BlenderNation’s Future
I launched BlenderNation ‘YourNews’ a few days after Christmas. It was an experiment to see if a new approach to Blender community news was viable. After about three weeks, I have very mixed feelings about it and I think it’s time to make a decision on the future of BlenderNation. I’m asking for everyone’s advice on how to proceed.
The good
It seemed reasonable use the power of the community to drive the news, and I implemented a Digg-like system called ‘YourNews’. (using the Pligg software, in case you’re interested). On first sight, YourNews works fine – stories get submitted and people vote on them. If enough people vote for them, they get promoted to the front page. I no longer have to write most of the news – liberation! So far, so good. However…
The bad
There are a few side effects that I hadn’t anticipated. First, I believe that the quality of the news has dropped. Of course, I’m biased in this because it was me who used to do the news selection ;-). Still, there’s very little background information in the stories and they usually work as a way to get more traphic. I find the ‘new’ news uninteresting and hardly ever read it.
Also, community interaction has almost completely stopped. There are almost no comments on the posts, and the comments were the fun part of the site (well, sometimes not so fun, but that’s another matter).
Finally, I have always been proud of BlenderNation. With the new setup, I no longer have that pride and I feel more detached from the Blender community.
Editors
What to do? I want to return to the old setup with edited content but I no longer want to put in the hours I used to… Working with volunteer writers is of course always difficult. People come and go, and they’ll contribute something when they feel like it, which of course is fine. That does mean that I have to ‘fill the gaps’ though..
I’ve been thinking of making people ‘responsible’ for specific areas and I’m already in touch with candidates for the positions of Development Editor and Art Editor, and asked them to supply at least 2 posts per week. I’m sure I can think of more nice positions. Will this help? Do we need to actually hire editors? (Warning: a supermarket job pays better!)
Graphic design
Another thing I’d like your opinion on is the design of the site. Is the ‘old’ blue design still good enough for you, or do you think we should redo it? I wouldn’t mind a new, fresh look, but it’s a lot of work – if you think the site is still cool then we can put that idea back in the freezer.
And you?
So: what do you think? What should BlenderNation’s future look like? Your thoughts are much appreciated.
I think the site’s current design is fine, but even if it wasn’t, I think it’s more important to focus on keeping the site going, whether that means finding help or continuing to go it alone. What matters is getting that news and content out there, and a spiffy new design doesn’t mean anything if there’s nothing to apply it to.
I wish I had the time to step up to the plate and offer to help, but unfortunately I’m overcommitted as it is. I’m optimistic that there are folks out there who are willing and able, and hopelly you’ll be hearing from them. Good luck!
With the old site, the news felt ‘up to date’, and the community interaction felt alive and if a news story was posted it was worth reading. I have submitted many stories to BlenderNation and nearly all of them weren’t posted because they weren’t up to the quality of the site, and I respected that. Now I only read posts that have a tonne of votes, and I am visiting the site less.
how about to join both worlds in one?
i think it would be great have regular BN news aside PLIGGed news (only those above X votes, of course) , displayed in similar ways (but being able to clearly understand what comes from you and what from the pligg system).
Showing all news “toghether”, if BN (you) first publish a news article, and someone PLIGGs the same the PLIGGed one it won’t have many votes, because that would be “old news”. If a PLIGGed one appears first, and gets many votes, your job is helped by the community anyway.
So if you feel the PLIGG system is missing something important, you’re free to post a regular article.
If you just feel the PLIGG system is missing something important, another way could be, ithat you post articles in the PLIGG system yourself!
BUT comments should be free-of-registration as they are here, if possibile.
My 2c
I’m with you. I liked the old style of news better. It’s nice to see the other general submissions, as it brings a bit more to the table, but I found the old style articles more interesting and useful. For the submitted news, you might just go to the Blender Artists community and read up on what’s there. Blender Nation has been more than that in the past.
