Strummerson recently started the conversation on the Moose that I’ve had in my head for a few months: what kind of blog are we/do we want to be? There seems to be a core group of commenters/authors who apparently have time in their lives to post things; I sit in front of a computer eight or nine hours out of the day so I can lurk or post at my leisure. But there are others who are able to come and go when life lets them. I will admit that I generally let someone else post articles (diaries) because I can’t get my thoughts together long enough to be coherent and worthy of being read. And it seems that the last few month have been particularly slow but with the new year perhaps there is a chance to put further thought into what the Moose should be and how the Moose should look.
I’ve thought for awhile that the nature of the Moose is such that we don’t need to separate recommended articles from “regular” ones if only because we don’t generate dozens of stories a day. In a recent comment I mentioned that a format such as Balloon Juice or Little Green Footballs might serve us. The downside to the BJ format is that, as far as I know, only certain people can post articles while the majority are commenters. I like the idea that anyone can post an article because we all have something to contribute and deserve to be read. So maybe we keep most of the current format but simply remove the “recommended” section.
My other thought is that those of us who can post to the front page need to do a better job of actually doing so. And yes I smack my own hand. I don’t necessarily think that a front page article has to be the second coming of War and Peace but something that may foster discussion.
Hopefully folks feel free to give their ideas, suggestions, thoughts.
(And anyone who knows how to wrap the text around a picture is free to do so above because no matter how often I’m told how I never remember.)
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