Yeah, I just noticed this Jason, when I posted my last entry into Religion and Faith.  This is Way Cool and it's about time.  Thanks.

I'll check this out tonight.  Philosophically, I'm opposed to cubbyholes and would prefer strong seach capabilities, but that's the kind of discussion that requires a long table, a whiteboard and soft things to throw at each other.  That said, the tags could actually be helpful to either structure.

Thanks for the continued work.

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for helping us test out these new features.

We made some last-minute changes, and as a result, I communicated some incorrect information to Jason about how Interest Groups and blog categorization are set up.   Here's the latest :

Categorizing Your Blog

If you go into your blog settings, at the bottom you will now see a section for blog topics.  You can choose up to three topics for your blog.  Your posts will automatically appear in the Interest Groups associated with these topics.    In the future, we plan to prompt everyone to choose at least one category for a blog.

Categorizing Individual Posts

You can choose a category for each post at the time you create it (or you can go back and add a category for previous posts).  When you do this, you will "override" the categories you selected for your blog.  The post will only appear in the single category you choose at this time.

I have a few questions and concerns, and I would appreciate your feedback.

Do you like the idea of being able to choose more than one category for your blog?

Is it a good idea to automatically place your posts into the Interest Group pages, based on the categories you choose for your overall blog?  Will these result in miscategorized content, or are your blogs truly focused on the categories you chose?

As an alternative, what about requiring you to choose a category each time you make a blog post?  This would probably result in more accurate categorization, but it is an extra step in the process.

Thanks again!

Mary Lou

Mary Lou, this looks great, I edited an earlier post and categorized it in politics, and it showed up in the politic group, I posted a comment in the politics discussion area, and that's kinda cool, it will be interesting to see how much converstations take place in the discussion areas. 

It nice that we can categorize our blog, and override the choice(s) for individual posts .

Congradulations to all involved.

Thanks for the feedback!  We're hoping that the discussions area really takes off once we add the ability to start multiple threads. 

I would prefer stronger search capabilities and  "quote" functions plus some built in emoticons for making  "just kidding" posts, etc. more readily evident.

I have belonged to blogging communities that pigeonhole posts by categories and I find they are somewhat restrictive and get muddled as to original topics/categories anyway.

One that is kinda nice, though, is a  "Dante's Inferno" where the  "offensive" type posts (in the eye of the beholder-Mods I guess) can be relegated to for a little looser rules (insults, etc.) can apply without fear of being banned outright (within reason of course).

This way, when someone enters Dante's they know what they are in for (again within reason) and can enter at their own risk (not for the timid or easily offended).

Strong search functions where you can view all your posts readily or those of other posters would be a big help though........

p.s. the quote function would allow you to quote instead of just reply and the person you are quoting would show up automatically as identified as his/her quote that you are responding to. It can still be editied for the specific content you are adressing.

I think the problem with multiple classifications is that some people will choose to add all the categorizations to a blog post.  On the other hand, I write a lot about technology and the environment and classifying as one or the other would be difficult.  A max of two or three categories per post would probably be enough for most people though.

This also depends of course on how the categories are selected in the eventual blog searches.  If people have 14 boxes and can select as many as they want to have displayed, then that's probably less of a big deal than if each blog category ends up in its own walled garden.

At the root, here's my main point: The blog as a whole has less than 50 regular posters, less than 300 regular readers.  There are about 6 existant wholly walled-garden sites including Northwest, Southwest, Bakotopia, etc.  Mas makes sense as a separate site, but it looks like all the properties are maxing out at a certain number of users which points to useability issues in my mind.  The solution on your side seems to be at this point breaking the community into smaller and smaller chunks that can all max out the existing framework rather than trying to figure out how to raise the ceiling on the number of people that can coexist under a single umbrella.  Now, from a cost standpoint I understand that urge since replicating the same rebranded site 10 times or 30 times has a low marginal cost.  What is missing from the equation is that as a site grows, it creates its own gravity.  Everyone posts there because everyone posts there.

I'm wondering if rather than trying to widget your way out of the problem, we should be looking at solutions that simply and make sorting and selecting from a bigger pool easier.

Chico, I worked at a company for creative types that had it's own walled garden for porn, profanity, etc.  There was an unofficial "Porn Friday" and "Gun Thursday"(which was really just naked women with guns).  They couldn't get people to stop posting the stuff so they just created a special list and during orientation they said "don't sign up for this list".  The company has since gone out of business but the list was recreated on Yahoo and is still alive years later.

There is always a certain attraction in the blogster genus species to the  "darkside"

One can merely outlaw it, forcing it underground, or wall it off like timec wants to do with 290's.................

As is the case with all things in ife, the key is to have rules and have them fully understood by the blogeratti........

I would envisage, given the nature of this board and TBC's TOS in general, it would be altogether  "tame" compared to most  "inferno's" ...............

Nothing wrong with that.

Tom, thanks for your thoughts.  We don't want walled gardens, either, and in fact part of Phase 2 for Interest Groups will be to make content on the same topic available on all of our local sites. 

It's a little complicated to explain, but I think it will be more understandable once it's up and running.  Here's a quick description.

Each of our local sites will be able to define its own topics for Interest Groups.  Some topics will be unique to the individual site (for example, we have a new site called RaisingBakersfield.com that is for parents of young children and it probably won't have a lot of political news on it.)  But it may have a topic about Religion, and so may other sites.

When there is a topic that appears on more than one site, the Interest Group will have a toggle that lets you view content only from the site you're on, or lets you see content on this topic from all local sites.  The default will be set to content from your "home site."  If you choose to view content from all local sites, the page will reload and you'll see all the matching blog posts, forums, etc.   Each content item will identify its sourcet,as in, "This blog post is from MaryLou on NorthwestVoice.com" 

You can click through to see the full post, or not, depending on your interest.  If you do click through, you'll go to the originating site.

The idea is to bring people together who have shared interests, regardless of the local site they use.   We're excited about this idea because we feel it will allow us to break down the walled garden, as you describe it, and get that cross-fertilization going! (I'll stop with the garden analogies now...)

I do appreciate your observations and insights.  Please keep them coming!

Mary Lou

Mary Lou,  I missed your response but thanks.  I think that's a great direction and really like it.  I've poked around on some of the other sites and now I get where you're headed.  Very exciting.  I look forward to it.