For those who don't know, the Christian Carnival is a weekly blog post, hosted by volunteers, with the site different each week, which lists links to posts by Christian bloggers, with a brief description. Each blogger submits her own choice of post. See here for links to instructions, and locations of previous Carnivals. Anyone can submit, but the post has to have some Christian facet. There are roughly 40 posts listed each week in a Carnival.
I don't deserve to make any proposals, as I have never hosted the Carnival. Thanks so much to those who do! However, even though I have no right to, I'm going to make a proposal, anyway. I think the Carnival is a great idea, and I want it to make as much of an impact as possible. There are devotional, apologetic, and other types of entries, and they should be having an impact on Christian bloggers, and maybe even on others. Here's my proposal:
Cut the number of posts in half.
How to do this? I suggest that blogs beginning with the first half of the alphabet (say A - L, plus any beginning with non-alphabetic characters, the first week that this policy starts) submit one week, and the rest submit on the next, so that no blog gets to submit oftener than every other week. If this were put into practice, I would not be eligible to submit for the first Carnival under this policy, since my blog begins with an S.
This would make each Carnival shorter, and therefore, I hope, more likely to be read. (My own reaction to 40 or so posts is that that's just too many to read, so I don't try very hard to read them all.) It should also make the host's job easier. It should also mean that, since bloggers can only submit every other week, that the submissions will be more significant.
This may not be practical, unless there is a good way to notify potential new posters, but I submit the proposal, anyway, for what, if anything, it is worth.
Thanks for reading! If this post has been included in a Christian Carnival, thanks to the host!
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
License
I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
5 comments:
I think that is an interesting suggestion. I am not sure how well it would work out in practice though. I would definitely email Dory (see here for contact info) to see what she thinks about that. I guess my biggest concern is actually getting people to pay attention to and follow what week they are supposed to submit. I fear that many would not pay attenion to that and just submit whenever. But, again, talk to Dory and she might suggest it to the Carnival mailing list. Its good that people are thinking about this stuff!
Cheers
Matt
Thanks! I've sent a message, including the URL to Dory. So far, I've been unable copy and send her the post, for some reason.
What if, instead, we only have a submission deadline every other week, and then have the two hosts figure out a way to divide them up about evenly (either alphabetically, thematically, or something else) and the first half goes up immediately, and the second half goes up a week later? This solves the problem of not having blogs evenly spaced throughout the alphabet, but introduces the problem that the second installment will have no posts less than one week old. To solve this, we could simply put all news and current events type posts in the first installment. Some blogs, including mine, rarely post on time-sensitive stuff (all the recent fuss about Quake magazine notwithstanding), so it doesn't matter to me if I get put off for a week.
Martin,
I think this is an exellent idea! You certainly have my vote. I believe that perhaps some don't read the carnival because it's too long. This certainly would resolve it fairly.
Martin,
This is an excellent idea! I think it's a fair system and would encourage those who don't read the Carnival because of time contraints.
You get my vote..:)
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