First of all, I want to let my readers know two things:
- This is not an official Capsuleer posting. It is my own personal opinion.
- I have nothing but respect for what CrazyKinux has done for the EVE community, even if he doesn’t really blog that much anymore himself, aside from linking to everything else everyone else does.
Seriously, CK was the man motivated enough to organize the efforts of all us EVE bloggers, promoting the crap out of our work, consistently pushing us forward to ensure EVE players had the best blogs available to them at any time.
Others have tried this before, and since, but for whatever reasons have failed where CK has not. So kudos on that.
Having said that, and let me make it clear that I am not intentionally dissing CK, and that I am not speaking on behalf of the Capsuleer dev team, I can continue.
Ok, have I covered my ass enough?
The voting for the new blog pack is nothing short of a popularity contest. There. I said it.
Does it ensure that the best blogs make it to the Blog Pack, and therefore make it into Capsuleer? Nope. It just means people who are even aware of CK’s post get a chance to promote themselves and their friends.
Make no mistake, I voted, and I’m proud to be on the blog pack. Still, doesn’t mean we’ll get the best of the best.
There are many blogs I read in Capsuleer that probably won’t make the cut. That makes me sad personally because obviously I enjoy them.
There are also EVE related blogs I read not in Capsuleer or the Blog Pack that I would like to see in both.
I truly am rambling today.
I’m just a little miffed at the process, and the possible affect it will have on bloggers as well as an application I am very proud to be a part of.
If it were up to me, and it just might be half up to me as far as Capsuleer is concerned, I would simply add the new blogs to the existing Headlines list in Capsuleer, as I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
I wouldn’t want to lose a single Capsuleer user due to one of their favourite blogs being removed.
Anyway, CK, if you read this, know that I do appreciate you, but hope you understand my comments. If were a community with a million bloggers, I would understand the need for the “blogfather” to trim the fat. But we’re not, and if anything, I think the Blog Pack should grow, or at least consider removing blogs that don’t post original content at all.
Dear readers, if any of you feel the same way, please comment. Comment here in this post. Comment on CK’s post. Comment at the Capsuleer forums. Make yourself heard.
What good are differing opinions if we can’t discuss them as mature adults?
ROC'S RAMBLINGS 
Well said Roc. SO many people love and enjoy reading the blogs on the Capsuleer application. I for one would be a very sad guy indeed if people were removed. Now granted it is HIS list but perhaps we could have one of yours then might we get the best of both worlds? Without your application I know news of my mulish tidings would never have reached so many, the same goes for CK’s promotion of my blog as well…without the two of you I would just be a lonely ole mule plodding along….instead of striving to write stuff worthy to be showcased. I see it as a honor and a privilege to be mentioned and strive to maintain a level of work and commitment that I think it deserves…but that’s just me….
I agree with your sentiment and many have gone to his site and shown much support for me(and you as well I might add) which is very nice to see.
I still just hate popularity stuff.
Amen, brother.
Your point about the blog pack being a massive circle jerk is correct, Roc, and I’m glad that a member of the Pack has the balls to point that out.
1) I don’t read the blogs through Capsuleer, mostly because I don’t read most of the blog pack.
2) The only reason I would want to be in the blog pack is to be featured in Capuleer. (Yes, your app is awesome, so thank you for that.) And while the blog pack may bring more readers to my blog, I would be unable to play by CrazyKinux’s strict set of rules. Am I going to link to blogs that I don’t read or find interesting just because they are in the blog pack? You’ve got to be kidding…
So, possible sollutions for you guys:
1) Keep capsuller the way it is now, featuring only the current blog pack.
2) Feature only the new blog pack.
3) Get rid of the thing all together. (Taking out features? WAT!? 😛 )
4) Add all the EVE blogs.
5) Add a totally awesome and super rad Capsuleer RSS reader. That can’t be too much more work, right? 😉
I get this response, and I think a few other bloggers share it. I also am wary of the blog pack from time to time as I’m afraid it keeps me from seeking out other newer blogs that are well done. But for that, there are other feeds, other web portals.
So I’m not really sure why “popularity” in this case is a bad thing. What makes a blog popular? I would guess its quality. Why else would people enthusiastically promote/vote for a blog? It’s an acknowledgement that of all the blogs in existence about the subject of EVE, this reader enjoys these the most, and is most likely to read them. Enough people do that, and suddenly the Blog Pack is a lot more democratic, and probably more ‘essential’. Where as before, CK just picked his favorite blogs, for the most part. I’d much prefer this new method.
But I do disagree that we need to limit it to 20 blogs. I would guess CK is wary of the BP getting too unwieldy, too hard to manage. Can’t blame him, but cutting it down in half is maybe a little heavy handed.
