Wondering what you all think about scheduled time slots. Ek mentions this in some comment, somewhere, but it seems important enough to put it up top.
First, I think we should figure out how long a front page diary stays up top- 2 hours, 3 hours? We should pick time slots and length of stay based on how long the FP diarists can hang around for comments. Not all the DK FPers do that, and it’s part of why popular non-FP diarists so often have so many more comments. We want all FPers to engage with their audiences. Builds the community.
I suggest we mix in a news roundup/open thread every third diary or so. That will keep people coming, to get their daily news digest. It might even be a good idea to set up a phpBB2 site, where we can discuss meta, ask people to fill in if we won’t be available for our slot, and also compile news links for the roundups. Someone should oversee each roundup (we can do that with random volunteers), but everyone should chip in stories, as they find them.
Now, if there’s some huge breaking news story, while someone’s in the middle of their FP diary, we can add just a banner headline up top, so people can click it for the story and thread, but the FP story stays essentially on top, too.
Any thoughts?
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Definitely need to set up a phpBB2 site.
if a FP story stays up for 2-3 hours, how many slots do you envision a day?
assigned a time of the week? Alternatively, can we request a time of the week?
for 56-84 slots a week. (yes! she can multiply!) that’s more than one shift a week. Oh, I guess I didn’t subtract open threads.
not an implicit request.
And it is not a tragedy if a slot goes unfilled, either!
The issue will be: do the occasional FPers want set TV schedules, or to arrange the TV schedule each week?
I assume the main FPers will not want such a schedule for themselves.
is a set of schedule guidelines that people can work within.
Tose who want a regular time slot can have them…but still have slots available for those….like me…who work mainly on their muses schedule.
I hate the idea of having TOO rigid of a deadline thing.
As for me, I wiill be posting whenever I want, but will make sure not to step on someone who has just posted. Having time at the top of the page is very important.
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have our best of the blogs around 7 pacific time, and leave it up until it goes quiet, then have some sort of fun late-night thread until morning.
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anyone who posts on a regular basis should have a set slot, so people know when to find them. as much as is possible, people should also be able to pick their time slots, because each one of us knows best when we’ll have time to really engage with any commenters. i’d also say we shouldn’t presume that everyone will want just one slot a week. some people might want to fill more than that. we can also let the open thread /news roundup monitors open the roundups with shorter diaries.
Armando tends to post a lot, which is good.
I am going to explore posting lots of short items and thoughts, that is one of the real advantages of having an FP to me….not everything has to be diary length.
I encourage Turk and OPOL to do the same. It brings dynamism and freshness.
So that fills some slots. But I don’t want to be restricted TOO much when I can post.
But I also don’t want to step on someone who just put up something great with a one liner. I promise to exercise discretion.
Hopefully we will be able to promote from the recent diary list too, I want to attract and nurture new writers as well.
And………who is going to do the schedule?
Do we need a separate site?
Or do we do a neato transparency deal….have a diary up in the recent column every day, where folks can sign up for a slot? And where we can have the meta out in the open? I like the idea of having an open kitchen where the patrons can watch the sausages being made!
I LOVE what we are doing right here for example….why hide it? I think it is a great example of consensus building and the cooperative society I speak of in the Mission Statement!
unrigid, buhdy!
um … figurally speaking, of course. I am implying nothing about your, er … OK, I give up now!
I think a regular time slot for certain topics is good for reasons Turkana has already pointed out. It can be vague though, say Tuesday night rather than precisely 7:35.
Given that readership/commentership will not be that huge at first, I see no need to rush the cycle and get something new up every two hours.
Also on that, one of the defects of dkos is overemphasis on the FP and rec list. It is astonishing how few people read anything else. From the looks of the crowd already here, not everything is going to fit on either of those two. Encourage people to read the rest. Of course who knows the dynamics of the readership.
(Problem I see with dkos is everyone talking and no one listening.)
buhdy approached me as a green/enviro contributor. My thought on that is maybe a more or less regular slot with an emphasis on subject or theme. There is the possibility of a roundup a la jillian or the overnight digest at dk. But I have problems with those. Maybe they have to do with way I read blogs. I think there is a tendency to cram too many things into one post, with the result that little attention is concentrated on each. The opposite of course would be an entry for each – also too much in its way.
