Introducing Guest Bloggers
We have asked published authors if they would be willing to write about their experiences as a writer and what led them into a writing career. The response has been very overwhelming and we will shortly begin adding their posts to our blog.
If you are a published writer feel free to submit your url in the comments of this post and we may contact you asking you to be a guest blogger as well.
steve
Stumble it!
Tags: guest blogging, published authors
December 12th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I think it would also be handy for individual members to be able to use a blog for themselves as well. Recently I reviewed an article, and the comment on my review seemed to misunderstand me. Because of lacking message and/or blog features, I couldn’t try to explain. In the same line of thought, there is no option to search through the members. If there is a writer whose work I really enjoyed, then why shouldn’t I be able to look him up (beyond using the link through the review) and leave a message, or perhaps even establish a form of regular editor? Maybe some sort of contact system where a new review will be posted whenever your contact updates a story or submits a new story. However, the last thing I want this site to become some perversion of facebook.
Yes, I’m well aware that most of that preceding this was more of a rant than an organized statement, but I believe my ideas are still conveyed in an acceptable form.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
We are planning on adding some communication features in a few months that will allow you to interact with other on the site. We are debating several options such as private messaging, a forum, and a blog. Any suggestions?
December 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I would open a suggestions forum or suggestions box of some form first. My ideas were posted with what I thought was the most relevant topic, and unfortunately, it wasn’t very. I think that having to tie ideas to blog posts by the admins only discourages the creativity of posting ideas. After all, who wants to post about the ability to send private messages under the topic of “Introducing Guest Bloggers”? You see the problem I think. As far as forum vs. PM’s, it is up to you guys. The forum is a great way for writers to talk about subjects and debate without knowing any of the other people, while PM’s are a more comfortable way of communicating with the acceptation that you should probably already know someone before you start communicating with them (writer’s are stereotyped as introverts). However, the editing system encourages socialization between writers, and it would be much easier for these editing writers to continue their conversations and explanations through private messages than it would be to do so through a forum.
One final note against forums is that they tend to become either very impersonal, or far too personal. In a series of private messages, there are no third parties to misinterpret, but in a forum, there are dozens of people who can read one response “Really?” (for example), as sarcastic and angry, demoralized, tired, confused, etc.
Thank you for your time in reading this, I hope you will consider some of my opinions.
December 14th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I’ve seen the addition of review discussion. Fantastic. Thank you.
December 15th, 2008 at 7:27 am
@Intentionally anonymous
Thank you for pointing out the lack of the suggestion area. We meant for the about us page to essentially be that, however we had not enabled comments on it. In addition to enabling the comments, I have also added a new page called Suggestion Box to further encourage comments like yours.