Anybody can post to a Neighborlogs site. While most sites using the Neighborlogs service are owned and operated by an individual content entrepreneur or small team of neighborhood volunteers, anybody can sign up to contribute a post to their local site. The result is often an expanded definition of what a neighborhood blog is and can be. Instead of a single, monotone voice, enabling open contributorship helps create sites that are more inclusive and cover the widest possible breadth of topics.
But all this newfangled Web 2.0 inclusiveness doesn't work without some good old-fashioned discretion. Nothing appears on a Neighborlogs homepage without being selected from the site queue by the site owner and contributors with special privileges. This layer of selection is what elevates the Neighborlogs community features above a basic message board or forum.
Posts on a site using the Neighborlogs service represent, for the most part, an elevation of the dialogue. It's not enough to slap up a title and a one-sentence question in this format. That's a perfectly acceptable dialogue on a message board or on LiveJournal. A post on a Neighborlogs site, on the other hand, is part show biz. A contributor needs to elevate the conversation to the next level with posts that are interesting, entertaining, provocative, funny, etc.
With all of that as prologue, here are some of the posts that probably won't make the homepage of my own neighborhood site, capitolhillseattle.com. I offer them as examples to help anybody interested in creating useful local content. Of course, knowing when to break your own standards is a key to keeping things interesting. But nine times out of ten, you're probably better off finding another forum for posts like these:
o Questions without answers
When is _____ going to open? What's the best _____ in the neighborhood? Both represent fine springboards for a fully formed post. But my site gets a lot of posts that don't go further than asking the question. To make the homepage, these posts require a little research into what is already known about the topic and should offer the readers some value like what you think the answer is given what is known. Heck, sometimes it's enough to add a great picture. But come to me with only questions? You know my answer.
o Already been posted posts
These ones are hard because it's not always easy for a contributor to keep track of the content flow on an active site. The solution is to do a quick search of the site for the topic you want to write about. Take a few minutes to find out where the coverage to date has taken the conversation -- then add your $0.02.
o Cross posts
Almost without exception, items posted to another site and my site won't make it out of the capitolhillseattle.com story queue. We're about unique, original neighborhood content. We don't want to waste time and space with things that people can find elsewhere.
o Rants and Raves
One of these slips through every now and then -- it can be hard to deny a decently written diatribe or love note to somebody's favorite restaurant. But the ones that usually do make it through come from an established contributor giving the rant/rave more weight. If you are a first time contributor and start things off with a "Kudos to the guy who saved my cat" post, it's probably not going to make the homepage.
There are a few examples of the types of content that won't make it over the homepage bar. The types that do make it are too numerous to list -- we're an eclectic neighborhood. And just because it doesn't make the homepage, doesn't mean the post is rejected. Lots of readers check out the site's queue page to see the entire flow of content. The goal is to maintain an open and inclusive site while maintaining the highest possible level of content craftmanship for the posts we do feature. It's a piece of good old-fashioned editorial judgement enabled by Neighborlogs technology.