That being said, I think we all understand time commitments, so something is better than nothing. Best of luck finding your way forward.
These are great questions. I had the same impression about the Digg-style site. I really thought maybe it would be a good way to lighten some of your workload which I know is too heavy, but then I began to hope that things would eventually go back to the original style. There were some great little stories, but they often seemed to get lost in the shuffle, and the sense of community with the comments did seem to diminish. Something about having the focus on a single recent, highlighted, interesting story seems to be really worthwhile.
So here’s a suggestion. Why not do both? How about a highlighted story at the top with comments, like the current BN, and then, maybe to the side, a Digg-style news feed. The highlighted story could then change less frequently, maybe once every couple of days rather than several times a day, and it could be selected for more newsworthiness. This would also pre-empt some of the complaints people sometimes have about, say, non-Blender news or not-so-hot demo reels and the like, because those would go into the daily Digg-like column. So Blender news addicts could have something new with a lot of frequency, but we could also have a nicely written up “big” story to comment on and debate in the main area of the site? “Very special messages” from the management could also be highlighted as main stories.
Hopefully, this could at least allow you and the other BN editors to get a little breathing room. A third or a quarter of the amount of content you currently run would be enough for the main story area, supplemented by an endless stream of Digg-like news, nicely organized off to one side. One thing that the experiment did prove is that there will be no shortage of user submissions!
The design and implementation of such a site would take some time. Maybe we could have a fund drive to pay for you or someone else to do the redesign?
Blender Nation must have a “tutorial” section. Digg style can be useful for the fresh tutorials. On the other hand, news section is different. Tutorials, for example, are not news.
I hated the Digg style all the way. That said I completely understand the reasons you have :)
As others said before, a tutorials section with such a Digg style sounds like a good idea. For the news part, it’ll be great if you could harvest a number of collaborators having you on top just to verify the submitted items, something like a Chief Editor. If you have people you can trust, you can even switch that role or take it only a few days of the week.
Adverts in exchange for work could be used to attract such collaborators.
Having separate “departments” or news categories would also help the collaborators to focus on particular areas and reduce the amount of work.
Just a couple ideas. Best of luck !
i love the old design!!
and the bn search function works very good for me. I wouldn´t change it…
due to the last three weeks i realized what you did for us users the last 4 years!!!
you made a very good job!
I would even pay for your services.
THX LOT bart!!!
The “yournews” section sucks, I prefer traditional blendernation.
I think the forums are good enough for the “amateur” sharing
of news.
Old Blendernation was better. You know how to write good articles Bart, most of us don’t.
I don’t want to see 200 posts about 5 minuts blender models free to use. I don’t need em.
I don’t want to see self promotion for blender artists if they aren’t really really good.
I find art if I want, I want NEWS to read. Ok some good articles were made, but worked more like links to aother sites.
Go back to old blendernation, Bart you are not old enouth for retierment anyways. :)
The yournews was like blendernation died for a moment.
How about keep the “yournews” style and have it as a side tid-bit a sort of “community fed updates” section but clearly not as promoted.
If someone happens to post an interesting article about something, you could then flesh it out some and make it a primary post (but make sure it’s clear that you or another ‘editor’ will have the power to do just that if needs be).
I think that good sites don’t work without some pullhorses. If you do stop working on blendernation without having someone to take up the work, blendernation will die, because it will be nothing more than a forum with ratings.
What to do to make your life easier?
* Stick to the community news, so you do get more input. Cherrypick the good ones (without voting, but your judgement). Should get the time down from 1-2h to 10-15min.
* Get some more editors, but don’t specialize them (they’ll have their favorite themes anyways and will post more in their favorite themes than in others). They’ll help you cherrypicking, and if you see that the project runs good without you, take a break then.
The design is really getting old, but for a free spare-time project, it’s the content that counts. Change it if you feel like getting your hands dirty, but it’s still okay, if no one wants to work on the design.
