Here is a suggestion:
Enable each user to put his or her best foot forward by featuring their own selected writings.
I often want to check out someone's writing, but going to their most recent content is a real hit or miss proposition. Maybe their latest post is their best work, but odds are there's a gem buried somewhere deep among their many submissions.
Let's take me for example. Not all 114 of my posts are of equal value, but if I had the option, I would feature "Goodenough Road", "Fresh Corn Salad", "Ronnie's First Memory", and "With Whom They Please".
I mean, heaven forbid someone assesses me using "Explain the Threes, Please" or "10 Stocks We Hold and Why" or "Thank you".
What would be great is this: Someone clicks on your name or your icon, and the first page they are taken to would include prominently-displayed "Featured Articles", selected by the author, just as a Group Owner selects features on a Group home page.
That would be really slick.
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Comments: 20
This is a good idea, and I am glad that you published your suggestion. However, I would encourage you to not publish your article to as many groups as you have. I subscribe to many of these groups, and due to your article submission, I have now received many redundant emails.... and my inbox is difficult enough as it is to get through! ha ha ha
I would recommend publishing future suggestions to the 'Building a Better Gather" group, as that is one of the purposes for this group. Thanks!
I don't know if this is relevant, but you can turn off email notifications from any particular group. Of course you may care about the group enough that you want a notification whenever something is published to it. In that case, by all means leave that email notification on. Sorry again for the inconvenience.
For my commentary, go to:
Shava's NSHO.
For my wit/writerly bits go here.
For my cooking stuff, go here.
None has *everything* I've written in that category, but I can send someone I know is interested in just my cooking stuff and they'll see *just* the cooking stuff without the political scree.
For someone who writes rants, poetry, and recipes, this is a nice way to use gather groups to create my own features in categories of my writing, and I use it as reference pages for folks I file writing query letters with too.
It's not *quite* what you want, but you might be able to, as I did, use it as a work around.
Aileen, I selectively repost material that didn't originally get read. I've even reposted a couple pieces that had only one or two comments. They subsequestly got more like 20 comments, overwhelmingly positive. What we posted months ago didn't get read because there was hardly anyone to read it. Re-post! Re-post!
If anyone objects to reposting, I'd like to hear that. I don't know why anyone would care, but there's a tiny nagging doubt in the back of my mind . . .
I like your idea about "...Someone clicks on your name or your icon, and the first page they are taken to would include prominently-displayed "Featured Articles", selected by the author,.." I agree with you as it is your page anyway, right? So I think you should be able to display your 'Featured Articles' but can it be done? Yep, that would be really slick:-)
Irene, Jake, thanks for the support. I am encouraged and am now ready to run for office : )
I do think a person may not be the best judge of what they consider their 'best' work; or, maybe people simply like what they like. I've written pieces that got a huge number of comments that i never thought would; this happens frequently, in fact. Some of my stories I've spent a lot of work on do not always get a huge number of comments, in my experience. Still, I would appreciate a 'featured ariticles' page for each Gatherer, done by each Gatherer.
I republish some of my better works because they were written two or three months ago, when there were half the number of members.
Obviously, many people weren't here to read them. No one has minded, as far as I know. I don't think anyone should object to reposting.
In fact, I would like people who were here in January and February to repub some of the earlier work so I can read it again, or for the first time.
I don't think people should send many emails soliciting reads. Not to the whole email list. Perhaps a few people. But no one person should do it often.
I think people are very busy and try to get around to stories to read, but it takes some time. With 20,000 members on Gather, each author has a lot of potential readers to try to interest.
Christopher C. - I've been spending twenty hours a week or more on Gather for the past month, and I think I've interacted with maybe three dozen members. I'm with you wondering where 20,000 members are. This must be some labyrinth.
Kathryn, I agree about our own judgments about our work, I mean who would have thought "Wallace Lost His Frog" would have gotten even a single comment. Yes, I'm shamelessly weaving plugs for my posts into this conversation, but it's mostly because I can call a dog a dog without using someone else's material for examples.
Christopher and Bill, I like to make the distinction between members (anyone who's signed up), audience (anyone who even visits Gather), and core users (us). It feels like there are about 250 core users, but that's just a gut feeling of mine.
Bill, your first comment makes me think of another suggestion I'll probably make into a post. I'd like something like "Google Advanced Search", where I can find out what _______ posted about _________ before such and such a date.
Laurie, for the reason you and others gave, I'd like the "sort" ablility mentioned just above.