@KitFox tut tut tut.

-1 point to Slitherin

@MattЭллен Aw crap.

@KitFox Well, you're here today, so that's a good start.

Hi!

@KitFox it gives me a search page with instructions

Great, thanks.

Oh, can you actually search for something?

yes

I have successfully searched using completion

So you typed something, selected something on the list, and then it found it for you?

it found a list of results, yes

searching within the returned list worked, too

What did you pick?

bra, then tyr then um i forgot.

I have just broken it, by the way

I brought up the autocomplete, then clicked on new search and the autocomplete didn't go away

I suppose I could click on the autocomplete, but I think that should just go away

after tyr I added pten

Oh, that's a known issue.

Thanks though.

no probs :)

I'm early for the meeting!

But now I'll be late because I'm going to fetch tea.

@KitFox -1 to hufflepuff

phew

I think I'm more Ravenclaw actually.

Is there a blog chat?

blah blah blah.

them's my thoughts.

yes

So let's talk about ELU chat.

Let's talk about EL&U blog!

you can chat about chat in the main chat

shakes fist

Wow. Hello.

So what do people think about the blog articles the EL&U blog has had in the past?

I'm a bit disappointed

I decided to try lapsang souchong because it smelled like a punch in the face.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 how so?

@KitFox ah, the smokey one?

Hehe.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes.

@MattЭллен They seemed kinda random and uncoordinated.

There doesn't seem to be a unified theme

Apparently the only tea that tea shop guy's wife has ever spit out.

Each article might be fine on its own, but together it's just a hodgepodge.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, I agree but it's hard when we don't have regular contributors.

@KitFox yeah it was a real hit or miss flavour around here.

Sounded like fun.

@KitFox Yes, that is the problem, as I see it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 interesting.

He also gave me a sample of golden monkey, which is his favorite.

Isn't a blog supposed to be a bit unstructured?

@MattЭллен let me take another look at the blog.

@Cerberus There aren't a lot of supposed-to's for blogs.

There you go.

@KitFox That is one gamey punch in the face. LIke you've been punching a face covered with hay in a barn.

Well, the quickest feedback is (a) how far I make it through the first article before I quickly scan the rest of the front page. The second piece of feedback is (b) whether I continue reading after that page scan.

(a) was exactly two sentences; (b) was "no"

So that's a description of the form of the feedback, not the actual feedback. What's the actual feedback?

Oh. asked and answered.

The reasons why would take a while to discuss and will probably just boil down to "I'm not the target audience."

I'm not sure who the target audience is, exactly, but it certainly isn't me. :P

@MrHen If you think you're not the target audience, then you -are- the target audience.

@MrHen but you are the target audience. well part of it. it's for people who use EL&U, and perhaps ELL

@MattЭллен Mmk.

I mean, I can elaborate if you are curious.

I am curious

But it will just be a mind dump of thoughts.

that's OK

I'll bullet point it for reference purposes.

interest in writing and reading the blog had petered out, so we need fresh ideas

(a) I don't understand the formatting of the page. During the page scan, I had a hard time distinguishing between topics and finding "interesting bits" so the whole thing comes off as monotone and dry.

Yes. Fresh.

(b) The extremely informal tone in the current top post and the extremely detailed tone in the second post collide and tell me this is a volunteer blog with no real editorial staff. Each post is probably a hit-or-miss on its own right and my liking one post isn't going to suggest I like the rest of them.

(c) Robusto's post is much easier to scan through.

So is StoneyB's.

Well, that sounds like they should write all the articles, so let's tell them.

aye

@KitFox It's just about the formatting.

@Ro—oh.

(d) Particular content thoughts on Chat vs Comment incoming as I read it

This tea is really interesting.

(d1) First paragraph is informal but the second paragraph makes me feel like you are about to chastise me for something. It puts me on the defensive.

(d2) Third paragraph is spending a lot of time/energy trying to get me out of a defensive state... :P

(d3) "Oh? You cannot comment?" Actually, I can. This post must not be for me. I would normally skim the remainder and then skip to the next post.

(d4) "It is important to note that comments are not permanent parts of the site and they get deleted when they outlive their usefulness." Really? That's interesting. I learned something new which is great. That makes me want to read the rest of the post to learn more things.

(d5) Paragraph starting "Yes, you are quite right. [...]" is the first time Chat is mentioned since the title. We are now 50% of the way through the post. This makes me suddenly remember this post was supposed to be about comments and chat... so what is the actual point?