Blendernation was the first real blender website I started to follow, and really the only one in my opinion that is worth following. It features quality news, and not just any story someone submits to your site (including mine) I respect that, I respect the fact that you are willing to say, hey I don’t know if your story/website/project is really going to go anywhere, I’m not going to post it now but hit me up in 6 months. THAT’S QUALITY CONTROL. I also understand the amount of time and energy it takes to put into a site. I think your design works, is it flashy, no but that doesn’t matter, it works we are all comfortable with it. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. As far as how to make it easier on you, I have no real input there. About the only thing I could think of is to maybe pass the torch to a trusted individual who has the fire that you once possessed for the site and the work. Best of luck to you, I hope that Blendernation will continue to be the quality site I get all my Blender news from.
peace
matthew/mofx
I say first off thank you. you have created a service that many have taken for granted and that is free of charge. I owe much of my blender skills (humble as they are) to the feeds on this site. I am a almost a daily follower. Here is my only complaint (but it is only preference and I offer it most humbly) — the different stories or news items are not updating in my RSS feed reader on the my.yahoo page–now I have to excruciatingly make another click to actually visit the site.
I will say I liked the old style a bit better graphically speaking. It was neat having different banners–from contests and all.
If people want better service they should pay for it in my opinion. You are taking your time to do this and just having the site up is a GREAT help to the blender community. Now I will admit I am a crazy bastard who uses ad-blocking software so ad- based revenue is useless on me, but for this type of info I would be willing to make a $20-40 a year subscription fee (about the cost of a magazine). I know it is info that is taken from abroad, but like you said you do the work and maybe with enough subscribers you would be able to hire some staff.
Dude this site still rocks.
Thanks again
Jikz.
I want the old format back pleas!
I personally think that the bad outweighs the good here. I have liked the new BlenderNation simply because you get MORE news, but the quality is far lower.
If you only get to pick one choice, I like the old BlenderNation. But why only pick one? I say you do both! Keep the old one on the front page with a link to the new one.
As far as the blue theme, I still like it. In fact, I like it a lot, and I think it is far from outdated – especially since the header is regularly updated.
I like the new one better, once I learned it / got used to it.
The problem with the new one is that the ‘bury’ button needs to be easier to spot.
What I find damn annoying about this old one is that now that I’ll make the reply, it will redirect me to a stupid white page telling me there’s someone registered with this nickname and that I have to log in… and I need to copy paste my comment before doing so and manage my way back to the article in order to post it… ffs… fucking annoying!
Thanks Bart.
With the pligg- approach quality, fun and community interaction dropped.
Nice experiment, but it failed imho. Might be a sister project and appreciated by some, but not my cup of tea.
I doubt that a mixed approach for all news would improve things, but it can be a good option for the tutorial section as people suggested.
How about going the slashdot/slashcode way, with moderators and such? You would be still involved a lot, but a varying amount of people c/would help out (as much as they want).
The old design works fine for me.
I vote quality before quantity.
Hi Bart
shocking news ? I’m biased about that….
Because there’s always a chance to make something which is really good even better……
I have quite a bit experience with computers as a whole, a bit less in Blender, a few years experience in writing articles for a comp. magazine and a huge amount of time (housebound). So if you need any help (yes I have the same amount of time in the future), just send a mail.
I was visiting the site via my RSS reader. Apparently the original feed went “dry” when you began the “Your News” and I thought updates had stopped. It might be beneficial if the highest voted Your News items were injected into the main RSS feed… somehow… automatically.
The digg-style site just isn’t the same. The quality of news has dropped, and of course I can’t get notified of news by Twitter.
A new design would be cool, although if you do make sure it’s done properly.
Just my two cents.
I like the old style better as well. The professional quality adds credibility to the Blender community.