Kind of like traffic signs. You pay attention to one, but a forest of them tends to get ignored.
With those encyclopedic entries, which are in a way easier to write, there is also the problem of keeping track of maybe an important item buried in a list of 30 or 40. I’ve noticed this trying to track things down that I saw in those entries.
There is the whole matter of commenting that might be discussed too. Take dos again as an example. I find it quite irritating when people post dozens of short comments, often repeating the same thing over and over, on those threads. That is not a discussion, it is a shouting match.
I don’t know what the etiquette really is. Myself I have adopted the notion that you make your point(s) and shut up unless an actual conversation opens up from there.
There is a real trick that most of us do not have, of writing something that opens a conversation instead of closing it. There seems little point in bald assertions.
Oh I forgot to add: NAMBLA endorsed Hillary, and Obama chews his boogers.
that there is a timed-publish feature for diaries. This makes everything much easier.
You people are like smart and stuff.
Time slots are good for those who want them.
I DO want a daily diary either on the FP that has the scedule for the day so folks can see what is coming up and as a place to sign up.
If we have another board to work out the uberschedule on that is great….especially since iirc, they are free!
And most important to this model.
We need someone to volunteer for the Very Important Job of Scheduler….or a committee.
Those of us who have been Rangers know how well that kind of committee can work.
Now onto the next evolution!
Damn, I missed that by a lot, didn’t I?
Here’s my two cents. I do like some structure for two reasons: 1. it’ll hopefully attract us more regular readers who know when to come by for what they like, and 2. it’ll force me to write regularly, because otherwise I have a tendency to put out two or three diaries at a time, then be silent for a while (I finally learned this with the literature series, and it’s a good thing).
I triply (quadruply?) second the phpBB2 idea, since that can also be a good place to hash out meta-disagreement without having to plaster the public forum with it. Toes will get stepped on here: there are a lot of type-A personalities in this room. Banging heads can be a good thing so long as people don’t take it personally, but meta-banging is best done off-site.
Agree 1000% (yes, a thousand percent) with the necessity of FP interaction. I think we can set a tone for commentary simply by doing it ourselves: I notice at Progressive Historians, for example, that comments tend to be longer and more substantial thanks in part to the admins there leading the way.
Maybe not so much.
I’m ok with appearing in Recent Diaries.
I think the apearence of dynamism is important. I’d like people to visit 3 times a day-
* Morning, before work or first thing at.
* Noon, what else are you going to do while you eat at your desk?
* Night, TV Sucks!
So those are the prime times.
Overnight?
There are a lot of people who are sleep deprived or time zone challenged. I think the hours from Midnight to 6 am might be one of our most popular time, especially if the pace of change is slow on other sites.
Morning might be the best time to put up the meta scheduling/pimp diary.
Noon would be a good time for news, because there will be the morning DC Developments (which might make a nice title btw) to talk about.
Night.
We could try live blogging Olbermann, but it is a Recent Diaries diary just like TDS/TCR. There is no need for it to be around forever.
Over at Boo they put up “community” diaries in the recent list and swap them out as they fill up. I think it’s highly effective and doesn’t take up huge amounts of FP real estate permanently the way dK Open Threads do.
their own energy, i think. and good ones seem to get rec’d, despite the author.
however, there are many good ones that slip away without much traffic.
some questions:
– is there a way to keep a worthwhile diary in top ten of the recent diary listing to help get more exposure? would that cause problems? or do you just let people know this is a possibility
– sometimes great diaries die because of titles… certainly won’t catch them all, but when you run across diary that you think is worthy of more traffic, is it worth coming up w/title editing help?
– can you remove rec’d diaries from recent list so other diaries get more airtime?
– always good to try to get FPers or your known bloggers to comment in diaries in the beginning… just the other day RiaD was thrilled to have LithiumCola comment in her diary (I think that was you LC)… don’t know quite how that would work…
i think these things will give diarists more attention… some get promoted, others get recent list hang time, and some title help, and others get a nod w/FPer comments whenever possible in as many diaries as warrant it… too much maybe… ????
one last observation: the banner… struck me funny… if you don’t mind my honest reaction… love “blogging the future” but not sold on banner… don’t shoot me okay?