Posts tagged ‘community’
Did you know that October 15th is Blog Action Day?
Blog Action Day is an annual event where the world gets together and discusses a single topic. The idea is simple: Get as many people around the world talking about making a change as possible.
This year, the topic is one close to the heart of all of us here at allvoices: Poverty. The prevention of it. The causes of it. The cure. The impact.
I will be blogging here and adding items to the site to support blog action day. For now, I want to ask all of you: What are you doing to prevent poverty? Are you willing to tell the world? If so, add a story to the site. Comment here. Let’s get the conversation going!
PS: If you want to tag your items as part of allvoices contributions to Blog Action Day 2008, add this HTML code to your news stories:
<a href=”http://blogactionday.org”><img src=”http://blogactionday.org/img/df1ceadc3cb61f1e378cf8945a424f90f5a6e2a3.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”" /></a>
Meet the Community: MarcusCato
Community member MarcusCato - Someone you should know!
Community member MarcusCato is one of the allvoices community all stars! If you aren’t following him, you should be. I got the chance to catch up with him on email yesterday and get a quick interview with him
Having just gone over the 100K page views mark earlier this week, MarcusCato is a user you should know!
MarcusCato is from Islamabad. He is a retired diplomat. The news that matters to him is news that is insightful, interesting, and meaningful. He looks for stories like the news reported in the New York Times and on BBC. You can see this tendency in much of MarcusCato‘s writings, especially in his pieces on the financial bailout.
He takes a world view on the events that are happening today, which I love. He has learned to put images in with all of his pieces, knowing that images give stories traction and attract the reader’s eye. In fact, he has a images with thousands of direct views. All but one of his last 10 stories have over 1,000 views – I think this is because of his ability to pick the right image to go with the story.
MarcusCato‘s strongest tip for members of the allvoices community? “Let your voice be heard.” When asked what else he would like to tell the world, the response was to “wait and find out in my subsequent columns on allvoices.” In other words – wait and hear more of his voice here on allvoices!
We like that attitude – You know we will be watching your contributions. Your voice is definitely heard and definitely matters to us!
Congratulations to MarcusCato – our latest community member you should know!
Want to be a community member highlighted here in the blog? Email me, message me from the site, post to the blog comments. I will get back to you!
Are you on Facebook?
We are on Facebook – if you are too, we would love to connect up with you. Right now, there are three ways you can do it:
- Join the Facebook group (FYI – If that link doesn’t work, please let me know!)
- Fan our page
- Read our blog via Facebook’s blog network
I have been thinking about what else we can do on Facebook to make it easier for you and everyone else to find us. I am thinking that a basic Facebook application might be fun, but don’t know what you would like to see. I figured the best way to find out is to ask. Send answers to me via the blog or my allvoices page and let me know. Or, (better yet) post a comment – let’s get the conversation going!
My top ideas so far are:
- Do you want something that shares the latest news? The latest comments? The latest videos?
- Do you want something that lets you share your news directly from Facebook?
- Do you want a way to find allvoices community members via Facebook?
- Do you want to see where the news is happening?
These are all obvious things. I am thinking that we might want something more fun, different or eye catching. Got ideas? Share them!
PS: Do you do Facebook application development? Got ideas for a great app that shows the world what allvoices is all about? Leave a comment – we’ll get back to you!
Community Journalism, Not Vigilante Journalism
Yesterday, Todd of OhmyNews posted a blog entry called Citizen Journalism Returns… He talked about the fact that they are different because they “edit every single published story.” He then quoted a piece written earlier in the day by Paul Bradshaw about Erik’s visits to journalism students in Europe going on now.
One of the things Todd mentions is the Steve Jobs false heart attach reports. We here at allvoices take a dim view of people submitting false reports. At the same time, we don’t believe that one person has he right to decide what should and should not be reported. Instead, allvoices takes a different view of citizen journalism. We let you the community decide. We don’t edit your pieces. We don’t decide what can and can not be posted on the site. You might say we are community journalism instead of vigilante journalism.
I talked to Sanjay Sood, allvoices CTO, about this and he offered the following:
While it’s true that allvoices does not have human editors accepting and rejecting user reports, we believe that the proper technology and community input can provide the necessary validation. Just as journalists validate their stories via multiple sources, the allvoices system can automatically validate a users contribution against thousands of traditional news sites. Just as you judge the news you receive by the reputation of the source and reporter, the allvoices system considers the past actions of contributors (if any) to handle and verify a new report. The allvoices community, like your friends, helps you vet what to believe and what is just false. allvoices is all about building perspective and context around the news that matters to our users without the barriers of the traditional media.
We have four mechanisms that let community members add their voice to the news: Flagging, voicing up or down, adding
Flagging lets you mark a piece as inappropriate for the site or the story. If you want to learn more about flagging, check out Flagging stories… Voicing up or down an item on the site allows you to share whether you think this piece belongs here or not. Try not to think of these two buttons as whether or not you agree with the item. Instead, think of these buttons as your “review” of the item. Is it a good item which others should view? Or, is it something people should disregard?
Flagging and using the voice up and down buttons are quick ways to express your opinion and help to validate information. If you have something to say about the item, comment on it. You can comment on a report from its main page. If you have a comment on a related item (blog, image, or video), you can click that item and then comment on it directly. Commenting on items keeps the conversation going and growing. It helps us all to learn from each other and validate what is being said.
The last way you can voice your news is to add your own news. This can be a related item like a blog, a video, or an image. Or – you can write your own news story and let the system link the two together.
No matter how you add your voice to the news, know that we are depending on you and your fellow community members to help us verify the news you read here. We believe that by taking down the walls that block your voice, we can all work together to make everyone better informed.
October 10, 2008 at 7:52 pm kathyallvoices Leave a comment