I definitely feel your pain. It’s a lot of work to manage a site like this. I like the idea of getting people to manage different departments. Perhaps you can get to a point where you’re a supervising editor, which may reduce your workload while mentoring others to the level of quality you want will make things that much better. I do think Blendernation is an invaluable service that should continue at as high a quality as possible to preserve Blenders improving standing in the CG community.
Having said that, I do think there’s a place for the other style. It’s a chance to follow what others are doing, and perhaps with a certain number of votes (more than there are now) a story can be evaluated for promotion to the front page, with edits.
My 2 cents.
Thanks for your hard work.
I would like the background dark color instead of white as it is.
I am too newbie here to understand all the other things you said.
A bad example for that “Digg” mode was the “Octane” articles where at least on the 2nd one it was voted by the creators/devs and was more advertise than news. This system can quickly be used by commercial driven individuals.
Thanks but no thanks to that!
Bart,
This is one of the few sites I visit everyday, even on weekends, primarily because it is a great web site dedicated to a community of folks with a common interest. I understood the need for time off during the holidays, I even took a couple of days away from my job, but every day this week when I clicked the BN shortcut I was hoping the old site would be back.
This is the one site that continually has fresh news and information related to blender and as such it would be a shame to see it die or lose itself in the digg style news.
I would agree with the suggestion to leave the updates to every couple of days if that is what it takes but keep the site going and keep it the way it was.
Thank you for what you do for the community.
I’m with the most of them, the old style is better. I bet implementing the new stuff along side the old would end up as even more work though huh? Not to mention, I hated it after three days.
Could you make a group of moderators that have news channels? Or could they… yeah I like the old style is what I’m saying again here.
Seriously, there was no news. Tutorials? Yeah. However, I don’t ****remember a single thing being said about anything Durian or 2.5****.
I get the same problem as Dread Knight wrt logging in, by the way. My old handle was just Tony, but I can’t post with that name because I’m supposed to log in or something, but I don’t have any password or anything. A bit confusing.
I liked the old style.
Try keep a section that uses the Pligg style, but keep the old way the main focus.
Have the articles you/ editors choose or write be “Feature” articles and let the user submitted ones be the “daily news” or whatever.
So for instance at the top you could have 2 or 3 articles that stay there how ever long you want it to like you used to but whenever you or the editors put it up, and at the bottom have user submitted content if only to look through that and find some hidden gems that you could “feature”.
EDIT: Maybe somewhat like this:
http://www.dreamydesigns.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/creative-news.jpg
So main top part is where you have featured article and then the bottom ones are the Pligg style user submissions.
Do not change the design! The current design works fine and it doesn’t matter anyway. As long as the website is clear and easy to use (like it is now), the only thing that matters is interesting content.
I also vote for the old style the recent news felt like something that poped out from blenderArtist which ain’t bad by itself but made blenderNation look more like a forum than a news site. Also these “yourNews” were too trivial or looked like adverticing. I also missed the comments.
But it’s true that it’s way too time consuming to run a site like this one, I hope you can find good collaborators.
This digg system could be added to the main site as a sister project as some mentioned, using this vote stuff as they said to pull up a comunty news to the main site.
The site design could use a fresher look, but don’t think it as an urgent necesity, if you want to do it do it but take your time, if not so be it ^^.
Maybe a hybrid approach would work. Keep the Digg-style submissions but you manually promote worthy stories to the front page. That way, the community sees what does and doesn’t make a front page story. Over time, certain submitters/authors will demonstrate consistent ability to write/submit front page worthy stuff and those writers are promoted to admins, taking some of the load off of your shoulders.
Crawlie
Well first off, I believe the blue header and site design are really good right now. I think it’d be fine to leave them as is.
As for the voting system. It doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s basically giving the majority control over the news, which is not the best way to filter stories… in order to really make an accurate reasonably fair vote everyone would basically have to read every story anyway so I really don’t see the logic behind it too well. Not to say that voting is entirely bad, you could still have people vote on stories but I definitely prefer it better when you or someone else selects which stories get displayed.
