"Recommended Posts" (was: "Best of the Forums") - NEWBIES PLEASE RESPOND
One thing I've been interested in doing is making the forums as they are more accessible to newbies and non-regulars. To date, I've mostly been carrying this out by making obscure references to long-forgotten threads and by writing posts that are too long to read. (As Mitch would say, "~".)
So I'd like to propose something -- on a regular basis, say, every week or two, we come up with a few recommended posts or threads. I vaguely envision "best short post," "best longer post," "best new thread", "best ongoing thread", with hopefully a couple nominations in each. (ETA: three08 points out below that "best" is an uncomfortable judgment. Perhaps instead of voting, just nomination?) Then people who can't follow everything can at least look at what's going on in those threads -- they'll miss things, perforce, but they'll get a taste of what's going on.
(Is this part of a master plan to lure JoCo back into the forums? Mmmmmperhaps.)
I don't know that the categories I suggest are the greatest, I just offer them as suggestions. (I wouldn't mind seeing a "funny" category, for example.) I'd appreciate suggestions.
This is the tip of the iceberg as far as ideas go -- mtgordon has suggested that we do a weekly writeup on forum happenings. (I'd assume not too long, just a quick summary. Shorter than most posts I make.) I would love to see that happen, particularly if someone besides me would write it. (I'd be glad to do it occasionally. I'm just not in a position to take on any more commitments of that nature singlehandedly. And of course people who don't want to write can still help compile and suggest things to include.)
Questions for you:
Is the "Best of the Forums" idea a good one?
Have you any more categories in mind, or any reason to oppose any of my off-the-cuff suggestions?
How often should this appear?
Any suggested rules or anything for "Best of the Forums"?
Would you nominate threads and/or posts?
Would you vote on threads and/or posts?
Would you be willing to help suggest things to include in a weekly forum update?
How often would you be willing to write a (badly estimated) 200-400 word forum update? (As in, can I get you to agree to one week out of four, or one in ten, or one in twelve, or one in twenty, that I don't have to do it myself?)
(Anything else you have to say on either subject is welcome.)
So I'd like to propose something -- on a regular basis, say, every week or two, we come up with a few recommended posts or threads. I vaguely envision "best short post," "best longer post," "best new thread", "best ongoing thread", with hopefully a couple nominations in each. (ETA: three08 points out below that "best" is an uncomfortable judgment. Perhaps instead of voting, just nomination?) Then people who can't follow everything can at least look at what's going on in those threads -- they'll miss things, perforce, but they'll get a taste of what's going on.
(Is this part of a master plan to lure JoCo back into the forums? Mmmmmperhaps.)
I don't know that the categories I suggest are the greatest, I just offer them as suggestions. (I wouldn't mind seeing a "funny" category, for example.) I'd appreciate suggestions.
This is the tip of the iceberg as far as ideas go -- mtgordon has suggested that we do a weekly writeup on forum happenings. (I'd assume not too long, just a quick summary. Shorter than most posts I make.) I would love to see that happen, particularly if someone besides me would write it. (I'd be glad to do it occasionally. I'm just not in a position to take on any more commitments of that nature singlehandedly. And of course people who don't want to write can still help compile and suggest things to include.)
Questions for you:
Is the "Best of the Forums" idea a good one?
Have you any more categories in mind, or any reason to oppose any of my off-the-cuff suggestions?
How often should this appear?
Any suggested rules or anything for "Best of the Forums"?
Would you nominate threads and/or posts?
Would you vote on threads and/or posts?
Would you be willing to help suggest things to include in a weekly forum update?
How often would you be willing to write a (badly estimated) 200-400 word forum update? (As in, can I get you to agree to one week out of four, or one in ten, or one in twelve, or one in twenty, that I don't have to do it myself?)
(Anything else you have to say on either subject is welcome.)
Comments
also, the idea of voting on specific posts for which is best is something i'd be leery of (seems a little competitive and i could see feelings getting hurt), and in any case you can only put one poll per thread, right?
Besides, everyone knows everything I say is brilliant. I don't want to dominate the "best of"~
(See, an appropriate place to end a sentence with a tilda!)
Good point on "best", three08 -- maybe skip the voting and just make it nominations. Thoughts?
(Yes, I know it is on this side too. I just wanted another example of when to use it "properly".)
Where would it be kept?
How would it be organised?
How do we define best? Out of context some of the greatest posts sound quite bad.
If someone who could effectively write a gist (not me I over write and suddenly it is as long as the original just in different words) it would be good.An obvious rule, but it has to be said, no self nominating.
On regularity it is hard to say some weeks are busy some are not. Maybe you should have a flexible benchmark.
To answer my own question to an extent, would this appear on the wiki or the forum. On the wiki it can be neatly organised and have sub headings for gimmicky things as Word Association highlights of the week, or such like. On the forum it could just get lost in a very long thread and be hard to find in between all the comments about it. Though on the wiki forum people could be unaware of its existence. Arguments both ways. It could be good for example to catch up after you get home from an internet free week or some such.
If it's just nominations, no vote-off (which I'm fine with, and seems to make sense), do we require someone to second the nomination? (And I agree, no self-nominating.)
I do like the idea of having rough categories (so that clever one-liners aren't getting lumped in with substantive posts).
Thread title:
Recommended Reading, week of (previous Monday through Sunday)
(the thread would be posted Monday morning -- eh, Eastern time, I guess, because that's what
I'mJoCo's in, we agreed for JoCopedia, and stickied)First comment:
-----
Here are recommended posts for the previous week. Suggest posts for this week below.
