Monday, August 20, 2007

Hands up, please..

Regarding the last post on the OCB about the new amendments to the original blog rules, I have gone and revised each of your comments on the issue and found myself to be in frustration to see what it is that needs to be done next.

Therefore, I ask that everyone (including previous members of the blog) to join in by raising their hands to include suggestions on how the Oman Community Blog should be moderated in terms of rules & regulations and also the posts, the language, and topics assigned to the contributers of the blog.

This is your chance to be as honest as you want - but at the same time maintaining decency of language used - for you to voice your true opinion of how you think that the blog should be managed.

Awaiting your comments..

15 comments:

Modee said...

you get three warnings i think thats fair
but there should be occasions where ppl are unable to blog for different reasons i.e. sickness, exams,travelled etc
but other than that its quite fair

Abdullah Al-Bahrani said...

No warning needed for me. I will have to withdraw from OCB. I understand your position, and respect your goal for the blog. However, given my current schedule, I know I will not meet the requirments.
I will be reading and commenting when possible. Thanks for the opportunity.

Twister said...

I do try and post as frequently as possible, but as the semester progresses the commitments increase considerably...I'll still try and keep posting, and I'll let you know if circumstances change over the coming weeks...

Blue Chi said...

I think that you guys should start using the categories features for posts, I think that the admin should set the basic main categories, for example, (culture, shopping, news, politics, holidays, humour, blog announcements) and each post should fall under at least one of these. That should encourage the author to have a more focused post and it can help develop some sort of system for posting.

Arabian Princess said...

I am not a member here, but can I give my views?? I think you are nice enough to accept them :p

ok, I think a limit is good to insure that the blog is active ..however, 2 posts a week is too much! even us the readers would find it hard to follow (imagine 10 contributers means 20 posts a week!!)
I think 2 posts a month is good enough .. and give the member 3 months notice and then remove them from the blog. If the member cant for any reason post during that period, he could inform the admin and they could put him in temp suspension until his back.

I think you should allow both arabic and english contributers to post .. after all its all about Oman!!

I agree with Bluchi, its good to catogrise the topics, it would make it easier for the people to refer to the posts later.

this is what I have now .. if I thought of something else, I would let you guys know. I think this is a great thing you started, it needs organizing.

Sleepless In Muscat said...

These are all very valid points. But I am waiting to hear from the other contributers of the blog so that I may reply in general to everyone.

Please bring in more suggestions if you feel like it. Speak from your heart.

muscati said...

Why must there be a rule on how often people post here? Let them post whenever they have something they want to post about. I was a member here a month before I posted anything. I just didn't have anything to say. That's why say if you want there to be a quota then this blog isn't for me. I don't want to be bound by having to post even when I have nothing useful to say. Quality is more important than quantity.

Arabian Princess said...

Muscati, but whats the use of having a blog if no one posts?
I mean look at the gulf book club .. I tried posting for a while, but I was the only one .. and now its dead!! maybe if we had something like this it would be dead!!

I understand your concern .. but to keep it active, we need something to keep it going ..
maybe there is another idea beside the quota, but something have to be there to encourage people to post!

Twister said...

i agree with arabian princess.

weirdgoat said...

Regarding the Arabic posts, there are some members on the blog who are more than capable of translating a post. For all Arabic posts wouldn't that be the perfect solution? Or at least a short summery of the post in English.

muscati said...

Sleepless, you yourself.. you post more on your blog than here. I mean do you ever post here at all other than admin stuff? What makes you decide to post there rather than here?

By the way, it's not like this blog is dying or anything. It has a healthy number of posts. Just let anyone who wants to post here post. Assign a couple of moderators/admins to make sure things don't go out of line, and all will go well.

AP - Comparison to Gulf Book Blog is not fair because that blog has a lot less members, and reading is a time consuming hobby. No one can post daily about reading. The theme here is much more general. And the number of bloggers who can post here is much much bigger.

Sleepless In Muscat said...

Muscati:

if you look back into the history of the posts, you would have taken back what you just said about me just posting only admin stuff.

my aim here is to keep this blog active and as up-to-date with the developments in Oman thus came the rules that i posted.

as i said, you guys can discuss this between yourselves on this post and once you meet a general consensus, inform me and i will look into it.

Arabian Princess:

you are more than welcome to join this blog if you wish to. just send me your email address so that I may send you your invitation.

Thanks.

Arabian Princess said...

Thanks SIM, I dont think I can join now .. I am barly fighting to keep my own blog updated. I will one day, just not now.

Anonymous said...

Sleepless,

I think establishing a mandatory minimum number of posts is a really bad idea. It's not like we're getting paid to contribute, this is strictly voluntary, and should be kept as such.

As Muscati said, it's about quality, and not quantity. Some of the most talented bloggers you have contributing would likely ask to be removed. I would.

I compulsively visit a number of blogs, many of which are updated weekly, at most. What keeps me coming back is the quality of the writing.

There are a lot of blogs out there that are updated twice a day, but the quality is not so good... I went shopping, I saw this weird guy, here is some bad poetry, here are some lyrics from a song I like, here is a picture of my car... etc. It's thier blog, and they can put whatever they want on it, but it's not interesting to me.

THanks for your time :)

secretdubai said...

UAE infiltrator chipping in: obviously you should run things as you want to so this is just my ideas thrown out there, but for a lot of people who write their own blogs, contributing heavily to another blog can be a challenge/impossible.

One of the things that put me off Metroblogging (though I may still be an author there) was the fact that you were kind of expected to move your own blog there, they discouraged cross posting. With my own blog and UAE comm, it was just too much commitment.

Perhaps you could reach a compromise where busier people could cross-post entries from their own blogs if they were unable to write new ones all the time?

Or, if you are trying to fulfil a kind of community magazine role and really need content, maybe have a duty rota where a particular blogger makes sure to cover important news on Oman Comm every week?

It's weird because when I started UAE Comm, it was more to act as a kind of support and networking centre for UAE bloggers, to help promote their blogs. But it has taken on a real life of its own, and I think it now acts as a very useful online local gazette and discussion forum. So sites do evolve over time.

Your already looks nicer than ours, I love the green.