Moving Ahead
Hey Gang. I don’t know how many are reading this regularly, but I would appreciate as much feedback as possible.
As many of you know, I have been dealing with personal/family issues over the past few months and have been out of service. As I have done this, Dean has taken a lot of the responsibilities for the HBCE, and some has simply fallen by the wayside. While my problems are not finished, things have gotten substantially better. I do not have time to take up the reins of this and do it all (like I did at the start). On the contrary, I would like to have a real community effort on this.
We have done a lot of work on the forum in the past, but as Dean pointed out, it is not a real efficient process and upkeep of the forum is high.
So here are the tasks that we need help on.
- Review of websites and approval/rejection of obvious ones.
- Review of questionable websites by a group and approval and rejection by a reasonable process
- Giving the HTML code out for the sites that are approved and posting the links on the HBCE website.
- Upkeep of the HBCE gallery. This should be a group effort that will require posts on the blog. It should not be too bad, but I would like enough hands on deck to do 1-2 per week in ideal circumstances.
I really believe in the HBCE as do a lot of you. I am sorry for my absence, but have been very thankful at the great support. Please let me know what you all think on this.
Rob
My thoughts are these:
1) It’s good to hear from you
2) I believe in the concept of the HBCE
3) I prefer to bask it its reflected glory than to expend effort in furthering it
4) I’m a bad person
All Hail the Grand Poohbah!!!
I agree with Sid,
1) It’s good to hear from you
2) I believe in the concept of the HBCE
3) I also have an aversion to expending unnecessary effort
4) Sid is a bad person
I’m still leaning towards an opt-in email system (perhaps the newsletter mailing list?) of voting on new members.
1) New applications automatically forwarded to voting members
2) Voting members can then choose to review new blog or not.
3) Vote by replying to separate email address with your opinion (Yes/No/I don’t give a rip)
The above is just a rough idea. It still needs feedback and ideas … and I’m sure … several bugs worked out of it. But it should be fairly effortless.
Dean
I think we should look at “automating” as much as possible. The Medblogger list on the website could be done with a moderated Blogroll. Then we can post a link list on all of our sites and increase our traffic. An email list for review of submitted blogs would work well and would be self reminding. The gallery could be self posted with an email sent copy to moderators, again self activating. To build some interest, instead of an “interview” format, it could be a “Best of Blog” cross-post. This would minimize the effort and attention of moderators and contributors.
I like Dave’s suggestions, but don’t have a clue about how to actually do it. Not tech savvy enough.
yea i second dave’s suggestion. its fantastic. HBCE was and is a fantastic initiative and anyway i could help, just drop me a mail. i’d be glad to.
I agree with Dean, 1,2,3,4 (although I don’t actually know Sid…), and his suggestions 1,2,3 sound good also. I also think Dave’s suggestions sound excellent. Automation is my middle name; although I have no idea how to implement Dave’s suggestions OR Dean’s, I could most likely learn to use such a system pretty quickly. I will donate my time however it’s needed.
I think doing approvals via e-mail as has been suggested would be a good idea, and I like the blogrolling idea. I think there is a site you can go to (could it be blogrolling.com??) that can help set up blogrolls.
A little off-topic. My blog was approved for Patient Code (in Nov I think?) and I have not been able to access the Patient forum. Is there a reason for restricted access? Curious.
Hi Lisa,
The forum was only used for voting purposes. It was very time consuming, complicated and confusing and that’s why we’re discussing other options in this thread. So the answer to your question is yes, but don’t worry, there’s nothing there to see right now.
*****
I like Dave’s idea of a “community blogroll” that we could feature on our sites. I’m going to look into a script that we could use to accomplish that. The “Blogrolling” one referred to by Mauigirl is one possibility, but I don’t think we would be able to moderate it. I think we could do it with an RSS feed, however.
I’m on the list, but cannot access the forums — it wants an ID and password and I don’t have one.
Hi Sandy,
You have to register separately for the forum. I would hold off on that until we decide what we’re going to do with it. (See my post right above yours.)
http://www.ringsurf.com/
Has anyone every done anything with “ring” — I think it is a semi-automated community building tool?
The only down side is that the site looks like crap with all of the ads. But the automated elements do seem nice.
I like the blogroll idea. If the list is put on all of our blogs, we will all get more traffic and exposure. I tried doing it with other medical student bloggers but it seems there wasn’t a lot of interest in the idea.
Hey Rob,
I just stumbled upon your site and like the idea behind it. If you need any help I am down. When I get a chance I need to add your link and/or widget to my site.
All the best.
–
Bo
http://studentpt.blogspot.com/
Dave,
what is a blog roll? and how it will help it here?