You could potentially put more ads on the site. I’m not sure how much you’re getting paid, but that’s generally how news works in print to make the editor’s time worthwhile.
Finally, I think you can cut down the number of stories that get posted… I don’t know how this will effect your actual workflow as you’ll still have to sort through all the news to select which ones end up on the front page, but I know at least I personally don’t usually pay attention to every story posted. Weekdays its like 2 stories a day or something like that and most of it to me is not really interesting enough to go read. I’d say I read on average 1 or 2 stories a week. Generally I’ll read the Development Meeting Notes and anything about new features -occasionally there’ll be a great tutorial, but I think you could cut back on these areas:
-Individual tutorials (a single tutorial -unless its insanely useful I dont think is necessarily worthy of its own article -although the focus of the article could be about a tutorial author and just happen to mention his/her latest tutorial -but then let the community follow his future work if they’re interested)
-Projects (Films, Games, etc. -anything involving sort of an individual artist or group of artists -I sometimes read one of these that catches my eye but there’s usually like one every other day it seems.)
-Local Blender Conferences/Trainings/Meetings and Big Buck Bunny Screenings (These just annoy me because unless coincidentally I happen to live nearby one the story generally doesn’t interest me at all, and there’s usually not much to the story beyond the obvious title…)
So I think a cutback in those kinds of stories, maybe scaling back to 1 article a day or 1 every other day.
Or I would recommend only publishing really news worthy articles to the FRONT PAGE maybe a few times a week at most (Only really interesting stuff)
But have a separate page for each of those other topics… A tutorials section, Projects/Artist Bios Section, Local Meetings Listing -stuff like that, and those types of secondary news don’t necessarily need as much of a selection process so maybe you could get away just letting people post stuff THERE and vote on it.
You could always take a really interesting one from one of those pages and put it on the front page if you found it to be a really newsworthy item, but I think a scale-back in Front Page news is what would help the site and you personally the most.
That’s my 2 cents. You’ve done a great job with this site. It wouldn’t exist without your monumental efforts Bart. The community is definitely in debt to you. I hope whatever you decide to do will make you happiest.
I think, that while this has been a great experiment, there are definitely some major flaws with the current system.
Personally The reason i Loved coming to Blendernation (the old/origional version). Was to read the very good quality articles, and news from the blender community. The articles were well written, and There were often usefull links, or Relevant info (about the Durian team for example)…
The new site, is i believe, a step backwards, and seems like its only purpose is to link to blendervideos.com
We already have BlenderArtists.com, if we want to discus / show off our work, and blendervideos.com to showcsase the tutorials, so as far as i can see , the yournews feature didnt really serve a purpose.
My Conclusion:
I would like to see an implimantation of both sites, but perhaps in a rather small way, for instance, Blender YourNews could simply be a section on the blendernation site with the Current Blendernation site, still acting as the MAIN, or FRONT page to the website…
Or Blender YourNews Could be a sort of sidebar app..?
Eitherway, whilst i realise the much easier task of running YourNews, to having to keep the current system up and running, i feel it would be a big loss to the community to loose Blendernation, as it currently stands…..
Sorry for what may seem like negative feedback, I am a web designer / programmer myself, and i understand how long it must have taken to build/program Blender YourNews.. but i dont feel its the right direction for this site.
Hope this Helps
CalumK
I managed to get an article onto the front page with your new system (thanks all who voted) but I preferred it when you were doing the editorial. Many thanks for your 1-2hrs per day you have been spending, since the new system started I’ve probably racked up 15 mins per day looking through blendernaton filtering the interesting news for myself as the votes don’t seem to reflect my personal choice of what’s interesting.
Digg it’s self suffers from content being controlled by a relatively small percentage of the top users. Great content is regularly dug and only gets 1-3 diggs then sometimes weeks later it’s dugg by a top user and it zips right up to the top.