Short posts:
from Thread title, by Commenter.
from Thread title, by Commenter.
Longer posts:
from Thread title, by Commenter. New threads:
Thread title, started by Commenter.
Description of the thread.
Ongoing threads:
Thread title, started by Commenter.
One-sentence summary of what's interesting.
-----
Second comment:
I'd like to nominate this particular post in such-and-such category.
Third comment:
Second that nomination.
...etc.
Plausible? You tell me.
This is possibly a product of my always liking everything to be concise and contained and organized and such, but what I was thinking of was like, say there's one thread that's stickied and locked, right? And each week a member (it can rotate or whatever) writes up a summary of the exciting events that've happened, and sends it to Bry, who adds it as a response to the (locked) thread. Because what we DON'T want happening is the bestof/recommended thread also turning into something of a confused discussion.
But, I mean, I don't know.
I mean I guess that format's fine, I don't really understand this whole recommending deal though. Is it just in case the first part was omitting things?
Mostly this was to avoid having to use two threads - one empty, locked thread containing the past week's summary, and another for the incoming nominations for the current week. It does seem unnecessarily complicated, though.
Most of the posts in this forum are really well thought out and very intersting to read, I wish I had more time to devote to this place. So, I think that Bry's suggestion might help foster more rapid inclusion of newbies into the forum.
Introduce Yourself Summary
This last month, June 2008, we were introduced to:
LilMarauder, rhobbynneq, Headrickinator, DeeRo, Jutze, and Invid.
The conversation also touched on the number of forum members with Psych degrees. Turns out theres a lot of them which is good because we need help.
Otherwise, I think it would end up being too much trouble for one person each week to either read all the posts or all the nominations, and it would quickly tail off. Especially since copying from a nomination thread to a recommendation thread would be rather laborious using the forum, as there's no way to view the source of someone else's post to copy formatting and links, as far as I'm aware.
I like the wiki idea, though.
A "thread" (also called "discussion") is a chain of posts (also called "comments").
A "wiki" is -- well, there are several kinds of wikis out there, but the most important characteristic they share is that they're a collection of pages where anyone can edit the text. The most famous example is Wikipedia. When we talk about "the wiki" around here, we normally mean JoCopedia, the Jonathan Coulton "encyclopedia" that anyone can edit. MediaWiki is the software that's used by JoCopedia, and MediaWiki formatting is how to format text on JoCopedia (for instance, to make text italicized on the wiki, you put a pair of single-quotes on each side, ''like this''). HTML is all over the place on the Internet, and you'll forgive me if I can't figure out how to explain it, except to say that HTML is used to format comments on the forums and it's not exactly the same as MediaWiki language. Google will tell you more than I can about all of these.
A "sticky thread" is one that's "stuck" to the top of a forum -- for instance, new forum members ought to be able to find the "Forum Code of Conduct / FAQ Thread" easily, so it's a "sticky thread" that will stay on the first page.
A summary would be good. I haven't been following the posts much this past week or two, since it was just taking up too much of my time. It is hard to wade through all the inside jokes, asides, and references to previous posts (which then need to be read). I think for a newbie, lurking is what we do best. We need time to get the sense of the forum, the culture of it.
This is the only forum I frequent regularly, so I don't really have a way to compare it. For a way to get JoCo info, the forum is great, and those sorts of posts would be my favorite to read a summary of (like the "What do you want to know" thread and the "Favorite JoCo moments" thread) Many many many of the other threads either go by too fast for me to follow or add to, or get too esoteric too fast. Which is fine, but I'm not sure that summary of those threads would be very helpful to me (us?) as by the time someone has compiled and posted the summary, the thread will be on another tangent, and any comments that newbies or part-time posters could add would be stale.
my two cents, for what they're worth (not much these days....)
G2G! JoCo Prep in teh haus!
EDIT: I had an idea!
Oh, there may be a place where the community can gather their skillsets that we could use to help JoCo out, say I'm doing a DVD of a live show (which will happen this weekend!) and I need a fun music video to include, I look at a list and see that Spiff does WoW videos (ok, I already knew that... but it's an example people!) I can then contact Spiff through the forums and get what I need/want to include into the DVD that would then be mailed to JoCo for his records, press stuff etc.
That way we can get involved in the popularity and marketing, and as long as we have our names attached to what we do, we could become superstarz like (but not coming near to) Dr Coulton's brilliance. Everyone wins!
Three08: I was thinking perhaps a "Start Here" section recurring every week -- threads like Introduce Yourself, the Favorite Songs List, Favorite Moments, How did you discover JoCo?, etc. that are a good place to jump in. I'm unduly flattered that you think the interview I was partially responsible for deserves a slot too -- thank you. I'd be glad to take nominations for the recurring section too, I guess I should say.
LilMarauder: That's a great idea! And of course I'm always in favor of anything that involves forum-wide collaboration. Will you start a thread to discuss it, and maybe we can all figure out something that makes sense?
ATM, I'm kind of hesitant to click the "edit button on the wiki" having never done it before and fearing the worst screw up un-imaginable...
Bry: Thanks for liking the idea! I created the new discussion (my first since joining!)... where's my cake??? lol!
ETA: You weren't supposed to say anything about the cake! Now everyone's gonna want one.
On a more on topic note. I think we need somewhere to discuss the nominations and persuade people why they should and shouldn't be nominated. I would take it to the wiki discussion page but I fear no wiki newbees would find it and I don't want to exclude people. I just think it might be useful to see people's thought processes when deciding on whether to support or not.