Thems my thoughts.
I agree that cutting the blog pack down makes it more of a popularity contest than getting rid of old blogs. There needs to be more moderation rather than just taking the easy way out and just allowing 20 other blogs. Furthermore, I know of more than 20 blogs that should be in the pack. Setting a number doesn’t ensure quality. Proper review of the blogs in the pack will.
I’ve seen many posts of “I’ve not posted in a few months” or “I’m going to focus on other things for a while”. This shouldn’t happen with proper review of the blog pack. Sure, I know it’s a lot of work and CK is a busy man, but it feels like he’s taking the easy way out by limiting the blogs to the most popular (which ensures they will post, if nothing else for adsense).
Maybe it’s time for CK to have someone else keep a watch on the blog pack. Maybe he should set more stringent rules as to what can and can’t get in. But reducing it to a certain number to make it easier to administer shouldn’t be the route taken, in my opinion.
And really, do you think 20 blogs will cover all the different aspects of EVE life? Wormholes, Alliance warfare, missioning, ratting, piracy, etc.
There are many issues with CK’s blog pack, some of which you touch upon here. The need for a revamp is being done simply because CK did not have the time to maintain it. So, what happens when he disappears again?
In all honesty, the best blogs get themselves known for their content. CK laid the ground work and we picked it up from there. Do we really need his blog pack anymore?
Perhaps a simpler solution would be to stream the fees from evebloggers.com. That way, content from all the active blogs would be present in Capsuler and no one would be left out.
I wish it were that simple my friend. Each blog hosting service constructs their blogs in a different way, which we then have to parse out for Capsuleer. Blogs that don’t use any service at all, have to be manually parsed out.
It’s a lot of work to get some of them setup.
It may be a viable option for the Capsuleer dev team, but we’ll have to examine it more closely.
Yeah. Of course, if you had a custom template for importing, we can create a seperare rss feed in evebloggers.com for capsuleer. That way, it would stream just fine. We could try something.
I too have reservations about it being a popularity contest, hence why I refrained from posting a list of my own. I’d much prefer a feed that could show the best articles as submitted (and voted on?) by readers. But you lose flow of a single feed that way. I guess a combination reader / reddit type idea would work. But a lot of work I imagine to implement and keep functional.
Well, evebloggers.com already streams all the known eve blogs now. We just keep adding new blogs to the feed and remove blogs that go missing.
Most of that work is already done. The site pretty much runs itself.
As for voted on articles, well, we are kind of doing that on Twitter with retweets. Add a hash tag for ebp, eve blog pack, on a retweets and create a search feed from that and you have your feed perhaps.
Thoughts?
I don’t think I really started to feel rubbed the wrong way until I noticed people posting stuff on their own blogs like “Go to CK’s site and vote for me!”. Once everyone starts just rallying their readers to go spam CK’s comment page, then it really does become 100% a popularity contest.
I think the sentiment echo’d above to allow people to enter their own RSS feeds or create their own blogroll via Capsuleer would be awesome. Perhaps allowing people to submit their blogs for entry into Capsuleer would be nice too and then just organize blogs into categories so that there is some organization to the massive amount of potential content. Obviously up to you and your development buddy what you want to do Roc but I think it would be great to support the entire blog community as opposed to just 21 bloggers who happen to be part of an “elite” pack.
fair enough mate and granted I asked people to go and voice their opinions honestly and openly…if they like someone else say so it what I wrote.
I think people who want interactions are a bit fearful that they will not have any if they get removed, no one really likes less interaction ( those in this camp) hence they are a bit fearful and ask those that like them to say so at one collection point.
For those reading comments…
Another feature for the Headlines section we are considering is a rating system, where the top rated posts for a given time period would be in their own category, giving our users a quick list of top picks to read on the go.
Haven’t explored it too much yet. Still testing if it has merit.
I think CK is the best thing to happen to the EVE blogging community since they keyboard, but I have to agree with Roc on this one.
Still I can appreciate they why. To do this right CK needs to make sure every pack member is still meeting those high standards that got them on the list in the first place. That can’t be anything close to easy or time-effective.
If this is what the workload as wrought, I say drop the pack entirely and just have the blogroll. Capsuleer users will have the same choices (of course Roc’s and CK’s blogs should be locked in) and CK will find he has free time to, oh I don’t know… play EVE.
Roc,
I agree with you here and it is one of the reasons why I haven’t posted about the blog pack change on my blog. Not that I am a member of the blog pack, or that I would even make a good member of it, just it seems all too much like a familiar contest. In the end however I think that the original blog pack was picked by CK’s favorites and should remain that, but it is the link to capsuleer is what makes it a much higher visibility item. Love that app by the way, very nice work.
