I've been (and others) have been thinking about this for a while:

Would anyone like to help revive cB News?

- - -

Also, related to this, would anyone be interested in creating a cB music magazine? It would be similar to cB News with different articles and reviews and such, and maybe a photography section if someone goes to a concert and takes pictures and stuff.

I would definitely want to, but I've been getting a lot of school work lately.

What would the responsibilities be?

Responsibilities like what? Like job positions, or how often we would seek contributions?

What we would write about and how often we write, I guess.

Do you guys need different people for different subjects/sections or do you get a few people to do the while thing?

A music magazine would be awesome. I love the idea. I'd like to help if I could (with reporting/reviews, stuff like that), but I dunno, school keeps me really really busy.

To answer your question about how often, I figured once or twice a month.

I'm not sure of all the components the old cB News had, but I remember editorials and music reviews (Brie was great at that), and there were poetry submissions too, I believe, and also cB related news stuff. Anyone one cB News can correct me and/or add on to this list I made up. The music magazine should have reviews, information about upcoming releases, and editorials, and whatever else appears in a music magazine.

Contributors: There should be a core group for both "magazines," as well as voluntary submissions by other members (freelancers). I think that's pretty similar to the setup of cB News, again, someone who was involved with it can better explain how it came about.

Well, I'm thinking if we do do a music magazine it could be like once a month or two. (Carrie beat me to it)! That way those who have outside obligations such as school will have plenty of time to contribute something if they want.

Yeah, that sounds good. A month or two for each issue gives more than enough time for people to do their reporting and stuff, even when tied up with other activities. And you could be a freelancer, like Madame C (Carrie?) said, which would work for me. [:

^ Yep, my name's Carrie.

When we tried to revive cB news over the summer, there was positive feedback, but in the end people lost interest and nothing was accomplished because no one was turning in articles. And that was during the summer. Now that school's going on, I don't think a newsletter could be accomplished unless it was a once-a-month type of thing.

I think it would work if each issue came out once every two or three months seeing as most are busy with other things.

I'd be willing to submit things randomnly because my schedule is often hectic.

Hopefully, this will actually be executed on time and we can get the next issue out.

Yeah I would definitely help with this.
Last attempt died off. I kept coming back but nothing happened.

I'm sure deadlines would help keep us on track. Would we be using the cBnewstaff forum again?

As for concert photography, I've never really gone to a real concert. Not that many people come here.

Like it was stated before, the biggest problem is that people are intially interested, but when push comes to shove, they don't contribute things according to deadline. I'm all for it, but it's like pulling teeth; I would know. It flopped both times.

2 revivals, two strikes...

Im willing, but i may or may not be able.

So pick people we know won't flake out. I don't necessarily want a position or anything (I'm not a great writer), but I'd gladly help out in any way possible.

So yeah, just wanting to express interest in getting this back up and running.

Budump.

I'm guessing we would, though I haven't seen anything new over there.

Normally, I'd be totally on board, but I'm horrible about deadlines. But I would love to.

^ Deadlines, psh. There's always a way around those. My thoughts for the revamped cBNews was for it to be extremely flexible on submissions and so on. Or maybe it could be a constantly evolving thing, kinda like a blog? What do you guys think?

This seems fun, I would love to be involved with this.

I'd love it if you'd bring cB news back. As Alvin said, I'd love to be involved as well.

alright. so. idea idea idea.

createblog. a site about blogs. SO WHY THE HELL DON'T WE HAVE OUR OWN BLOG?

we have people who can write. CB news proved that. The type of articles we did for CB news were basically what would go in a blog.

The only major change from CB news would be that publishing would be continual. We'd still go through editing and such.

so yes. where to put it? well, i would certainly like it to be on the front page, but that is unlikely at the time. so i don't know.

LOVE this idea... better in my opinion than a revival of CBNews 1.0...

But, i imagine it will have to wait for CB4, which is a pain... or... are we on CB5 now?

^cBnews!! I miss that.

QUOTE(sadolakced acid @ Jan 8 2007, 11:26 PM)

The only major change from CB news would be that publishing would be continual. We'd still go through editing and such.

so yes. where to put it? well, i would certainly like it to be on the front page, but that is unlikely at the time. so i don't know.

Would the articles be open to editing by everyone, perhaps in a fashion after that of Wikipedia? Or would the articles be proofread and approved before becoming visible to the public?

I'd probably expect this sort of project to be linked on the homepage (similar to http://allhiphop.com) and then threaded into its own forum (perhaps within a new forum suborganization with the next version of cB).

Whatever the case, I'm down as an editor, as usual.

Would it be possible to keep this idea in a Wiki? That style of site is ideal for collaborative writing IMO.

well, i think it'd be easier to simply do what we did for newstaff, except without a deadline for everything.

sure, we might have weekly articles, but otherwise, contributers would submit whenever they want, it'd get edited and published.

the purpose is to attract more people to the community, so this would require more community support than cbnews had. Each post would need to allow comments.

Basically, we need to turn cB from a resource site into a content site. The costs of trying this are minimal, if cB is willing to do it.

This, to me, sound slike a mission statement. I LOVe it.

YAY! I love this idea. But how would we create a wiki format for the blog?

That's similar to an idea I posted in the revival thread, but no one got back to me on it:




Wiki is great for collaborative writing, but we're not exactly making a "resource" here, we're establishing a place for thoughts and ideas to be shared.

=]

You're right, let's keep with the times. No one reads newsletters anymore., they read blogs!

Yea I think this idea is pretty neat. Are were waiting on cB4

well, we could always start it now using one blog or another, and then incorporate it more when CB4 comes around

I like the idea. its like clique's origami - but slightly different.

Merged the two threads.