(d6) "One excellent trick you can do with chat is to take a discussion in comments and move it to a chat room." You should note that [chat] exists in comments and automatically creates a link. :)

(d7) After post end, I still don't exactly understand what the post was trying to say. There are two places to discuss things? Chat is more hectic, more off-topic, scarier but better for longer discussions?

(Side note, I "get it" in the sense that I already know which problem you are trying to address. But I feel like I only get it because I already got it.)

(e) Particular content thoughts about "One Language, Many Voices"

(e1) Firstly, great title.

(e2) Introduction paragraph quickly tells you what to expect from the post.

(e3) "English has its origins in the various north-west European dialects [...]" oof, this will be dense. If I was in a hurry I would start a quick skim here to tell me how long the post is and get a better sense of the topic. What I want to know is whether I should save this post so I can read it later.

(e3) Btw, this is where the formatting of the post hurts.

(e4) "For a period, the Wessex dialect was the most prestigious, showing that then, as now, any one variety of the language predominates not for linguistic reasons, but for political, economic and social reasons." Holy commas, Batman.

(e4) Also, I don't really know exactly what Wessex is. This makes me think this post could be for a more "expert" audience and it really collides with the target audience from the (d) post.

(e4) If both of these posts are "on-topic" for the blog, the blog will need to be very clear about who should care about each post.

omg he's still talking.

(e5) "The next most significant influence on the language was the Norman invasion of 1066." Wait, what was the first most significant influence? The Wessex dialect? It wasn't introduced that way. This caused me to go back and scan for something I missed.

@KitFox It's what I do.

(e6) Each paragraph has really interesting information. I'm happy I kept reading.

So. Let's skip to the end then?

Here are some questions:

Why do we have a blog?

Why do we want a blog?

(sorry, it's time for me to commute. bll)

No, but...

@KitFox But I'm only halfway through Barrie's post. :P

Aww.

@MrHen Yes, but really this would have been helpful before it was published rather than now.

@KitFox Sure. That's what you get when you ask for "thoughts" without more qualifiers.

So let's talk about why we want to have a blog, and how we can accomplish that.

@MrHen Well, I didn't ask.

And now Matt's gone home.

@KitFox True.

(f) If you don't want long, rambling thoughts don't ask MrHen for "a mind dump of thoughts."

He's in charge of the blog, but there's not been much participation, so we need to change that or scrap the blog.

@KitFox Well, there is a historical answer, presumably.

Presumably it doesn't apply anymore or else we'd be swimming in contributors.

Originally, we thought we'd take the most common questions and provide some synthetic answers and interesting detail.

It hasn't really congealed like that.

@KitFox Presumably you also want to avoid that problem again, eh?

Presumably.

We're doing that on purpose, right?

So, I can help pester everyone with annoying questions and point out problems.

But I'm not sure how else we might use it so that it gets more publicity and is interesting.

I'm not sure I'm the right person to help come up with solutions.

@MrHen We have lots of those kind of volunteers.

@KitFox Right. I'm just being clear about what I can offer.

I see.

Running a blog isn't as easy as it looks. It is even harder when you are hoping for volunteers to write the content.

In my opinion, the necessary components of a blog are (a) topic (b) clear target audience (c) consistent editing and (d) regular content

(Those aren't necessarily in priority order.)

So, ELU has two potential topics: "English" and "How to ELU"

Both could work in the same blog

(b) is tough because people don't even agree on ELU's target audience

(c) is impossible without an actual editing team

"English" is too broad a topic.

(d) regular content is a pain when just starting out

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Good point.

I think clarifying who the target audience is would help narrow it down

I think the target audience should be people who post questions on the site.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why not people who post answers?

How will they know about the blog?

Hey, I see some familiar people who migrated here from an unknown place where I was just roaming around.

@MrHen They are our writers.

Do the people who post questions on the site even want a blog?

I think we ought to just post random stuff until something sticks.

Similar to my coding style.

@KitFox That's how most blogs start out. :)

@MrHen They would, if the blog had interesting topic germane to the kinds of questions they ask. But our problem is that most of our questions are too basic or off-topic.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So do we want to write blog posts targeting people who ask basic or off-topic questions?

@MrHen Maybe. If we addressed the basics in blog posts, we might not need to address them in questions.