Possibly as some have already suggest a hybrid may be the way to go. I hope you can get some help.
All the best,
Alex.
I liked the old style of news better.
And i wisited it min. twice a day.
Now is more news more mess…
i agree with the general consensus, the old moderated BlenderNation was much more effective than the community submission method. relegating the unmoderated submissions to a sidebar sounds like a reasonable option, with minimal redesign. i do not know what to suggest to improve motivation / compensation.
Okay, so here is what I suggest:
1. Keep your current new page layout, but make the background color something other than white and put the banner back on top.
2. Keep the Digg system – Call it the “Best of Blender Community News” – put it on some page somewhere.
3. Make a “Best of the Best” section where you hand-pick the best stuff to showcase on the main page.
4. Get a couple of volunteers to help edit.
5. Enjoy life!
i miss the old blenderNation the relevant, potent, and interesting news.
Vote for the old Blender Nation.
I was a fan of the old Blender Nation… almost always really good, quality news.
I think “reader-voted” content actually would be really best handled if people used the blender subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/blender/
Which, actually, some people do, and it is okay.
I think a moderated blendernation has been helpful to the community though… it’s like what BoingBoing is to maker/steampunk/etc culture. An intelligently filtered blog, which is what blendernation is, has a role in keeping those communities live and active.
I prefer a tutorial section using digg style system so we can see new tutorials everyday. I like sharing Blender 2.5 tutorials or documents but these tuts or docs may not be related with “news section”.
I vote for the old Blender Nation forever, because it’s very clear and amazing.
The important things are the quality of information.
Thanks a lot for your past and future work!
I have been watching the community news through the RSS feed.
My opinion is that the lack of traffic and comments from this is due to the fact that title links in the feed link straight to external sites not the blendernation news page, which eliminates the chance to comment on this site.
I must admit. I only checked blendernation in hope that it had returned to it old self. In my mind is was not what blendernation was. But IMO anyway. Must admit that there where some news I dont think Ill ever see. Even with the old Blendernation. But in the end I miss the old blendernation :P
Bart: The Blender Community Loves You.
You’ve worked your butt off for it for the last 4 years. Maybe the baton should be passed.
The amount of work you’ve done for us is unaccountable.
I don’t know if there’s anything else to say.
There’s two roads.
One, keep writing for BlenderNation. Keep on going.
Two, Pass the baton, and go on with Blender or whatever else you love to do.
I personally like the the digg system and hope it does not go away entirely, but also like the old “quality news” of past also. I think you should split the difference, have a “news” section that is edited by you guys, but then also have a “whats happening right now in the blender community” section that is digg style. Best both worlds, and the digg style brings some gems out that would have gone un-noticed otherwise.
The site design is not really that important, or the features, the one thing I come here for is to see the blender news, so as long as you keep doing that, i’ll be happy as a clam. Thanks for taking the time to make all these postings.
Bart, first of all, I want to thank you very much for your hard work on this site, and for the quality of the service that you provided to us.
I think that everyone is risponsible of the lack of the quality of the new voting system.
I believe a lot in self teaching. As I wrote to you some days ago, I think that the fact that most people who voted for news or tutorials (for or against) haven’t left any comments has not helped writers (submitters) to understand what was appreciated or not and for what reason.
For people submitting informations, I’m almost sure that comments whould have helped a lot to show them what to do next time.
I agree that all my own comments may not have been very deep in their content, but at least I tried to show my interest (or not) with more than a simple click.
Not everyone has acces to fresh news from the hard core of Durian team or the Blender foundation, and I perfectly understand that everyone articles has more chance to be a tutorial than an scoop about an important recent or upcomming event.
This said, if nobody takes even few seconds of his time to write a single line of comment, how to know what to add, remove or improve in a next article ?
The votes counter is not enough informative by itself. It is not a sweepstake with as award the amount of votes. Writers must know what people think of their news or tutorials, what they like or dislike in them. Otherwize, they will continue to feed the site with low quality content, or will simply stop posting.
