Hmm...I notice that my pictures seem to trespass on the menubar that shows up beneath them. Do you know of any HTML commands that will fix this problem? I experimented for awhile but gave up.

I think the key to maintaining a high readership is to build connections with other blogs. When you post a reply to another blog, make sure you let the blog author know. When you post an item to knews that you think will be interesting to the readers of another blog, send an e-mail to the blog author or post a comment linking to knews in a relevant thread.

I think that's more important than design. There are some fugly blogs out there (aka boing boing) that have VERY high readership.

--Dave

Dave--thanks for the advice. Sounds good to me. I'll start trying to bridge some of the work I do on other sites/forums to what I'm doing here at Kairosnews. I agree; the secret is networking. :-)

talking with others, it seems like because it is end of term people are busy... and in some cases, schools have already closed.

i know i'm very busy right now.

heading into summer, i'm making my own personal learning game plan-- of laying back and reading divergent stuff... i'm going to stick my head in sociology and urban planning, and modern history- and um... jazz-age novels... :)

so i can see even my own online reading habits changing... i wonder if this may be the same for others?

maybe a kairosnews game plan might be to look into slightly divergent, but peripheral realms in which to make connections... find not just like minds but kinda-like minds?

does this make sense?

Eh, watcha been smokin, chief?

maybe a kairosnews game plan might be to look into slightly divergent, but peripheral realms in which to make connections... find not just like minds but kinda-like minds?

It's a catch-22 situation. People won't post here unless a bunch of people are actively reading/posting/commenting. If people think Kairosnews will reach a big audience, they'll take it seriously and get enthusiastic about it. However, if things go dead, people stop posting, stop visiting the site, etc.

What we chiefly need around here is some new blood. You appear to be quite active now, and for that I'm thankful. Now, if we could each try to get at least one more person to actively blog on Kairosnews, we'd make a step in the right direction.

Slashdot posts get anywhere from 50-5000 comments each. That's a POWERFUL readership. Kairosnews averages about .01 comments per post, I'd say. About every 10th post gets a comment. Some posts get more, but I'd happy with 3 at this point. This is just unacceptable. We must try to get more people reading and interacting here. I won't be happy until every post is getting at LEAST 5 comments, but hopefully 50. We can't accomplish this unless we can get more people reading and commenting. It doesn't matter if the comments are intelligent or not. We just have to generate a bulk of comments.

In short, we have to make Knews a sexier place to blog and post. To that, I recommend the following:

1. Put more graphics and images in posts. People love eye candy.
2. Don't blog boring stuff, but keep it hot and controversial.
3. Let's find a way to easily put our pics next to our blog posts.
4. Try to talk about other people's blogs and let them know about it (idea submitted by Dave Munger).
5. Reward frequent posters and commenters. We need a rating or ranking system here to that end. As mods, we ought to be able to "mod up" a comment and earn a user points. People like to feel that they are earning something for their hard work. A point/ranking system could help out with that a lot.

I don't know about you all, but I think having my pic alongside my posts would greatly help. It's one thing to see a handle, another to see the author's pic.

((shiver))

what i meant was... the community here is quite focused on teaching writing, and i think niche and spethifithity, i mean, specificity are good things, but perhaps widening out the topic would help widen the audience? maybe not? i dunno?

anyway,

They are called 'Avatars' in Drupal

enable the profile.module and enable the 'avatar' setting... and they must be configured within the theme as well, in order to show up. there's much discussion on thr site about this:

http://drupal.org/node/view/7195

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
the illusion of progress: http://nearlythere.com

I haven't tried that feature yet. Could be something to do once I get around to upgrading Knews to 4.4. Any experience with implementing them yet?

However, my picture will *not* appear by my posts :)

i can respect any decision people come to decide here. but as a reader, i would say that the real photo has a definite effect on the perception of seriousness...

what do you think about this? :
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RealPhoto

"Using a RealPhoto--a photo of yourself in reality--can help you mentally AvoidIllusion that your online LifeInText? is divorced from your offline identity. That is, it will make you feel that your online presence is merely a reflection of yourself proper, rather than merely some fantasy construction."

Clancy recently spoke about the subtleties on her own site, 'eye contact':
http://culturecat.net/node/view/380

Oh, I don't ever feel that life online is somehow separate from f2f. no different than the phone. just don't want my picture displayed next to the several hundred blog posts I have on knews :)

could also be because i'm happy with text. for instance, i'm writing this from my phone text-based internet browser while sitting in a waiting room. the lack of graphics/images does not detract from the experience of conversing on knews for me.

still, someother people like the eye candy (i agree with the thread). but then there are also those, like me, aceessing knews through dialup. unless images provide additional information or really rhetorically enhance the text, I can do without them.

"I miss Post Nuke's ability to incorporate the small graphics into the posts."

well, it did add something to the appearance of the site. but finding good thumbnails was a pain. and while this feature is now possible with drupal, it's no longer probably a good idea with knews since we use multiple categories with posts, unless they were a small icon size.

Not to be obtuse, but what is the goal of having more active readership? Are you looking for more people reading the site, or more activity in comments, etc? And why? What is the value of having more comments on posts?

(Note: it is this post that has jarred me from passive reader of the site for many months, to finally posting my first comment.)

That's an interesting question. I've been having a private email discussion here with another lurker and we've agreed that blogs tend to remain more personal (or retain a feeling of private ownership) than other online writing spaces, like discussion boards or wikis. Readers feel like a guest when they visit a blog, and just as many guests won't raid your fridge when they come over, many visitors to blogs aren't inclined to post comments or start serious discussion about the topics raised here.

What bothers me about bloggers is that they refer to their blogs as "my blog." Well, I don't want to venture to a non-public website and start putting together sentences or arguments. I don't care what kind of license the blogger has posted, I feel I'm at someone's home making an argument rather than a public forum (the office hallway, etc.) People are always wanting to me to visit THEIR blogs and discuss a topic rather than just post it here, where everyone can see it. It's all about improving their stats; they want to look at those stats and see that 40 people or whatever have been reading THEIR blogs, etc. I don't dig it.

For me, online writing is first and foremost about building communities. I do more writing at Armchair Arcade than I do at Kairosnews. Why? Because people will respond to it. They'll tear it apart; argue with it; discuss it. It's a shared space, and I feel great about spending time and energy writing there.

Kairosnews? Well, this isn't exactly a private blog; I share this space with Charlie and Clancy. However, I feel more like it's a triplex apartment than a truly shared space. Sure, people drop by, glance at the materials here, maybe talk about a post here on their own blogs, but I don't get that feeling of community that I need to really get excited about writing. What's more, I have a bad feeling that the most interesting things Clancy and Charlie talk about aren't posted here but on their own private blogs, and that's bothersome.

" I share this space with Charlie and Clancy. However, I feel more like it's a triplex apartment than a truly shared space."

Actually, I had alwasy viewed it as we share the space with everyone and anyone who wants to post. Just seems to work out that we have done most of the blog posting. And I would be more excited about seeing blog postings from other people than increasing the number of comments.

"What's more, I have a bad feeling that the most interesting things Clancy and Charlie talk about aren't posted here but on their own private blogs, and that's bothersome."

Why? You can always blog about them here :) (btw: this may be true for Clancy, but probably not for me--LOL)

Well, I'd like to see more comments. I also would like to see more bloggers. In short, I'd like to see more EVERYTHING!

I'll rub my magic lamp tonight and see if the djinn will grant me this wish. :-P