I have some possible alternatives for Entry Of The Week that I will be thinking about over the next few weeks. One of the problems I had with EOTW was simply not having enough time to review the entries and in any case I am a REALLY bad critique because I'm of the opinion that the online world of publication should present similar high standards of grammar and spelling that any offline publication would. Of course that's not what EotW was about so it made it hard for me to judge suitable entries.
I should also point out that I'm only one guy :) I am up to my eyeballs in things for the site at the moment, and the whole place desperately needs an overhaul - which is under way. That's what the new front page is all about, the beginning of the overhaul. So bumming around reading entries to choose for EotW wasn't feasible. Having volunteers isn't really all that feasible either (at the moment) because there's no easy way to update the entry of the week and such like. Katrina did a fantastic job while she was looking after it, but the level of spam in her inbox got a bit too much I think!
So who knows, maybe it will come back in a different incarnation later, when it can be easier to manage and less controversial (ie not judged by me :)).
In the meantime I am also looking at overhauling the Top 10 Diaries system because as everyone has pointed out, its always the same. It's also majorly skewed right now by the Search Engines that are spidering us every single minute of every day. Those hits need to be weeded out from the calculations. I'd also like some kind of 'unique readers' system so that the diary with the most readers, rather than the most hits, is in there instead... All that sort of stuff.
I'd like to bring back the Vote For Me option somehow, so that maybe the Entry of the Week is an automated thing based on votes, but it needs careful thought so its not abused by clickhappy voters and fraudsters.
But at the moment, I am working on getting Plus services working properly after the move, and migrating to the new template system so that finally people can have proper control of fonts, headings, keywords, robots etc etc... Its a lot of work, but it'll be worth it in the long run.
I should also point out that I'm only one guy :) I am up to my eyeballs in things for the site at the moment, and the whole place desperately needs an overhaul - which is under way. That's what the new front page is all about, the beginning of the overhaul. So bumming around reading entries to choose for EotW wasn't feasible. Having volunteers isn't really all that feasible either (at the moment) because there's no easy way to update the entry of the week and such like. Katrina did a fantastic job while she was looking after it, but the level of spam in her inbox got a bit too much I think!
So who knows, maybe it will come back in a different incarnation later, when it can be easier to manage and less controversial (ie not judged by me :)).
In the meantime I am also looking at overhauling the Top 10 Diaries system because as everyone has pointed out, its always the same. It's also majorly skewed right now by the Search Engines that are spidering us every single minute of every day. Those hits need to be weeded out from the calculations. I'd also like some kind of 'unique readers' system so that the diary with the most readers, rather than the most hits, is in there instead... All that sort of stuff.
I'd like to bring back the Vote For Me option somehow, so that maybe the Entry of the Week is an automated thing based on votes, but it needs careful thought so its not abused by clickhappy voters and fraudsters.
But at the moment, I am working on getting Plus services working properly after the move, and migrating to the new template system so that finally people can have proper control of fonts, headings, keywords, robots etc etc... Its a lot of work, but it'll be worth it in the long run.