Say a createblog subdomain called "cbnews" is set up so that it works a bit like Origami. A blog (wordpress is most versatile) can be used to post news/updates and whatnot.

Or if a blog is implemented for individual members, that could work as well.

that sounds like a great idea...

but what the heck do we write about? music? fashion? other news? celebrities? what?

I'm really liking the idea of blogs for individual members and such.
Just a quick question, where would it actually be located?

But a blog for individual members doesn't make a community either. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that if it were to be implemented, but there should be one big community blog.


Whatever you want to write about.

Agreed.

If people aren't reading thereads, which is why they're actually here, they aren't going to read individual blogs.

I think this could be a really cool idea, and help to separate some of the "forum junk" from the truly creative and inspiring thoughts and ideas of the CB community.


Agreed. I love Wikis, but I don't think we'd want a community blog to follow a Wiki format. If someone posts his thoughts, we don't want them to get deleted or altered.

However, as Mona suggested, WordPress would be perfect (and WordPress has the benefit of being free, GPL'ed software, too ).


I think we should avoid just making it a purely news thing. A blog should be personal, i.e. it should discuss the personal thoughts and ideas of the writer. No, I don't mean that entries should be "Today I did this..." or whatever. But, for example, back when I was more active on CB, I commonly posted essays or other thoughts in forum threads; I'm thinking a community blog could function in the same way.

Of course, I don't think the staff should mandate what can or cannot be written.

^ Of course not. That makes it an oligarchy or an aristocracy. W00t for Democracy! =)

I meant that if the cBNews account were going to be used to publish the articles, then it could work that way. Sorry.

hell no! freedom of speech/press!

My only chief concern is allowing anyone to contribute to a community blog, without any oversight, might lead to a free-for-all regarding content. If the posts are disjointed, poorly written, or lack focus, the entire quality of the blog might decline to the point where it is unreadable. So on the one hand I'm against oversight, but on the other hand, I feel that there either needs to be a core team of writers/contributors, or there needs to be at least some editorial oversight.

My other issue is focus. I find that most of the blogs I follow regularly have some sort of overarching theme. For example, as a computer science student and budding software engineer, most of my blogs most-read blogs revolve around programming topics, or follow the development of specific software modules—or at least discuss these themes in some tangential way. I think that a CB community blog would be most successful if we at least had some sort of theme or goal in mind in publishing it—otherwise it's just a mismash of topics that might be best left to our own personal blogs (speaking of, mine hasn't been updated in months...).

Of course, I do read a few personal blogs (namely NSLog(); and The Dilbert Blog, if anyone's interested)—but truth be told, I don't visit them nearly as often as I do blogs with a focused theme.

I think that an editorial team which functions similarly to the way design staff work might be Ok.

Like, they assess submissions based on quality, rather than on theme, if you see what I'm saying. Tweak the odd typo, and limit anything which is outright inappropriate in association with CB, but leave the words of the author untouched

I don't like this concept. Why does it have to be only the staff that creates articles?

Why can't we just create a topic and allow any regular members to contribute articles by pming the news staff. Of course, you should include requirements for releasing articles.

Here's the fun thing. How about we select a random member to post an article? Then, we'll reward them with a title and the ability to post with no flood control. Eh?

Btw, we should select a random member who seems to post less. We should surprise them and make them feel welcome & appreciate. We'll use their username to be added to a list as an honor. This method will make cb cozy … a bit?

At the end of the month, staffers will select the best writers to be the next cb news staff!





edit: I'm confused.

Steven, I like your idea about randomly choosing members, but if the blogs were to go into place, I think it'd be better if have people go through peoples' blogs every once in a while to choose who'd write cB news..

But that wouldn't happen if cB News was in Wiki format.

Bah, I sorta don't get this either.

I don't think that idea was proposed, or at least seriously considered. There was the suggestion of some editorial oversight in a community blog, but I don't think the contributions were limited solely to staff members.

CB News has generally had a staff, yes, but the staff of CB News was open to anyone. So no, I don't think there would be a limit on those allowed to contribute.


Interesting. I don't know how and why flood control is attached to this idea.


Well, then it wouldn't be a random member, now would it? (Sorry, the mathematician in me is kicking in. )

i agree a theme could help, but with cB's diverse community it'd be hard to find a unifying theme.

what i'm going to say now is just what i envisioned it would be like when i thought of this idea.

first, we'd have a few weekly "column" type posts, for instance, a movie update, a music update, a politics update, etc. based mainly on providing information. We can also have focus articles on various topics

between these we'd have room for editorial comments on the information, opinion pieces and the like.

basically, it'd be like Time magazine in blog form, written by cBers.

cB news had good content, it was just delivered wrong. with a blog format allowing for individual up-to-date postings, as well as the ability of the community to comment, i think it will work.

so as for a general theme; i think providing a consice place for teenagers to receive information about their world might work.

Eventually, if it's possible to be integrated into cB accounts, it'd be very awesome if you were able to select which content you wanted to view; for instance, you could choose to not view "US politics" if you were not interested. unlikely to happen before the blog is sucessful, so don't dwell on this idea.


so, does this seem like something people would read?

and as for where this would be physically located? Well, i hope it could eventually be the front page. that is unlikely to happen immediately, but i hope we ccould start out with a "blog" or "news" link next to the "forums" link on the first page, or better yet, seperate with a sentence introducing it so we'd get more clicks.

and yes; this would be open to contribution from anyone. We would need editors to help choose what is quality enough to get in, and because this is a position of power, i think all editors should have a weekly column as well, to ensure we have enough columnists. Hopefully it will get to the point that the columnists will be able to post without need for pre-editing, although that would certainly be needed at first.

^ I really love your idea for it.