Should Featured Posts Continue?

Written by Adam Audette
December 13, 2006

What do you want to see here?

When I originally planned this site, it was to be an archive and knowledge base for the LED Digest and Adventive lists. That project is slowly evolving, and we now have a few topics that show one of the goals of the site. The featured post category was meant to highlight some interesting posts and/or discussions on a weekly basis, but I'm not sure if this fits with the format or not. It's got pluses and minuses, I guess, which in my mind are as follows...

What I like about the Featured Posts

enables commenting and looks like a blog.
pulls visitors from the home page to deeper content
has the RSS feed
puts fresh content from the LED on the Web that doesn't look like email
attracts link citations

What I Dislike about the Featured Posts

looks stagnant unless it's updated every day
misleading - it belies the amount of discussions happening on-list
sometimes difficult to find a suitable post

I'd like to hear some feedback - either comment here or email me. What should we do with the Featured Posts? Kill it, change it, keep it, or other? Eventually my master plan is to convert discussions to topical threads in real-time. That way, what's being discussed on the list can be displayed on the Web - by thread - rather than just in the email archives. These topics can then be shown on the front page. This would create a site that truly reflects the LED Digest, which has very high activity for an email discussion list yet is practically invisible online.

Thanks for your feedback,
Adam

Comments (7) add comment

Sintari said:

Sounds good to me. I think your summary is pretty spot on. I know having threaded topics will take a lot of work though. Maybe you could think about opening up the task to the community? Other ideas - create a forum instead. That would kill the email list though (probably). So maybe it's not such a good idea. Anyways.

December 13, 2006

Nathan Holley said:

Please don't over work yourself on this. The email list is amazing for what it is. There's nothing else like it - you've got a niche so focus on that. The site here is just a bonus for me.

That said, if you could get these topic pages up they'll probably index really well. Your domain is trusted and w/ Google's recent bias towards authority sites you're probably getting okay rankings for some competitive terms. I'd like to help if you need anything SEO-related. I won't charge you for some basic consultations - you've got me email so let me know.

Nathan

December 13, 2006 | url

Michael Linehan said:

Yup. I agree with Nathan. It's a bit like something I've said before,
"Please don't over work yourself on this. The email list is amazing for what it is. There's nothing else like it - you've got a niche so focus on that. The site here is just a bonus for me."

There seems to be a pretty healthy list. You don't need to be like some others. And yes - for me the site is a neat COMPLEMENT to the emailed LED. I don't like the idea of a forum. And I don't like the idea of too much change. If it ain't broke - right? And LED shows no sign (out here, anyway, of being broke.

Michael L.

December 14, 2006 | url

Tom Anson said:

I'd have to agree with Sintari, Nathan and Michael. This list is priceless, and anything (like a blog or forum) that could replace it would be VERY unwelcome to me.

Forums and blogs get to where there are so many things going on at once, I can't find anything. And the format of LED Digest is always making me aware of things I'd never thought of, and would never look for -- much less FIND -- on a blog or forum format.

So to me, the key question here is for Adam: How much can you realistically handle day-to-day? What can you take on without diminishing the quality of LED Digest? How much reliable assistance can you get to enable everything to be accomplished?

Maybe one idea would be to do the daily LED Digest, pretty much as is, but have a weekly "feature" thread. Would that work?

Tom Anson

December 14, 2006 | url

Joel Lesser said:

"featured posts" is a great value add. I see no reason to remove it. My only suggestion would be to be very selective as to what you publish as a featured post. Save that for posts that are the most thought provoking. Keep up the great work Adam and thanks again for such a great resource.

December 14, 2006 | url

Adam said:

Thanks for the feedback. There's definitely a "slippery slope" to this. I think the crux issue is that featured posts are deceptive for people new to the LED. They get to the home page, they check out the "latest issues" links but the posts in blog-style are what grab attention. So if they don't subscribe or check out the latest LED issue they won't really know where all the discussions are taking place.

I guess I'm trying to evolve without disrupting / changing the LED. I like it the way it is too and agree it's got a good niche. But anything I can do to add value and make it better - I'm all for.

Joel - you're right about being selective. I guess I've been more concerned with updating it regularly - another reason it can be deceptive is if the most recent featured post is from 2 weeks prior. Makes it look old even while the list is cranking away.

One idea would be to create html versions of the LED and put those on the front page in "read more" summary form. Maybe just the table of contents or something?

December 14, 2006

Adam said:

Good points, Tom - but I'm not sure about the featured posts in the LED itself. That may be a bit contrived because the list "features" posts pretty well already - either by placement or the size of the issue.

As for the work load, yeah that's an issue :-) I'm already spending several hours per day doing this stuff. It's gotten a bit obsessive, I guess, after about 10 years at it. One thing's for sure - I never could have envisioned how it would end up. I still don't have much of a clue, but keep plugging along.

Thanks again for the input!

December 15, 2006

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