Open Blog/Open Thread

I wanted to also clarify the Open Blog "rules," which aren't really super-rigorous rules, but still, they're sort of rules.

First of all, I have to apologize for the inconsistency I have shown here, making up ad hoc "rules" and then forgetting them, which has caused confusion.

Here's what I think is the best way to do it:

First of all, if you're an Open Blogger, please feel free to put a post into draft whenever you like. This is very helpful, because it lets me and the cobloggers schedule posts better -- we aim for a post every 20 or 30 minutes during the workweek, for example. We try hard not to immediately bury a fresh post under a new post.

Having a post in draft also lets us post it when, for example, no one's got anything else ready to go, but it's been a while since the last one. If no one seems to be publishing it, write an email to me or a coblog; we might just not have noticed it.

In addition, also first of all, weekends should just be considered generally open blog. We can always use posts on the weekend.

One thing to bear in mind, first of all, is that newsy, breaking-news type posts are usually the order of the day during the workweek hours. The other type of post is welcome -- the "evergreen" post, we call it, as it is not keyed to any particular time-sensitive news event, but is thinky/philosophical in nature, or deals with pop culture, or art, or history, etc. -- is really best saved for the weekends or at night, when there are fewer rapid-fire posts coming.

That's for a couple of reasons. First of all, people tend to want to read the quick-churn stuff during the conventional news-hours week, and so tend to skip over posts which aren't of immediate import. They tend to read those more on off-hours; if these sorts of posts are published during the active news cycle, they tend to get ignored.

And first of all, on weekends and off-hours, there are a lot fewer posts, so these tend to be more prominently displayed for a longer period of time. Thereby giving them time to entice eyeballs.

If it's open blog, publish as you like (you don't have to bother with the draft business), but Make Sure Nothing Has Been Posted Recently Before You Hit Publish! If something's gone up in the last 30 minutes, hold off; give that last post a little time at the top.

Also, first of all, I wanted to say thank you to all the Open Bloggers -- I like reading the stuff from people with different interests and different areas of expertise.

posted by Ace at 01:52 PM

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