Getting in the monthly recap (was Re: [Theforum] Re: [**min] Article Update - Community News for January 2002)

David McCreath mccreath at ak.net
Tue Jan 8 13:23:24 CST 2002


Interesting approach, Seb.

I think it comes down to the intended use of the Community News 
category. It seems to me like the monthly recaps (one by iSac and one by 
martin) are not necessarily supposed to be comprehensive. They're just 
tidbits that each of them picked up in the course of interacting with 
other community members.

Is the category available to all registered site users? If so, then 
maybe what we need to focus on is getting members to post their own 
updates, eventually obviating the need for the monthly recap.

However, if the monthly recap is the best place for those sorts of 
announcements, then I see a couple of different approaches for 
automating the process.

1) Community news items should be posted in separate messages to 
[thelist] using <community></community> tag pairs, and must be 
accompanied by a <tip></tip>, to keep down the noise.

The problem with that approach is that many people don't feel like they 
have much to offer in the way of <tip>s, so it might discourage 
<community> news. So probably not a good approach (as I've described it, 
anyway).

2) Create an email list just for catching the community news (no sending 
out). If someone wants to include an item in the monthly recap, they 
send a message to communitynews at evolt.org (or monthlyrecap at evolt.org or 
whatever)

On the last day of the month, the adapted tip harvester that Seb 
theorized could roll through it and post the new article.

Of course there are other ways to implement it, but the I like the idea 
of making it easy for people to be included in the monthly recap.

David

Seb wrote:

> Sometime around 17:35 08/01/2002, martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com did 
> verily sayeth:
> 
>>Whoever puts it in.
>>
>>We *could* have lots of mini ones which someone then has to compile
>>into a monthly one, but it makes more sense to have one which people
>>add to as we go along.
> 
> I personally disagree with a single (or even multiple) admin/article 
> approach to this.
> 
> What I would like to see is a <community> tag that people on [thelist] can 
> use, and have their <community> news harvested in the same way as <tips>, 
> then a monthly article automatically generated from each month's community 
> news. This allows us to open a new category for community news, with only 
> these items in it. Takes some of the onus on compilation away from admins. 
> This allows people to share news in near-realtime rather than once a month.
> 
> Of course, this could be a distraction away from on-topic discussion, so if 
> this approach is considered, then there would need to be some additions to 
> the FAQ, and an announcement on-list.
> 
> I'm almost tempted to mention that we do have [thechat], but then there are 
> going to be people who are not subscribed to that list, and the articles do 
> make for an interesting advertisement of our sense of community to the 
> casual visitor.
> 
> Seb.







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