So, since we're about to get a blog, I guess we should all start working on our first posts...

maybe we should all claim topics?

There is a question we have

About the minimal amount of oil which makes non-crumbly crust

And another one (although accepted) about vegetable oil instead of butter in crust

I thought I could make some experiments and write them up as a post

haven't yet come around to post it on the list

Also, I have an impression of the Basel christmas market written up

But it will have to wait until next christmas :)

Also, I will make Kozunak for Easter

But I don't know if I can write something interesting about it

It is practically a very tasty brioche

I don't know if my lavender cookie, matcha cookie and orange cookie experiments can do a good post

But this is a good idea, i should make some pics of my lavender grinding

I should buy food colors for that.

Hah, you've got a couple posts there.

Guess there should just be a CW answer on meta where authors just claim what they're currently working on. I could go ahead and create one.

Sure?

I would add a comment to the existing ideas

Makes it easier to keep track

Hmmm, that could work too. Though then the authors need rep to edit them.

advantage of a CW post, is that you don't need rep to edit it

Edit what?

The comments don't have to be edited

You can add a new one (finished/posted) when it is done

hmmm, that's going to get to be a PITA to keep track of after a while.

I mean, there will be a page of done ideas you'll have to look through to find whats currently active

Yes. I think that we need something else

But I doubt that a CW question is the best way.

I think the other blogs have a spreadsheet in Google docs.

best way? No, probably not. Good enough? I suspect so...

Everybody who wants to be an author contacts the admin and is granted access to the spreadsheet, or something in this way.

hmmm, SS in Google Docs could work too, but not really sure how its any better than an answer on meta everyone edits

less confusion too, since usernames etc. will be familiar

An answer will get quite long

But yes, googledocs will require us to provide an email address

not really. It shouldn't have many more entries than authors

Nobody will want to.

@derobert I hadn't looked at it that way

But yes, sorted by authors is shorter than sorted by post ideas

I mean, I'm thinking of an answer that basically lists each of the authors, and what he's/she's working on

I guess you can make a question then, not an answer

Each author can then write an answer for himself

Hmmm, and that'd also let you sort by active...

And an author can edit his own answer when something is finished or added.

But I think we should have rules for claiming.

I suggest, first rule, if there are no objections, it's OK :-P

Just saying "I find this nice, and might write it when I find some free time" is not so good

Oh, in that sense, yeah

It means that the others won't pick this topic, because it is claimed

But the person might not work on it for months

I guess it should be something like "what are you actively working on"

I think that a claim should contain a promised delivery date

And nobody should be allowed to give a date too far in the future

Something like 3 weeks max.

Well, or at least status updates. E.g., if someone is doing one that required research or experimentation, its fine if it takes a while

If they plan to write it later, they will have to wait with claiming.

@derobert Yes, OK

I'll post a question on meta, and we can then edit it into shape

If there are more milestones than just a text, then we can require that the next milestone be finished in 3 weeks after claiming.

(instead of the last milestone).

I'm not so worried about strict timing. I mean, if someone else wants to take over the post, they can add a comment... right now, with 20+ ideas, hopefully we won't conflict much

Yes, I don't expect many conflicts

But it can have a more subtle effect. Like "hey, I wanted to do this... Oh wait, rumtscho is already doing something very similar. Never mind then."

If it is a person who wanted to write about a specific topic - as opposed to producing any post at all - and the motivation is weak overall, they will be unlikely to go over the bar of asking to get the topic to be reassigned to them, or to come up with a different idea.

Yeah. If someone takes forever with no word, certainly a ping is in order. And if they're MIA, edit the claim to note that, and say its up for grabs

How do we assign editors?

I would say that at the beginning, we just wait for a post to be finished

well, when a post is finished, you put it in the unpublished queue

then we can figure out who will edit it, or probably several people

also before its finished, certainly drafts can be passed around

Or we can make it more formal, with a rotation order

And then we three/four meet in chat and one of us claims the post.

(I've administered a blog before, just never written one)

Sounds fairer, but could of course mean that somebody is asked to edit when they are busy IRL

Every editor gets the next post in the queue.

Of course, I don't expect editing to be too much work

I haven't edited

But I have experience as a reviewer

Yeah. I don't think it'll be a problem. We can always come up with some system if it ever matters.

The worst papers take me up to 3 hours

And this is for a 15 page paper.

Oh, a blog post is nowhere near that bad

I have proofread internal papers too

Exactly - i wanted to point out that it shouldn't take much time

Even if we are supposed to change more

I have never done copy editing

So what I did was proof editing

Pointing out errors I find, both in language and in style

But not always trying to make better suggestions

Also, I was less invasive than the typical editor

Well, most of the blog editing won't be very invasive. Its a fairly informal medium, after all

But the people here are not necessarily experienced in writing

Doctoral students can express themselves in writing, more or less

And the end result is judged on information content mainly

@rumtscho Sure. But that'll probably get taken care of in informal drafts.

Wooooo blog!

It can happen that we have authors who did good research and are trying to write it up, but their style is atrocious

If someone isn't sure what should go in the post, we'll work with them (in chat, probably) on an outline. If they're not sure how to phrase something, the same, etc.

