the effort just runs better if someone is willing to spearhead things. If there's no post then someone to nag people to finish a draft, help organize things, arrange topics, things like that.
if there's no post for 2 weeks, who's going to step and recognize that and say "hey we're supposed to have a post each week!" and either write a post or get someone to do it?
well i don't know how much you can really crack the whip when it comes to home improvement lol... i don't think anybody is going to spend $500 to do a project just to get some content for the blog... content is just going to come in randomly?
we could form like a queue... where if we get 5 submissions in a week, we space them out... but not much else that can be done
just trying to say that i really don't understand the hatred for tool reviews :P it's very rare to find a good one, so there's definitely a market for it... and not only could it bring in visitors and money, but it helps people... some might complain that it costs too much (might cost $1.2k to do a comparison between 15 cordless drills)... but the referral revenue might be $5k in the next 2-3 years
@Michael i assure you, it's not a hatred! i'm all for tool reviews. i'm just skeptical of those being our Entry Number 001, that's all. but if the community wants that, then it's fine and I won't say anything more. I facilitate the community, I don't control it.
though i'd agree that it would be better to get Jay to write up something about his yurt... nobody can really force him to do that :P so we sorta have to settle for what we can get
if the content comes from the users, and the number of users doubles... then definitely
but definitely not from one person or even 2 or 3... unless you don't mind settling for really bad content :P nobody wants to read a blog about mundane stuff, though... like how to replace light bulbs or patch a hole... has to be substantial
like how to install a new light fixture... or how to install a Solatube (a fancy skylight)
you'd need like 30 active contributors to get a post like that once a week
@Michael Just popping in -- I'm on my on-call week, so I'm randomly having to get up at 2am and watch something that's broken or breaking. We'll discuss this tomorrow and I'll have another Meta post to fulfill the "Scheduling posts" -- I have a feeling that MOST posts will be in the "project updates" category, I really want to find someone who is willing to go out and interview tradesmen to answer questions like "what constitutes a quality job", and I am certain that we will cover tool reviews.
I would also like to cover some stuff that's tangential like how to work with supply houses that normally only deal with contractors and otherwise find good retailers when dealing with DIY projects. (Home Despot or bLowe's isn't always your best source for stuff) and things like that.
And possibly even some interior design aspects ... things you can DIY, things you can't DIY. I've got a lot of ideas. We just need to settle on a schedule of some sort.
I really need to take some video of what it's like using a regular screw gun and what it's like using an impact driver like the one in the giveaway.
The number one thing that keeps DIY projects from succeeding (or that causes people to complain about them) is not having the right tools, or even knowing what the right tools are for.
@RebeccaChernoff Oh? I thought the only real thing we had to do was to set a posting schedule and figure out specifically how we wanted to do content that other people are posting on their own blogs over here... those were the last two questions in my mind. Do you agree, or is there something else?
:( What else is left to do besides the two items? Do we need more contributors to sign up in advance? I think we'll get more attention after the blog goes live.
Honestly, I'm not sure how the others feel about this, but all this pressure to have a blog be constantly maintained and updated makes me less interested. If SE doesn't want to provide a location that I can blog when I want to, without threatening to shut it down in the future for low volume, that just makes me want to setup a blog on my own site.
Sorry for the rant, but if I'm going to volunteer my effort to create some useful content, I want to do that without pressure from a cheerleading squad.
@RebeccaChernoff Re: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2050633#2050633 -- I think we got a lot of commitment to do exactly that in the last thread about who will contribute. What I also was going to do was to ask people who already blog (such as @Jay
Bazuzi) if we could post the first couple paragraphs of one of their blog posts and then link to the remainder -- fresh content for the site, fresh links for him.
@BMitch I see it as the same philosophy as the site going through a private beta. The same empty restaurant syndrome. When we create a blog, we don't want to see people post to it for a month and then interest dies down and nobody posts to it again. That's what we want to prevent.
I realize that's the concern, but from a user perspective, if someone is putting up so many road blocks before they'll provide a site to use, then I'm incline to host my own blog on my own site, and if no one ever visits, it's no big deal.
@KarlKatzke, the good news is that a handful of us are about to hit 10k here real soon
@RebeccaChernoff The process to create my own blog is easier, download, install, done, it would have been up a month ago if I though there would be so much begging required by the community to get it created.
@BMitch Part of the time span is my fault; since I've been driving it I've been waiting to make sure we had everyone's attention that we wanted before hitting the next step.
I'm not asking about editors. I'm asking about one or two admins. Someone new wants to contribute an article, an admin has to create a blog account for them.
