments may be rough (until I get my laptop…).

      Actually, most weekdays I’m available for posting at this time (noon PST), as long as I am granted an occasional reprieve from doing a full ninety minutes of monitoring.

      I can also do almost any 3 AM (midnight PST) timeslot on most days of the week – this would be easiest for me.

      I’m just visual enough that I’ll need to look at an actual grid schedule to see the timeslots and how they overlay other’s contributions.

      1. Like I said…go where thou wilt!

      • pico on August 30, 2007 at 01:06
      • #

      around the noon slot for Wednesday, which is fine.  When does this start?  I wrote a diary today but wasn’t sure whether to put it on the FP or not.

    • srkp23 on August 24, 2007 at 18:07
    • #

    I can’t commit. Gotta go with the flow. Damned hippy and all that.

  11. Pyrrho has signed up.

    Noweasels wishes to be a floating slot person.

    Cskendrick has committed but not signed up.

    Any vacancies will be filled by Fpr’s….with at least an Atrios type entry. Or by slotless persons. Or with a promotion from the diaries.

    You are not required to pick a slot.

    I am still waiting to hear back from folks, I think a lot of people don’t check their public e-mail!

    More, post caffeination!

  12. and literature for kossak ponies.

    Two series that are good enough to FP even though they are crossposts.

    HFKP is at 8pm ET

    Not solid on the slot for LFKP

  13. Though Click Click Click Click Click Click Click Click Click Click Click Click, is a great name I think I would like to to Futurism Writing on Fridays, and a Monday Morning Meta Ho-down.

  14. people poo poo routine… but i like good ones… and the conflict of creativity, freedom, structure: all good tensions

    i don’t look at my tentative (?) Thursdays at 10pm slot as demanding political commentary only … i’m thinking about all the things that might be fun, furious, fantastical to write about…

    i love mythology and Carl Jung… ancient cultures… art, books… POLITICS, Miles Davis, and the zen of darts…

    so don’t worry about me… i don’t feel stuck and the little bit o structure is okay… i’d go as far to say it’s necessary

  15. does this mean we have to, like, write diaries and stuff?

  16. I put up a FP schedule in the right column.  I think this is a cool feature but it has a few drawbacks. 

    pluses –
    * you can add topics and summaries of what you plan to post that day
    * easy to enter and edit
    * I will make it so that only Editors/Admins can access the “Add Event” link
    * It is possible to add multiple days worth of scheduling or to make recurring events

    Minuses
    (which I plan to ask pacified about)
    * It doesn’t seem to be sorting the events by start time.  It sorts by whichever thing was last entered or updated.  Which means that if you make a change to the schedule, that item will fall to the bottom of the list, instead of going back where it was time-wise.
    * I’ve also noticed some weird behavior with the recurring events.  It creates duplicates of the previous event, while NOT creating the event you were trying to add.  Do not use this!
    * These behaviors mean that someone will need to carefully add the schedule each day in the correct order. If edits are made to the schedule (like replacing a diarist), the sorting problem makes it a real pain to get everything back in chronological order. 

    What does everyone think about it?
     

  17. so… does this mean we should restart this discussion?

    • melvin on August 30, 2007 at 01:31
    • #

    Tuesday, if there is one left blank when folks are done picking, in addition to the previously mentioned Friday slot. That would be two melvin slots a week which is surely enough.

    Is the whole schedule going to be viewable somewhere?

    • Robyn on August 30, 2007 at 02:35
    • #

    …if anyone wants it done.  And I’ll take suggestions as to time.

    Robyn

  20. Tell me time, day, even rant target.

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