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Newsvine has a great concept -- attract original writing, display it alongside traditional/wire articles, and provide spaces for people to discuss them.
In the Newsvine section a number of problems have been raised by users:
1. Newsvine is dominated by editorial columns rather than informational articles. There are few high-quality articles with inside information, local information, breaking news, or other documentary information.
2. It is difficult for new authors to get exposure.
3. How do we raise the overall quality of original articles?
4. How do individuals to find articles of interest to them that may not be popular in general?
So more generally there are two problems -- getting high quality articles and users finding them. These problems actually reinforce each other. Without high quality articles, users will get bored of the service and without users reading their articles, writers won't be motivated to write good articles. IMO Newsvine does not yet provide enough incentive to attract quality journalists. What incentives are amateur journalists are looking for?
1. To build their readership
2. To build their reputations
3. To fund their pocketbooks
Once Newsvine institutes ad revenue, there will be opportunities for all of these things. Pocket money can be made off of the ads on your articles. Readership will grow along with membership. Reputations can be built by stories getting consistently voted up the vine. In no time, journalists will have more incentive to write high-quality posts which have more resemblance to news than letters to the editor.
Or will they? All three of these things are contingent on getting enough readers initially. Problem is... How do high-quality writers get the initial readership needed to boost their ratings, reputation, and revenue? Without those first readers to recommend your articles or vote them up the vine, how do other readers find you?
In online media, this occurs through links and refferals from friends, blogs, and search engines. There is a glimmer of hope here, since Newsvine has plans to add referral features. Still these methods only get authors onto the top pages if they are referred by somebody with enough readers to vote them up there. "Email this story to a friend" is not going to get authors out of this dead-end.
Let's look at this from the other side of the column. How do you find interesting articles to read on Newsvine?
Currently, you can:
1. Read top rated stories on the main page and category pages.
2. Watch specific columnists whose articles you have liked in the past.
3. Watch tags of interest to you.
Columnists who don't already have readers will not rank high on any of these pages, except possibly uncommon tags. This problem will grow with the site, as the vote totals rise and it take more votes to be a top rated story. Popular writers will be set on people's watch lists and their stories will be regularly voted back up to the top. So, the genius of the format is also its achilles heel.
How can the format be improved to enable writers and readers to find each other? One way is by having niches in the site for different interests.
The main pages can contain only 25-100 articles each. These will be articles of popular interest (due to the vote ranking system). However, everyone has their own areas of interest and points of view, which are shared by some people but not popular. In traditional media, this has been handled by the diversity of publications on specific subjects (e.g., Scientific American, Vegetarian Journal) and/or representing a particular point of view (e.g., the Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones). Authors gain recognition by pitching their articles to a newspaper/magazine/journal which already has a readership. Readers gain a high-quality selection of articles in a consistent format with a predictable balance of content. Newvine can provide something similar through user created "Mini-vines" on particular areas of interest.
But niches are not enough to ensure high quality articles. A publication has more to offer than the sum of its writers -- because of editors. Editors have many functions:
1. They read a lot of articles on a given subject, including ones submitted by "nobodies".
2. From those they chose the ones that best suit their audience.
3. They set a regular format for their pages, so that people are assured a reliable balance of content and a familiar format.
4. Set word limits for regular features. This encourages people to use the fewest number of words needed to express their idea.
5. They work with writers and suggest edits necessary for inclusion in the publication.
Editors make content distribution a win-win situation for authors and readers alike. Readers get the most bang for their reading time and writers get an instant audience and credibility associated with the publication. I had been contemplating the need for Mini-vines with Editors, when I came across a discussion led by Mykola Bilokonsky proposting the creation of Guilds. Just what I had in mind, I thought initially.
To my disappointment, most people were in favor of having a limited number of Guilds with restricted membership which would be controlled by a few people. I think limiting the number of guilds is a big mistake. Not only will it not solve the problem of how to connect authors with readers who share their specific interests worldviews, but it will instead alienate readers and writers alike. When writers find that their articles are not included in this limited number of publications, they will naturally want to start a Guild for people who are interested in their content. Readers may also not share the perspectives of the editors. It was also suggested that filters or private discussions be used to improve comment quality. Great... for the people who will be included in these private discussions. What about those who share interests which are not covered by the set number of Guilds? They can't find news and views of interest to them on the front pages and not in the Guilds. They will go elsewhere.
That said, it is possible to have too many niches, which I will call Branches, based upon Neil's suggestion. If anyone can create a Branch then the directory of niches will be unnavigable and there will be a lot of inactive and redundant Branches.
So, gleaning for suggestions given in the Guild thread, I propose the following set of guidelines for Branch sprouting and pruning.
Sprouting a Branch:
1. Anyone can petition to create a Branch.
2. Petitions must describe:
- its focus
- its target audience
- what categories it will cover, what tags it will cover
- a list of other groups with the same categories and tags
- how it is different than those groups
- who will edit it
3. Branch editors must:
- have been a member for 3 months
- have contributed at least 10 articles, 10 seeds, and 10 comments
- have 50 total votes for these articles, seeds, and comments
- use their real names (cannot be anonymous)
4. Petitions are displayed quarterly at petitions.newsvine.com.
5. Petitions must receive 100 votes.
6. Only members with a minimum level of participation can vote. This is to be set just high enough to prevent people creating accounts just for signatures.
- have been a member for 1 month
- have contributed at least 1 article, 1 seed, and 1 comment
7. Additional requirements must be fair and reasonable, and attainable by any member, now and in the future.
8. Branch is cut off if participation over 1 year drops below a set level.
The way Branches work:
- Branches can seed/post articles to the vine marked with the authors' names and the Branch name.
- Branches can link any content from the Vine on their pages
- Anyone can read and comment stories in any Branch.
An additional problem is the proliferation of uninteresting comments. Many people want to be able to exclude or filter out comments by some members. To some extent this is elitist, but honestly some people express themselves better and know more than others. Some people give sources and some people just do name-calling. Moreover, it is natural that subject experts (e.g., physists) might like to have a higher level of conversation on articles in their subject area than possible with a general audience. Likewise, high school physics teachers might like to have their own group for discussing how the latest science could be used in their classes.
Two ways of doing this have been suggested: (a) heavily restricting Branch membership and filtering comments based upon membership or (b) tracking all user's comment ratings in each Branch separately and filtering comments based upon the rating.
Restricted Branch membership is a bad idea because it will alienate readers. It causes interference between two distinct issues: (a) connecting readers with writers and (b) having interesting discussions. These issues should be dealt with separately. Branches are a solution to the former problem. Branches are people's way to find content on specific areas of interest. When people go to a Branch to find interesting news, they will expect to be able to discuss it there. If they can't readers will be alienated by this exclusivity, which in turn is not good for the writers.
The ratings idea is good if it is technically feasible. That is, if it is technically feasible to do it in a way which
- leaves up to each person what level of comments they want to see and
- encourages people to continue participating and improve their participation.
A third idea would be to have many groups within Branches. Call them Twigs if you like. So in addition to Branches which are public, there can be private Groups. Branches cull content. And Groups are for members-only discussions. This way there would be fewer Branches, lots of Groups, and people can still connect with smaller groups of like-minded folks. ... like fellow 6th grade teachers, fellow space exploration fans, or even your family. Not sure how small it should be allowed to go.
Please comment, add, and pick apart.