Back to my point, because of the exposure capsuleer gains any blogs associated with it or the blog pack, it is a much sought after position. I was reading an interesting discussion about relevance on the OOC-Chatsubo forums and I think it applies here a little. “Everyone” wants to be relevant in eve, to have a little bit of their own limelight, e-fame or whatever. Hence when people see that chance they tend to head for it and forget why they initially started their blog. My blog was made to entertain me, and while it does that I still consider it a bit of rubbish. I’m shocked I have the readers I do 🙂
In the end I agree with Spectre’s comment, people asking for votes just makes it worse. It will be interesting to see how CK tallies the votes and comes up with his new list. In the end we will all have to see how that turns out before the next step can be made.
Thanks again for all your and your dev teams work on Capsuleer!
While I submited a list to CK’s blog, I actually read a heck of a lot more blogs every day. My Google reader is chock full of ’em and I keyword search daily to see if any new ones have popped up. So, really the Blog Pack is irrelevant to me, but if there is going to be such a thing it should encompass the most widely useful and entertaining. CK is ultimately going to have to be the final arbiter.
First off, thanks Roc for putting this post together and getting the discussion going on this. I was, in retrospect, much needed.
As for all the comments of popularity contest vs elite group of blogger, know that the Blog Pack has always been, in my mind, the latter. And that was still the case with this cleaned-up Pack, where I asked the community for their input. Though in this case I was going to have the community help me out in narrowing the Pack down to 20 blogs.
Having read all your suggestions and Roc’s advice, I’ve decided to be the final judge in choosing who’s in and who’s not. I know this won’t please everyone. That’s not my goal. My goal is to have the best group of EVE bloggers, in MY OPINION, together, doing what they do best! I’ve also decided to bump up the membership to 50, but only if I’m able to find 50 top-notch blogs on EVE.In the end, its my Blog Pack, and I’m the one responsible for the quality of its members. I need to make sure I keep that quality as high as possible.
There, I said it.
Now, let’s roll-up my sleeves and start putting that list together.
Well said CK, As I said on twitter the blog pack should be the creme del la creme of EVE bloggers and act as ambassadors to new eve players, non-eveplayers, and non-blogging eve players. A popularity contest is not really the best way to choose such an elite group, and TBH I can think of no-one better qualified to put such a list together.
I also concur, may the best 50 win!
Well said indeed CK, good luck finding the 50 best bloggers, there seem to be so many good ones out there! And seemingly more cropping up every day. You have definitely put a hard road out in front of yourself, so I wish you well on that. Don’t worry I am sure people will let you know in spades how they feel, good or bad. It is truly great of you to admit and change your stance upon community response.
Well I guess that settles that. 😉
Here’s another option for you guys, Roc:
Paid sponsorships. I imagine it will have to be in ISK, otherwise CCP might go nuts on you, but yeah, instant revenue stream. Sign me up.
I am still wondering what happens to CK’s blog pack when he goes inactive again. Will we have the same issues that we are having now?
Well I think you basically just made the point yourself. It is HIS blog pack. If he goes inactive then it will simply go unmaintained. There isn’t anything stopping anyone else from making their own packs or feeds. CK isn’t being paid (other than Google ads I think?) and he doesn’t have some official position at CCP or any blog related company. As a result, I don’t see why it matters what he does with his blog pack or how it would be affected by his possible future absence.
Ga’len, I just finished writing a rambling reply that would put War and Peace to shame, but figured I would just cut to the chase:
1. I think the blogs incorporated by Capsuleer should be broken down into categories similar to the ones used by CCP in their forums (PvP, Missions and Complexes, Industry, etc). Within Capsuleer I can chose which categories I want displayed (note that Capsuleer already does this to some extent).
2. I think Eve Bloggers should maintain the list and it should be the top 20 or 25 in each category as voted by readers. (This would necessitate a directory on Eve Bloggers) Also note that with this scheme a blog may show up in more than one category and may also move from category to category over time. This is good and as it should be.
3. Capsuleer should refresh the list from eve bloggers once a month
4. To be eligible the blog must be able to export its data in a format friendly to PS and Capsuleer (RSS?) to minimize the effort required from the Capsuleer side
Now, the icing on the cake would be the ability from within Capsuleer to rate articles as you read them, and then have this aggregated up to the blog rating on Eve Bloggers.
I personally think that Capsuleer users should direct the content they see on Capsuleer and this is one way to do it. IMHO it is the next best thing to having the ability to add any blog we want to Capsuleer but with the benefit of presenting new users with content who would otherwise not know what to read.
