I guess the title says it all.
It's a tricky wicket no matter which way you pick it. I think Dedos has been doing a tremendous job of keeping on top of things now that Xerexes has passed the news torch to him, but I can see that we will probably need to come up with some tighter definitions of what is news and what is blog-worthy.
As Ghastly pointed out, the blog was meant to solve the problem. The good news is that people are reading the blog!
It seems then like the Blog was to be the answer to the previous problem Comixpedia had where it began to look like the public bulletin board at the supermarket where everyone posted there "My comic turns 1 year old this week" and other generally uninteresting stuff. Unfortunately it's sucking some of the good articles into it too.
It may be that in the case of some items, like Jamie's announcement, that it got blogged and could have been moved over afterwards.
I think that there is something to be said for making the blog updates more visible on the front page, but hopefully that can be resolved in version 3.0. Actually, if anyone here is interested in participating in a focus group for a V. 3.0 why not shoot me an email: bill at comixpedia dot com. I know that there are some great ideas kicking around out there, and it would be helpful for us to have some regular readers involved.
Some of the blog news seems like Offical News to me, such as Jamie's announcement about CotC.
The news is actual NEWS relevant to the Webcomic community, whereas the blog is interesting stuff that may be only tangential to webcomics. We're also blogging press releases and announcements and all those things that aren't really news per se.
Like different sections of the newspaper.
Kelly J. Cooper
Comixpedia Features Editor
[quote:a08e17e202="Ghastly"]I thought blogs were only supposed to be used for whining about how that girl who sits beside you in math class is a bitch and "why, oh why is my world a bleak and loveless pit of lonely dispare. Woe falls upon my heart of darkness and lo the moon is red as blood."
Sincerely,
Blood Raven Dark Moon Delite
aka
Fred
I noticed a few times what was in the blog was more interesting then what was in the news at the time... maybe a more obvious link to the blog, or more advertising for it would be nice.. I didn't even know there was a blog here until maybe a month ago.
-24
I thought blogs were only supposed to be used for whining about how that girl who sits beside you in math class is a bitch and "why, oh why is my world a bleak and loveless pit of lonely dispare. Woe falls upon my heart of darkness and lo the moon is red as blood."
Well, as far as I understand it the news section is pretty dependent on people to actually submit news stories to it. The blog on the other hand consists of a few people (mostly Xerexes actually, although I intent to be more active now that I have my computer back after 5 weeks of repairs) who posts interesting things they find here and there. Personally I'm not in favour of posting the same news in both sections, since that may split any subsequent discussion into two different places of comments.
Perhaps it would be wise to have a discussion aimed at the next comixpedia redesign of how the news and blog should be organized. Should they be merged into one thing or should they be more separated as to what content goes where?
I guess the title says it all.
I still think the blog should be a mix of news and notes while the section we know as "news" now should be dedicated to columns.
But it seems that's just me.
-Willie G
[quote:8f22987ed6="Ghastly"]It seems then like the Blog was to be the answer to the previous problem Comixpedia had where it began to look like the public bulletin board at the supermarket where everyone posted there "My comic turns 1 year old this week" and other generally uninteresting stuff.
I was going to make a celebratory post to the Comixpedia forum when I'd done my hundredth daily. Then I began to wonder whether anyone besides me would find that significant in today's saturated webcomic market, so I asked about that instead. Good thinking on my part.
I'm kinda surprised on who the Comixpedia blog picked up on Webcomic Finds. It's been pretty low-profile so far.
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Actually I was in Big Sky Country (Montana). The Big Easy may be underwater at this point!
The blog is probably going to be moved back onto the Postnuke system that drives much of the Comixpedia site after the next major overhaul (which Dunk has mentioned in this thread). Right now it's on WordPress which is dandy but completely disconnected from Postnuke. So the short answer is maybe but not until Jan at the earliest.
As for the news/blog split it's just an ongoing process. I used to do all the news and in response to feedback and brainstorming split out a blog back in Jan of this year in order to put all of the non-hard news stuff on the blog. Later Dedos took over news. My sense is that the blog and the forums will always be faster in picking things up but there is no reason that newsworthy items on the blog or forum can't also be put on the front page as news if that makes sense.
Excellent idea. I will pass that on to Cowboy X when he returns from the Big Easy.
Incidently, would it be possible to program it so we know how many comments are made in the blog posts? It'll make it easier to keep track of conversations taking place there.
[quote:9ce0ca1ef1="dunk"] The good news is that people are reading the blog!
The bad news is, afterwards they die in seven days.