Folks, please, before you put up a user post that just notes a story in today’s papers, read the front page and the user posts that came before you. I just deleted two user posts reporting that the Brookline Tab endorsed Andrea Silbert for LG because I had posted exactly the same thing on the front page at least half an hour before either of the user posts went up.
There’s lots of great stuff in the user posts, and we encourage everyone to read them, and to contribute. But duplicating material already on the front page or in another user post just clutters up the site, and forces other more substantive user posts further down the list.
As we approach the primary, traffic is surging (averaging around 3,000 uniques a day), which is terrific. But that means there’s lots of new content going up all the time. Be sure to look it over before you post.
Thanks!
Front page posts tend to “disappear” down as front page posts get bumped down (and as you guys “promote” user posts in the AM, as often happens).
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Perhaps there’s a way to create a “table of contents” of “front page” posts, or the last 15 or something? I know that’s the last thing you need to do in this busy time, and there’s already a lot of boxes, etc… on the front page, but just a thought.
I think I forgot to hit refresh before I looked to see if it was already posted. I just did not see it.
Sorry, that mantra was so overused in the tech company world in the 90s!
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It applies, though. Posting a user post just to report a news story is, I think, inherently redundant. We know that if we don’t do it, someone else will – if all the users neglect to, David or Charley or Bob will. And since it’s a news story, people are gonna see it in some other source anyway.
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When I post about something new in the news that I think is interesting to Blue Mass Group readers, I try to take time to add something that makes my post valuable in its own right, not just as a way to notify people of the event they probably just read about on boston.com or cnn.com. A personal story related to it; some analysis of the facts; ruminations on its meaning and impact; links to a few particularly good articles about it; historical background … add a few of these to your post, and then it’s a good post regardless of whether you’re the first one on BMG with the report or not.