Status Of The U-K Upgrade Discussions

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Status Of The U-K Upgrade Discussions

By The Upgrade Group Members
Nov. 22, 2005

Have you noticed the link that the Editor provided to the Yahoo Group where the U-K community is hashing ideas for upgrading the site? Please click the link and participate.

Through the first few days of this discussion, the range of ideas proposed have been amazing - but that only makes us think there are many more out there to be heard. The membership of that Group want to keep the readers informed of our thoughts and progress and so will be submitting this post on a weekly basis for the next several weeks. We apologize for the long length of this first update; future editions should be shorter. We anticipate having a firm proposal to the Editor no later than December 17.

In general, I think there has been a consistent desire expressed in the Message thread and exhibited by early Poll results that the basic concepts of the site not change. Folks like the open acceptance of the Editor to all contributions resulting in the site’s unique blend of facts, fiction, politics, religion, current events, cultural events, and of course, the Useless Knowledge. Although the group has also recognized the need to improve the quality of posts, so that the search engines are more receptive to the site, we are looking at ways to do that without alienating either the less technically proficient writers or those with biased views.

One theory is to encourage our average writers to improve their posts by providing basic writing guidelines – what kind of writing does meet the search engine’s requirements? What should be avoided, or modified so that an article is not excluded? Still, we understand that worldwide domination of your opinion is not everyone’s goal, and do not wish to exclude anyone who just wants to whip out a short article without major concern for its content or style.

Thus, we’re considering the concept of recognizing our more talented writers – not just those that are technically superior, or with large vocabularies, or that can win debates, but also those that spin the most entertaining stories. However, if the site is going to recognize a writer (i.e. push their writing at the search engines), those articles cannot have major grammatical or spelling errors. There have been suggestions that a Review Board look at those featured articles to insure they do not damage the site’s credibility.

The Polls are a bit unclear on this point. On the one hand, they overwhelmingly support a Featured Writer (FW) status (90%). And the concept of voting on a slate of FW nominees, with voters required to “register” by paying a small membership fee that does not discourage anyone from joining, but does discourage joining under multiple aliases for the purpose of influencing elections. (81%). The confusion is that there is almost an even split as to whether FWs should be technically proficient with their writing (50% - yes, 40% - no).

Unfortunately, as the primary goal of this project is to increase our access to the news bureaus search engines, credibility – including excellence in grammar and spelling – becomes an issue. Elevating those with less proficiency to that status could work against our goal of using those FWs to attract the search engines.

In this context, AND IMPORTANTLY only in this context, there has been some discussion of editing contributions. Understand that even if that direction is taken, it is likely not to be used often. First, under the proposed plan for attaining FW status, the Editor nominates a slate, perhaps every quarter. The Editor can choose to only nominate technically proficient writers (folks, do not forget that this is the Editor's site, the revenues are his, and provide his food and shelter). Second, even if he is less strict than the news bureaus, such that some FWs would require editing to meet the news bureau standards (form only, not content), we can still expect that our worst grammarians will never be nominated.

The last “controversial” issue being contemplated is when/if to expel a contributor. First, the Editor retains the right to expel anyone, we’re talking about whether Members should also have that power. Surprisingly, as much as folks talk about U-K’s open door policy, the Poll on this issue is overwhelmingly in favor of kicking folks off (80%). That 80% is comprised of votes for three alternatives - basically, majority rule (8%), 75% majority (16%), and “only after extreme hatred and only after a warning” (58%). A telling point is that a similar option, “extreme hatred/blatant lies” received no votes. The inclusion of a warning step (probation) makes all the difference to the voters.

This would suggest a two-tier process. A reader submits an author to the Editor as being overly offensive, and if he agrees, he can either choose to issue that warning or announce a special election to decide whether to issue that warning. A second offense, again with the Editor's discretion, would require their status to be submitted to a vote. It might make an interesting drama (i.e. increased traffic) as the accused publishes a “defense” to their indictment.

The rest of the conversations have been easier topics. Voters agree with the concept of noting our International Contibutors (77%) to acknowledge their potential for weak grammar and to promote the site’s diversity. By a 2 to 1 margin, they like the idea of creating a second status tier – perhaps the more prolific contributors that lack the skills to be Featured, or are moving towards that classification. The Poll results for whether to enable the use of avatars is neck and neck.

Capabilities discussed include enabling a Content Management System (CMS). This would allow a contributor to self-post or edit their article after it has been posted. Self-posting would almost certainly be limited, if allowed at all by the Editor, for the obvious legal liabilities that could entail. However, how many times have you wished you could go back and correct a misspelling?

We’ve talked about creating a database of the articles to allow better searching of the archives. Contributions could be “tagged” by the author for one or more categories – sports, politics, religion, news, etc. – and readers could click those categories to retrieve a subset of the articles. Likewise, the database could simply be searched by the Contributor’s name, as is available now for the most prolific authors.

There has been talk of an Editor’s Choice of the Week recognition. Also, a “Slugfest” of the Week. We’ve suggested a “Comments” capability appended to each article for the purpose of short remarks and, perhaps, to minimize the larger slugfests. Some talk is about creating a new domain name to more effectively attract Google et al, although the user experience would not change (technical talk).

Finally, there has been a little talk about using the site to sell more of the contributor’s books, and also generate revenue for the Editor.

Again, please visit the site. Even if you have no input to offer, we’d like your votes on several Polls we’ve created that address the above ideas. If you have ideas, please share and we can also add Polls that gauge the acceptance of the new ideas.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKwebsite/

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