We have a lot of wonderful blogs on SCN. Many are full of insight, thought provoking, increase our knowledge or are even inspiring. For examples see Blag's best blogs picks from 2012. Unfortunately with opening our blogs to all in the new SCN many have complained that the blog quality has gone down and that we have many blogs which provide little to no value. I believe that a joint effort can raise the blog quality in our community. I’d like to provide a guide for helpful blog moderation to be applied by the ENTIRE community, not only our dedicated SCN moderators and space editors. Together – we can make a difference and increase the quality, decrease the noise.
First everyone should understand what constitutes a good blog. Many great resources already exist on the topic and I’ve rounded up a few here:
Lets assume we’ve encountered a blog which does not meet the SCN standards. What can be done?
- If connected to the author you can direct message (DM) them and keep the critique private (or reach out via email if they’ve shared their mail in their profile).
- Write a politely worded comment on the blog itself. Be positive (encouraging) and helpful. For example, if you’ve encountered a basic blog whose information was covered in the past you could write “Glad to see a new blogger however this content has been blogged about in the past. Please search before blogging to discover what has been covered previously. If you find a new topic or present a new edge to it, you will have many more followers/views and greater interaction with your content.”
- Ratings are an additional way to make a point to an author. This might be the recommended route for a blogger whom you’ve tried to reach out to before and you’re not sure they understand. A low rating from a few people might garner understanding that it is not just one person’s view.
- If you encounter content which should not be on SCN, for example something plagiarized; please mark it as abuse, clearly stating the reasoning in the comment.
The flipside is to remember to actively encourage quality blogs by ‘liking’ them and rating them highly. Include positive comments, especially to new bloggers, for their interesting posts.
Together we can shape the future of SCN blogging!
**Please note that this post refers to community blogs (posts written in an SCN space). Personal blogs are more lenient; they are not awarded points and allow for more ‘ranting’ types of posts and little to no moderation. Although for those wishing to guide, many of the same can apply there too.
