Hi everyone... There have been quite a lot of comments recently upon the changing face of our blog section. The quality of entries is for another thread, the diversity of them is something i had a look at today. some people (Including myself) have felt that repeated blogs by the same person clog up the site. I asked myself "Just how bad is this at the moment"? well.. here is my analysis of recent entries (a july snapshot)

31 members made 1 blog enrty
16 members made 2 blog entries
3 members made 3 blog entries
3 members made 4 blog entries
1 member made 5 blog entries
1 member made 6 blog entries
1 member made 8 blog entries
1 member made 9 blog entries
1 member made 10 blog entries
1 member made 22 blog entries

what does this tell us? It shows that yes there are some members who post repeated blogs (but only 3 or 4 of them). Interestingly these members are not the same members who posted a lot in previous months. There are 8 members who have posted 3-6 entries. but there are a massive 47 members who have posted 1 or 2 entries. To me, this is a reflection of th tremendous variety and diversity we have on WOL. I know there are some interesting ideas to maybe takle the issue of repeated blog posts but is it really that bad?

Let me know your feelings on this.

Winston

I may miss a lot by not reading them, but my mind does seem to have an internal filter which skips over the entries by the people who I personally feel I have had an overload from. Stressing this is personal to me - I don't want to offend but if I want to read a collection / anthology by an individual then I buy the book / booklet (I must be Amazon's biggest poetry purchaser) and sit down on my sofa with a glass of wine and sometimes a dictionary, not with a laptop!

On the other hand, I pay careful attention to unfamiliar names and work, and have many of those "wow, I found something shiny" moments from exploring the rare gems from the less frequent posters.

My view is to leave the blog as it is, and depend on individual's abilities to read or not read what they chose. If this is about how the site is perceived by newcomers or browsers then yes, perhaps it does give it an odd feel having consistent daily posters. I do wonder if those posting daily would actually find it more rewarding to have their own personal dedicated blog to do this in, and perhaps it could be gently suggested that their following might be better catered for that way.

I think your snapshot would have done better to look at a couple of 'whole' months rather than part of the current month.
A week away by one prolific poster can have a huge impact on your figures. I do accept your point that prolific posters are not in a majority - that isn't the issue though - it is the clogging up done by those few. No point in me saying anything further on this issue - I have already made my point a million times. I don't really see why we are raising another discussion thread on it either. I am only contributing to say that I think your analysis is a little narrow.

There is also the outside chance that established poets who post prolificly may have taken on board some of the comments made by people on threads and reduced their posting a little. Unless you put some kind of site etiquette in there will always be new poets to the site who follow the same paths. If they are given clear guidelines from the beginning there is less chance of them being offended by comments made later on.

Iso - I agree, it was a narrow snapshot. Just did it on the spur of the moment in a spare 5 mins which took 1/2 hr lol. Interesting to see the results of someone else (maybe you) doing another in a month say.

all your points, as you say, have been made many times by many posters. I think we are nearing a solution, I just wanted to see how bad/good the situation was as we can all think it's terrible without actually checking it out. and personally I thought WOW... so many members posting 1 or two poems and really (in this snap shot anway) not too much of a repeated blog entry going on. We need a system that can cope with both posting styles I think and I also think its round the corner :-)

I can understand your curiosity Winston - sometimes it is interesting to analyse figures. Last time I looked at it over the period of a month, one person alone had posted 55 and there were a couple of others who had posted very large numbers also. They represented a significant percentage of the total blogs.

I hope I didn't sound curt in my earlier posting. I just didn't want to re-open old wounds. It seems inevitable that whenever we discuss this subject, people disagree or get hurt.

I am confident that solutions will be found that suit all. If not I will just learn to put up with it. :-) xx

5% of people posting made 59% of the blog entries over this period. Now that sound more prominent than before!

It does indeed Winston! Maybe we should jack in poetry and become statisticians. It is so much easier to manipulate numbers than words...

A friend of mine recently said 'The majority of people have more than the average number of legs'. I'm still trying to work out what he was on about...

some people have only 1 leg and therefore the 'average' is less than 2...but the greater number of people have 2 legs.

Thank you Tommy - you obviously have a logical brain - I've never liked maths much - all those medians, means and averages - double dutch to me - my brain is one sided - I can never remember which side that is either...

interesting stats, Win indeed.. It doesn't surprise me that 5% are producing 59% of the poetry. Like Isobel, I am not going to get involved with the debate that has started up elsewhere.

Would be interesting to see this over a longer period.. I wasn't aware that one poet last month (if I read it right) did 55 or so poems last month. That's almost 2 a day! On a good month, I can produce maybe 15 but over half off them are for friends wrote quickly as little jokes, but 55! My arm would drop off! lol