tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post111346827480662182..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Carnival Idea: Public NominationsRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113527642346800022005-04-14T21:14:00.000-04:002005-04-14T21:14:00.000-04:00Alex emailed me with an alternative way to impleme...<A HREF="http://www.inessentialism.org/" REL="nofollow">Alex</A> emailed me with an alternative way to implement the 'public nominations' idea (rather than through a comments thread):<BR/><BR/>[quote]<BR/>I've been giving this a bit of thought, actually. I am wondering, are you at all familiar with the del.icio.us system of shared bookmarks? If not, check out http://del.icio.us/ and take a look around. It might work, perhaps, to use a certain tag to denote posts that we come across that we think would be good for the next carnival, such as "philosophycarnival" or some such. Then, whomever is hosting the Carnival for a given issue can subscribe to the feed for that universal tag, and at least get an idea of what posts others have been considering worthwhile.<BR/><BR/>Not sure how familiar you are with RSS stuff, but this seems to be an efficient use of available technologies, and could work nicely for this situation. Check out my del.icio.us bookmarks, if you'd like an example: http://del.icio.us/athunley and note that you can specify which tags you get on the feed, so if you subscribe to the feed from the page: http://del.icio.us/athunley/philosophy you will receive all the pages that I marked with the take "philosophy." Likewise, if you go to: http://del.icio.us/tag/philosophy you will get a list of bookmarks from all users that have been tagged "philosophy." So, if we were to use a standard tag for nominations to the Carnival (such as, like I mentioned, "philosophycarnival") then anyone with a del.icio.us account could help out by accordingly tagging the good philosophy posts they come across.<BR/>[/quote]<BR/><BR/>P.S. Chris, I'm pretty sure your entry (and another late one too - maybe Clayton's) was left out unintentionally. The host said he hoped to correct that soon, but was a bit pressed for time.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113501370349927532005-04-14T13:56:00.000-04:002005-04-14T13:56:00.000-04:00I agree with Clark. I think the way things work no...I agree with Clark. I think the way things work now, with author and reader-nominated submissions is the best way to go. There's nothing wrong with authors submitting their own work (that's the way it tends to work outside of blogs, for instance), and if the post is truly uninteresting or unphilosophical, the host can always put it aside. <BR/><BR/>I do think it might be good to encourage more nominations from readers. There are probably a lot of posts out there that would make for excellent carnival entries, but which are never submitted because the authors either aren't aware of the carnival or don't think to submit it. <BR/><BR/>I don't know about the topic thing. While I think it's a good idea in general, the carnival is often good because of the broad range of topics, and it would be unfortunate to lose that, or diminish it. It might be better to start an entirely separate entity that serves as a sort of semimonthly or monthly blog symposium.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113497561998335682005-04-14T12:52:00.000-04:002005-04-14T12:52:00.000-04:00I agree that simply having a public thread isn't t...I agree that simply having a public thread isn't that good. I think the solution is just allow, in the submission form, people to both submit their own posts as well as other peoples posts.<BR/><BR/>One advantage of the carnival, as I see it, is that it allows blogs that only occasionally post on philosophy, to be read. There are quite a few out there that mainly blog about politics, cats or something else which I therefore don't read.<BR/><BR/>The other advantage to allowing non-author submissions is that there frankly are a lot of people who don't care that much about the carnival but who still write very interesting posts. Especially once again from blogs that might not be on people regular list of blogs they read.<BR/><BR/>I'd add that I think this has been <I>de facto</I> the case the last few carnivals where a lack of submissions meant the host and you nominate posts anyway. <BR/><BR/>With regards to the theme idea - I like it a lot, I just wonder if we have enough regular contributors yet to make it work. It would be bad if we come up with a theme and then only get 2 - 3 posts. Especially with the end of the school year fast approaching, I wonder if there will be a decrease in blog activity as people are outside having fun and away from academics.Clark Goblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03876620613578404474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113491077695805962005-04-14T11:04:00.000-04:002005-04-14T11:04:00.000-04:00I like the idea of a theme as well. Perhaps a wee...I like the idea of a theme as well. Perhaps a week before the carnival came out you could announce a theme, such as "Philosophy of Time" (which is all I've been blogging about lately, and presumably why my submission didn't make the last carnival) and everyone interested could write a post on their favorite topic in that area, broadly construed. This way each carnival would be a more cohesive unit. How cool would it be to have the opportunity to look back at all the past carnivals if they were collections of thoughts in one particular area of philosophy? <BR/><BR/>I dunno...since I'm still a relatively young blogger I might not have a grasp on what the public wants. But I thought I'd throw this out there anyhow.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09376086559299430967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113481842256926532005-04-14T08:30:00.000-04:002005-04-14T08:30:00.000-04:00A further thought: To avoid pre-empting the carniv...A further thought: To avoid pre-empting the carnival, perhaps nominations should only mention the Author + Post Title, i.e. no links. But this would be inconvenient for the carnival host who wants to include a listed nomination that wasn't officially submitted. A better idea might be to <I>mention</I> the link, i.e. write it out as text, but don't make it a <I>hyperlink</I>. That would deter the casual reader from following the links, thus preserving their novelty for the carnival. (Then again, I may be overreacting to this whole "pre-empting" thing.)<BR/><BR/>MP, I'm not sure how themes would work. Are bloggers supposed to change their entries to fit the theme? Or does the host just deal with what's given, and try to fit them together into some sort of coherent whole? It seems to me that the first option is unmotivated, and the second is very difficult (though a couple of past hosts have tried, with varying degrees of success). Perhaps you could describe in more detail how you see themes as working. (Some examples of possible themes might help here.)<BR/><BR/>As for the problem of limited participation, I agree that could be a concern, though I outlined some reasons for optimism in the main post above. Also, it wouldn't be limited to my regular readers. I would update the carnival homepage with links to the nomination thread, and also mention it in the carnival newsletter. So it could at least become widely <I>known</I>. The big question is whether people, having learnt of it, would choose to actively join in.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1113480855980155352005-04-14T08:14:00.000-04:002005-04-14T08:14:00.000-04:00Hi Richard,As always, good to talk to a fellow phi...Hi Richard,<BR/><BR/>As always, good to talk to a fellow philosopher blogger.<BR/><BR/>In short, I think theming is a good idea per se, and separately, I think that a reader-driven theme is a good thing if there is sufficient interest. The question is whether I count as a reader. I would expect your blog would be mostly read by other philosophers, possibly including the philosophically and religiously curious. Ultimately, being reader-led would be good if there were sufficient interest, but bad if you end up failing to service your true readership, viz. other philosopher bloggers.<BR/><BR/>Short version: Good idea, not sure if there's enough people willing to express an opinion to make it fly. I think you should theme the carnivals regardless, putting non-themed interesting posts after the themed posts, thus allowing the ful range of entries while catering to a "zeitgeist" for each carnival.<BR/><BR/>Cheers,<BR/>-MPAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11384742711203790401noreply@blogger.com