$0.02 worth only. You get what you pay for 🙂 Trimmed for brevity.
You’re right that you, unfortunately, won’t make everyone happy, CK, and I do give you credit for listening to the community on this one. Best of luck with your re-formed blog pack.
As for Ga’len’s concern, I’m not honestly sure that’s a huge deal, at least not a deal-stopping one. What happened during the course of CK’s last absence? Some of the blogs that were on the pack died off, its true, but most of them stayed at least semi-active. Unless and until the vast majority of blogs in the pack are inactive and CK isn’t around to trim the dead brush, I really don’t think this’ll be a problem. Most of the blogs on the pack now have been posting steadily for years now, I don’t see a particular reason for all of them to drop off at once.
And let’s not forget, this has been CK’s pack from the beginning. If Capsuleer wants to go their own way, they’re certainly able to.
Figure its time I join in on this.
The rational behind Capsuleer using the Blog Pack as a source for content was, back in the day I needed a good source of contend to present to users.
I didn’t want to maintain that list my self. I already spend enough time writing Capsuleer that I didn’t want to also have to police a list of writers as well.
At the time the choice was easy. These days the waters are muddled a bit.
Adding a social aspect to the content in Capsuleer is an interesting idea that I like. It could be a very good way to help bubble great content up to the top and get it viewed by lots of people.
Some background on how Capsuleer deals with feeds. Everything Capsuleer consumes for headlines is RSS. If your site/blog/what ever can output a sane feed, then Capsuleer can use it.
The phone its self doesn’t do any of the heavy lifting (I moved all that off the phone early on in the 2.0 release cycle as it was really slow on the little guy). So the Capsuleer server fetches and processes the feeds and then delivers them to the 40,000 uses on demand.
I can control all the categories as well as the contents of each category from the server. I can update them on demand when ever is required. There is a lot of flexibility that the current system has.
One thing that people often ask for is the ability to add their own entries to Capsuleer. Hopefully you can see that the current system doesn’t allow that as easily as I would like. There may be an option to allow user entries that are loaded locally and don’t involve the server (at the cost of speed of refreshing those feeds).
That being said, I think I might take some of the ideas being tossed around and roll them into my 2.1 release work.
I am going to be watching the results of what goes on here with a close eye. It’s going to dictate how Capsuleer rolls out things going forward.
CK has been good to Capsuleer by allowing us to include the Blog Pack and we have been good to the Blog Pack. But for me, in the end its about delivering quality content to the Capsuleer users. And delivering content those users want to see.
chris.
The one thing I have liked about the capsuleer/blogroll is the fact that it is a variety of viewpoints on the one game. I read everything, though I do not plan to colonize wh space I like to read about those who have. Same goes for ninja looters, pirates, etc.
The partnership of the blogroll and Capsuleer has been a good one but while one has chosen to close ranks I think it is time for the second to grow. Sorted or unsorted would not matter to me, I do not need other folks votes to find the authors I like and those who do not give me anything new.
Sorting categorizes and a few of the Bloggers would defy that sort of ‘boxing’ in the very way they write. Those who do a bit of everything, those who write opinion pieces on the game as a whole, and those of us who have yet to figure out what the hell we are doing anyways.
The i-pods are getting bigger. Lets let capsuleer grow with them.
(I confess to being motivated by self interest as I know I have little hope of ever being read, otherwise)
We are all dancing around an issue here, advertising exposure for one’s blog in Capsuleer.
Roc, this forums link mentions how someone might get themselves listed separate from CK’s blog pack. Is this something that is possible:
http://capsuleer.evesuite.com/forums/index.php?topic=265.0
If this is still an option, that may be the way to resolve this issue. That way, the singular decisions of one popular blogger do not exclude those who don’t win his “popularity contest”.
I didn’t read that wall of comments so no doubt I’m repeating what others have said. I almost never read blogs on Capsuleer. Why? Because when I read and want to comment, I want to do it right that second. Capsuleer doesn’t let me do that so while I love the app for its primary purpose, what it does with blogs is “meh” given the way I prefer to read/respond to blogs. Capsuleer could do its own blog list … perhaps some kind of random sampler that pulls 20 or 30 from a list of most active ones. That would avoid popularity contest syndrome.
I would pay ISK for a google reader bundle to import all active eve blogs into it.
I skipped the wall of comments but I am really glad you made this post. I kind of was a bit miffed about the 20 thing but in the end I got over it and accepted it for what it was fearing that as a new blogger by opening my mouth I would have made enemies.
I am glad that you wrote what a lot of us were thinking and I fully agree with what you have to say.
http://www.crazykinux.com/2008/06/eve-online-blog-pack.html
^
for the g.reader adder