Improving Blog Sites

[Stonewall]

Most of this is opinion. I tend to think that one of the biggest problems that the Republicans have is that the party doesn't listen well. It should be embarassing that the party picked a candidate who was pushed out of the race by a third party candidate. It shows there is a serious disconnect between the party and the district in upstate NY. I can tell you that there is a disconnect between the party and where I live in GA. To the extent that there is a disconnect blog space is a great way to deal with it.

Blogs largely distribute information, sending selected material out to the user. The sites rarely use the feedback of the user. The site's normally give you an unstructured comments stream to discuss the article, but nothing happens there after. It is a serious mistake if there is a disconnect because the blog space is the key touch point with the user community that is completely wasted.

Any number of sites, including RTP, offers blogging features. I am largely here testing the features at this point, and see some pluses and some minuses. The ideas page is a good start. Email within the community is better than most blog sites. On the other hand, the problem with this site, and virtually every other one, is that there is too much data and too little interactivity.

These sites are designed to distribute information rather than exchange it. The changes serve three purposes. First, you want the site to be more productive, letting people find material of interest more quickly. This is important if the newcomer is going to join the community. Second, you want to give the user the impression that someone is listening. Third, you want to make the website more challenging, and entertaining.

Function 1. Add Polling Data so that bloggers can add a poll at the bottom of the blog to see what people in the community feel to specific questions.

Function 2. Add features which separate the data better. With 2000 articles on the database, no one can find anything. For example, suppress articles that I have marked as read. Suppress articles by author or subject. You want people to be able to find articles of interest. This is much more important for the newcomer. I should pretty much be able to define my sort, and have it appear in a window tab.

Function 3. Add a rating feature so that the reader knows what the community thinks of the author or of the commenter. The site should track the cumulative ratings weighted by rater. If someone who has used the site for 10 months, says that an author stinks, that isn’t offset by a single vote of someone who is new. These users aren’t of the same value to the community and their weightings should reflect it.

Function 4. Add a suppress feature to the ratings. If three people find something offensive or off-subject say spam ads for women’s underwear, the comment isn’t shown unless requested. This enables the community to moderate its own discussions.

Function 5. Attach pro- and con- articles to the ideas on the idea bank. This enables an organized debate to form on a subject. When you have a debate form in a free form comments area, the discussion gets sidetracked too easily.

Function 6. Ideas on the idea bank should be maintained. If an idea is left unchanged for 90 days, it is inactive. This doesn’t delete the idea, but simply moves it back to the authors draft state.

I welcome thoughts on these suggestions. As a side note, I am new to this community, and I am not convinced that it creates value to give someone with my level of familiarity within the community full publishing rights. Just my experience with other sites, that people who have no visible level of commitment required to publish put in exactly that level of commitment to their work.

[Stonewall]

I respect your view. I just can't call an unstructured comments section interactive. Your point about URLs reenforces the point that the design is meant to distribute data out.

I am most likely a visitor passing through. I stopped by because the name of the site suggests that this community wants to be part of the solution. It is hard to watch the last two elections, and not walk away with the feeling that the party is heading in the wrong direction.

I am amazed that the party put up a candidate that would have been beaten by a third party candidate in a 100-year Republican district. I just don't know how that happens. It is a breakdown of communications at the most basic level. How is it that the party simply did not hear the local feedback? Step 1 is that they didn't ask, but I sense that it goes further that they weren't listening when the locals said no.

[Steve Lee]

stonewall- "too little interactivity..." This is great Website, it has a simple method of adding active URL's (links within the Website and also to the W3 and photos can be easily placed on your pages.
There is a lot of interactivity between the members, all you have to do is write interesting Blog posts and Forum discussions and you will hear from them.

There are not a lot of "applications and Widgets" here that clutter-up the pages and make them hard to read.

There are plenty of those on Facebook and MySpace that may be more of what you have in mind for your publishing.

rtp is about, Click Underlined Link: Rebuilding The Republican Party

[Stonewall]

Actually all of the functions come from some degree of frustration. I have used other blogs, and strangely each has its own set of strength and weaknesses. Having worked in IT for a number of years I suspect that blogs aren't designed at all with the user in mind. We take what we have, and add features that appeal to a developer (who probably will never actually use the system).

First, and most importantly, you need to treat users as customers and assets. That is very different from the way most technologies are developed. They are developed much like the movie "Field Of Dreams" if you build it they will come.

Second, you need to increase the longevity of the user, and their stickiness. A user who visits once, and leaves is worth about zero. If you have a user who visits reguarly and whose insight is valued by the community, he is much more valuable. You need to give people a reason to make time and mental commitment to a site. Ratings are a good example. In one sense you want to know whether the person you are reading has the respect of the community. The deeper reason is that you will foster a competive interest in the users. Once you have ratings you will have a top-10 or 25 authors or viewers. People will post, and then they will come back to see how their last post was rated. Software is like any business you have to give a customer a reason to become a repeat customer.

Third, you have to have bubble-up potential for any article written. Material that our community enjoys should bubble-up to the alliance blogs. These are like minded blogs. Those have bubble up features such that the top-community say the RNC blog will take views from actual people. At the bottom of the article it gives readers a poll, and the RNC gets free feedback on new ideas (like better use of blog space).

Nothing will stop a customer from becoming a repeat customer faster than data. We have 2839 articles here, and 1 of them may be great. The problem is that you will never find it because it is a needle in a haystack. When someone arrives at a site, they should be directed as quickly as possible to something of significant interest.

[Whitehorse (Robin Ray)]

Good ideas Stonewall.

[Catherine]

Couldn't agree with you more. People in my area are actually organizing to get behind candidates running for office in 2010 without even consulting the party. Some old timers believe you have to have the blessing of the party, but considering they are not supporting conservative candidates and are squandering money seeking more money instead of supporting candidates, issues and promoting programs to get younger candidates ready to seek office, I think one can actually do things with the right understanding of the power of all internet and electronic devices. I have to believe that you ideas listed as "functions" come from some degree of knowledge, so I would like to see how those things might enhance connectivity among site users and actually result in good, useful information.