That was the idea, iirc, that by putting all this stuff into a blog post, we could link to the blog article when we close questions.

We could also expand the site's topic into the blog, where the different format allows digression and tangents.

Like a tailored FAQ plus some usual questions.

But I, for one, do not want to bother writing a blog post about singular they just to try to convince that guy with two accounts who kept insisting that singular they didn't used to exist.

So, the annoying question here is, "If it is interesting enough for a blog post, why isn't it interesting enough for an answer?"

Also, I'd like to mention that I really liked that tea.

@MrHen blog posts can be longer and digress.

@MrHen First of all, it might be too long and disjoint to be a coherent answer to a single question.

@KitFox So... the goal is to take basic or off-topic questions and answer them in a blog post that is long and digresses?

You've just lost your target audience.

Secondly, the question might be off-topic but the spirit of the question might be on topic.

because our topic is very narrowly constrained.

But it might help more if we posted articles on interesting features of the English language (more fun to write) and that might also give people ideas to ask good questions.

Word definitions and eymology is often off-topic because it's trivially looked-up on google or any number of references.

But a blog post about those could be really interesting.

@KitFox Sure, but that's kind of a different goal/audience.

@MrHen Not that. It can contain lots more information.

@MrHen Yeah, I know. Seems like it might be more successful though.

@KitFox Sure. So how do you appeal to that audience?

And can that audience mix with the previous audience?

The thing is, I can imagine in my head lots of theoretical blogs that are spiritually a good fit for our site, and have hordes of adoring fans, and a handful of competent writers and editors. Their topic is something the fans adore and writers enjoy. But as I'm not volunteering to write it, I don't know that my opinion matters.

I have no idea. Too hungry to think about it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right.

That too. We have no writers.

At one point there was a plan to have a bunch of writers, and someone... one of the mods... forgot who. Anyway, they were going to hand out writing assignments to the writers.

I don't have time. Matt might, but he's the only one.

There was to be a pool of topics.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I vaguely remember that.

or potential blog posts.

So we are just back to the list of problems I noted earlier.

ah, it was waiwai.

It's on the star list there.

But it petered out because the writers stopped coming.

Logistically, the ELU blog has to figure out how to answer these questions before it has a hope of succeeding.

It doesn't really matter what the specifics are as long as those things are answered and the content is generated.

Any one aspirational writer could do it (and they do, all the time) but managing a bunch of carefree volunteers is a Really Difficult Problem.

@KitFox So, the other side of this is how to keep your writers happy.

Which is item (d) on my list.

Aside from polling your prospective writers and past writers, I'm not sure how to get that information.

Heh: english.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/chat-vs-comment/#comment-40535

So you are volunteering to write all the content? That's great. Just churn it out, whatever you feel like writing.

@KitFox If I were going to write all of the content for a blog, I wouldn't do it for ELU. I'd just start my own blog.

Which is one of the major issues in asking for volunteers to write blog articles.

It's a chicken-egg problem.

You really hate me, don't you?

Holy crap this website copier just keeps going and going.

@KitFox Sorry. I'm not the one trying to solve the hard problem. :)

Me neither. I'm just trying to help Matt.

Also work.

Also not panic.

And it's cold and I think maybe I should make a pot of coffee now.

@MrHen Yeah that's another thing. I have a blog of my own which doesn't get enough love. I wish I had enough writing capacity to do that AND ELU but it's more like "neither"

Right, like how I was trying to keep Writers chat going.

Thanks for doing it this week, Mr Shiny.

@KitFox lol it barely squeaked through.

Many weeks there has been nothing though.

Really it was Pravesh who did it. He pinged me.

@KitFox You mean Writers.SE chat?

Yes.

Mmk. I still haven't had the purpose of Writers or ELL "click", internally.

I've got a meeting with my boss. Later!

Cheers.

@MrHen wait..some people are getting paid to blog? and there's a staff?

You know how everybody is in sales and they say their life is so hard? I want to be in the buying department.

@MattЭллен dude you left when everybody was starting a mind dump. Now you'll never know what they said. I mean there's no record of all this is there?

@KitFox by stick do you mean compile?

@MattЭллен The whole point to the blog is that we want it to be like Language Log or Grammar Girl or... as long as someone else goes to the trouble.

Also, that gives me an idea. All blogs should be alliterative. There. Go with that. Free of charge.

@Mitch Yes.