I don't blog but enjoy reading/viewing other's blog sites (and read most of the blogs by the members here who have them) so would like to see a SLF one. Would it be one big blog or many small ones devoted to individual topics? I vote for the one big one with sub catagories for varied topics.
I believe it would be individual blogs, although posts could be aggregated to a 'latest posts' sort of page.Originally Posted by Spartana
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
I think it's a great idea! I really enjoyed the Journal (thread entries segment) while it lasted.
By the way, I don't blog. Time constraints and family obligations all but tie me up, limiting what little wiggle room I already have...
I do worry a bit, though, about the forums getting too big. Not big in the sense of too many people, but too many bells and whistles. Our volunteers are stretched awfully thin, and Alan, you are infusing new energy, but we wouldn't want the whole operation to become unsustainable when you eventually move on from the position, which naturally happens in all volunteer posts. Just something to think about . . .
That's the great thing about some of the CMS systems out there such as vBulletin's Publishing Suite, after a few days of initial setup, they pretty much run themselves.
Granted, we may have to add another layer of moderation on the blog/article side, but it shouldn't add to individual workloads. Things are actually getting easier with the current site, as far as I can tell. Adding an additional layer of human verification to the sign up process seems to have stymied the bots and we're down to about 5 to 10 human spammers a day attempting to register. We had 4 overnight and 1 today. That's less than 10 minutes of work for one person.
I think we'd all be pleasantly surprised at the additional dimension a change would make for our community.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
So, if I understand correctly, this would be in the vein of the blogs at Dollar Stretcher or Allrecipes (if you've seen those - they are kind of like journals integrated into the site)?
Yes, the Dollar Stretcher was very similar, although it's site is powered by a very different application. To see the vBulletin Publishing Suite in action, try http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
I guess the relevant question is: what do the members of the community want? What's easiest to use/maintain, and what provides the best platform for members to communicate? Individual? Community with regular contributors and guest posters? Formally "assigned" "beats" or informal "pot luck" content? Separate blogs with links? Some combination of the above? I don't think there's really any preconceived idea of what it will look like, so explore away!
One advantage to consider of setting this up as a community effort is that we thought there might be members who would like to contribute posts, but perhaps not be ready to commit time and energy to maintaining their own personal blogs, or just welcome a chance to try it out without making any ongoing commitment. One line of thinking was that it would take the place of a newsletter in many ways, without having to have one person manage and write one.
So... what sounds good?
Helen
The Digital Point example was helpful. I have learned in my work this year that it is helpful to provide people with an example when it comes to tech, otherwise they just can't imagine what it might be
It looks like Digital Point's articles are curated by one person, or could any member of the forum put up links to articles? Often we end up discussing articles in threads anyway, this could be a different way of categorizing them and having them available for future reference.
I really do like the blog feature . . . would it be cool to cross-post stuff? Would we need some kind of etiquette training? Like if I had a post on a Wordpress blog of my own that I think would be interesting to the SLN folk, could I put it in both places? Maybe that's a dumb question . . .
Not a blogger but i like HKPassey's view of giving each a chance to explore blogging - that I might try doing for the fun of it. Imagine a blog about learning to train a dog and its psychology or watching some robins hatch etc. I'm game to do this.
As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
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