Based on the answers all the possible contributors have written, I think we don't have to worry /that/ much about writing quality.

If they can't work with our suggestions, it should be the editor who creates good text capable of holding a whimsical surfer's attention

But yes, we may have good writing quality here, in fact

Because the authors tend to be the people involved with the site

And the people involved with the site are those who already produce good text in answers and questions

The ones who don't are selected against, because they don't get rep

@rumtscho Well, if an author can't manage to write an acceptable text even with handholding, then, maybe they shouldn't be an author. Seriously. If they're doing something helpful & time consuming (research), then let them work with a coauthor.

@derobert I hope this won't happen, actually

I doubt it'll happen, too.

I am just accustomed to take care of worst-case-scenarios while planning

I expect that the only thing that will go wrong at all, is that we'll eventually have to start begging people to write articles.

Yes, this will be sad

We maybe should make a rule about what we consider maximal "good" contribution per author

maximal "good" contribution?

Not sure what you mean by that.

For example, if one of us writes more than one third of the posts, this would mean that something is seriously wrong

I donno. That doesn't strike me as a problem. As long as that person enjoys doing it, and is producing material readers enjoy reading.

@derobert I don't say we should forbid it

Well, you said that would mean "something is seriously wrong"

But it will be a metric that we don't have a healthy community behind the blog

It could just mean we got Jon Skeet to write for us.

:-P

Sure, our lorentz curve will be quite skewed.

I would say there are just multiple kinds of healthy SE blogs: ones with lots of contributors, and ones with three strong regular contributors. Maybe we'd rather have the former, but it doesn't mean the latter is awful.

But if it becomes the blog of one, two or three people instead of the blog of the whole site, and keeps this way, then we don't have a community blog

@Jefromi I don't mind having regular contributors, as long as there are also nonregular ones

@rumtscho The site has 195 pages of users. 3 people is 0% of the site. 10 people is 0% of the site.

I am afraid of a situation where there is not enough material from the community to publish

Well, it's never going to be the whole site, and I'd say three people with different cooking styles contributing different kind of posts is not that bad.

and the person with the highest emotional investment in the blog starts filling the gap every time there is a publishing date but no post from somebody else

And this starts to happen every second to third publishing date.

Plan for more, obviously, but don't fret too much if it goes that way for a couple months.

@rumtscho see, that'd be a problem

if we wind up with a high percentage from a person or two, because they love to write and burry us in posts, that's fine

Besides, seriously, there's nothing you can do about it right now. We're giving it a shot, everyone knows about it. Keep encouraging people to contribute like we've done so far, and see how it goes.

if we wind up with the same, but because everyone else has bailed, that's not

@Jefromi anyway, this came up, because I'm writing up a question on meta to claim the post you're actively working on

Claim the post...

@derobert if one person burries us in posts, but the others keep submitting too, I would try to balance the publishing

By giving posts by other contributors higher preference even when they were submitted later

Or by doing more frequent posts than planned

@rumtscho Sure. But ultimately, you wind up with a higher percentage of posts from A, because A is writing more posts

@derobert I didn't know I was actively working on something!

I only just got home from work!

@derobert Yes, but this would have to be monitored. We can then look at the situation, and decide why we ended up with a big percentage by A, and whether we want to react.

@Jefromi YES. You're working on something. For example, you could be working on the blog post on how to shirk your blog post.

But if we aren't keeping an eye open for signs of possible disbalance, we might not notice it early enough to investigate it.

Uff. 8 new tag wiki edits, and all of them define the word before noting how to use the tag.

Really, I start thinking that the label "tag wiki" was a really bad choice

When somebody says "wiki", people automatically think of Wikipedia

And they just naturally start writing definitions.

"Mushrooms are a fungus with a meaty or "umami" flavor. They are often white or brown, and vary greatly in size. Use this tag for questions about selecting, identifying, storing, preparing, replacing or cooking with mushrooms as a star ingredient. Questions about dishes which include mushrooms, but are not focused on mushrooms, should not use this tag."

Now suppose you are writing a question and don't know whether mushrooms are the correct tag

@rumtscho Sure. We should notice it pretty quickly, actually. And since we'll be tracking who's working on what, we'll see it before post buildup

Do you think there would be anybody in this situation for whom the first two sentences are any help?

The first sentence, maybe possibly. Second sentence, no.

For what it's worth, I think a spreadsheet might be better suited for the long term, because it'll let us keep things organized the way we want. A bunch of answers can get a little unwieldy.

@derobert The first sentence describes typical mushroom qualities.

@Jefromi Google SS has other problems, like needing completely different credentials

I can't imagine somebody not knowing if their question deserves the tag "mushroom", reading that mushrooms have umami taste, and then adding the tag.

Sure, I know that. I just think it's worth it.

I know you can sort by "active" but... if you wanted to do things like, say, have a planned date for the posts for regular contributors

keep track of the schedule, make sure it looks like there'll be enough, and so on.

Doesn't blog software have some kind of post planning tools?

@Jefromi well, at first, I was just going to use one community wiki answer to do it, but, shrug.

@derobert just mentioned some kind of publishing queue

Tack on a column for post type, easily see if everything upcoming is the same kind of post, etc

ah, okay, fair.