The Town Square

If so, where can I find it?

If not, should we as a group have a town meeting and write one for BN?

On the one hand we talk about getting more readers [purely a business decision] and on the other we ream each other on the front page.  In my experience the two do not go hand-in-hand. 

Also, if one is truly offended or challenged by a blog, there is no need for personal attack.  All one need do is write a blog with the counter view.  Maybe I have missed it, and it is very possible I have, but I have never heard Dan Rather attacking a fellow journalist on the air nor have I read printed journalists taking their precious space to attack someone who holds a viewpoint contra their own.  Instead, they spend time working to convince others they have the straight scoop. 

If this is truly the first real free press, it might serve us to evaluate and adopt some rules of professional deportment.

I could take this issue onto the front page, but believe issues such as this should be resolved in this private setting without artificially inflating the position of  a blog's poopularity, somthing I have benefitted from in the past, or engaging in endless chat about possibly having maybe hurt someone's feelings inadvertently for days on end. 

M

I think this is evolving  nicely, a lot of self-questioning and self-policing going on, alterations in fomat to fit the changing nature of the bloggs and their categories. But I wonder why bloggers ...well, BLOG.

Money or the hopes of it: certainly a factor. But as more bloggers jump aboard (increasing the capital influx), then the more writers start posting, some of whom may be very prolific (diluting most people's chance to earn anything). Suggestive of a jackpot system every quarter or something? And I think that the price of coffee for two ast Denny's is way under what then service needs to encourage foks and to keep the staff motivated. 

Peer recognition: the longer we interact, the greater this will be, as long as we play nice and the ringmasters keep us in line.But how does one gauge peer interest? Bloggs reach high rankings with NO comments, and NO income to speak of, suggestive of a tabulational fluke. Maybe a counter. And charge those of us (me!me!)with diseased egos a minimal fee for a counter.

Market exposure: hmmmmmm. What are the chances a porfessional scouting for talent who would pay better than BN signing in? Could this be enhanced? Y'all copyrighting your material so it doesn't pop up on Letterman or the PAX channel?

A chance just to get it out and receive  feedback, or just to share it:  there, dear bloggers, we need to do more in the way of comments, mutually supportive postings, emails.

SOLUTION SUGGESTIONS?

TIERED SERVICE: If people love "skins" and "faceplates" on their programs and cell phones, they'll love them on blogs. Have graduated fees for graduated goodies.

What say, all?

majroj

I know that I've left comments about this potential new feature before in other areas, but I wanted to put it here as well - partly to gain community feedback, partly to test out The Town Square, partly to lessen others' fears of posting here.

I like just about all the new innovations I'm seeing lately. I hope to have said farewell to all those single-post blogs permanently; I've noticed myself that there were a lot of people who were posting one blog after another without realizing that there was a key marked "add new post" at the top of each blog. I also like the feature about using unique-visitor hit counts to judge our popularity rankings as well; BN's policy on unique hits and how they affect popularity is far more generous than that of many other sites, in my experience.

The only feature I feel to be lacking is the Most Popular Reviewers feature. I can currently go onto each member's Member Profile to find out the rankings of their blogs, and how much money they've earned on BN, but there is no area on BN to determine how members stack up against each other. Who is the top money earner on BN, and how do I stack up against them? Where can I compare Member Profiles against each other to see which member consistently has the most popular blogs with the highest unique hit counts in a 24-hour period? Only a public ranking system in which this information is included in a chart for member consumption could answer that question for me.

Thanks for allowing me to "vent."

Want to discuss blogs you'd like to read, suggest features you want, or just hang out? Here's the place!