This happens on forums, but Blendernation is much more than a forum. And if we want quality news, we must all be active to help keeping the level of quality that we all like to see. Not only as writers, but also as readers !
For the visual aspect of the site, I like the current blue one and I dont think that this point is the most important : Content first !
BlenderNation was my favourite website for over a year.
I checked it about 4 times a day for the last year and Each time I saw a new article, I immidiatly sat to read it.
The quality of the news was amazing (I can only dream GIMP would had a site at this level), and I sat fascinated each time.
Since the “YourNews” revolution, I found myself skipping most of the content since it was videos, or some minor tutorials. What I liked about the old BlenderNation was the fact that every article was something that would interest nearly every blender user. However, now I find more than half of the ‘YourNews’ articles as non-important and it really decreases my motivation to check up with the site.
Each time I navigate to BlenderNation, I hope that the ‘YourNews’ season has ended, and I’m disappointed to see my browser redirecting me to ‘YourNews’.
I don’t mind having even half the amount of news we had untill christmas. as long as I see quality articles by my favourite reporters/editors =)
About the site redesign, I like the simple look it has. Seeing stuff that don’t try to rapidly change, really warm my heart. I like the simple-warm feeling of this community site.
If you really want a new design, please stay simple. Also if the site will be redesigned (which I hope not) I’m willing to help in it.
Please keep BlenderNation the old home I’m used to.
i gotta say, i’ve been waiting for it to go back to pre-yournews Blendernation. the quality has dropped immensely, and i don’t really read most of them. i’d say you should go back to regular posting plus a select few community-made posts that collect a large (at least 25, probably more) amount of votes.
just MHO…
DrJ
To add something to my previous post and because I read some proposal about increasing the amount of votes, I’d like to say that it would be in my humble opinion more useful to take in account the votes only from people leaving a comment.
The reason why is that a simple click is too easy ! If you take the time of reading all the news, you will certainly vote for several of them, and not only for the best of the day, or the best of the news that you have read. This leads to promote on the front page many news instead of the best one.
Why not have your cake and eat it, too?
Just post your stories the same way everyone else does, and if your articles and news are savvier than everyone else’s, it’ll get put on top.
Another option would be to include both. You can write half as many articles now, while the community adds their say-so.
Please go back to the old – it was SOOOOOOO much better! :) Thanks!
First of all, good job on this website!
Like Crawlie, a hybrid approach would be nice, and try to get some help of other writers.
Cheers!
Erwin
I agree with what many others are saying–the old style is much better overall, and I really enjoyed the quality you brought to it.
I think that to lighten your (and your editors’) workload, maybe it would make sense to have the PLIGG site for tutorials, projects just starting, meetups, etc. and focus the old-style BlenderNation main site on covering Blender dev news and outstanding art/projects–and maybe a weekly roundup “most interesting of the PLIGG posts” type article (which would hopefully just be copy/pasting a dozen worthy links, maybe it could even be automated).
@MFBlender : Please, could you explain in an other way ? English is not my native language, and I must admit that I don’t understand the purpose of your joke. In fact I fear that I have not understood at all your proposal. I’m really sorry !
You said “Just post your stories the same way everyone else does, and if your articles and news are savvier than everyone else’s, it’ll get put on top.” It is the principle of the vote, is’nt it ? But if I understand well, currently this voting system doesn’t give the expected result : the quality of the published articles seems to not be good enough, so if your answer is “keep it as it is”, I dont think that we will ever see an improvement right ? Am I wrong in my understanding ?
When you say “Another option would include both” : what do you include in “both” ?
I also liked the old edited content rather that the new Digg-like site!
With the new system, the news items move around as votes change. It can be difficult to spot when new posts are made or if they’ve just moved around.
With the old system the items remained in order and new posts can be easily seen at the top. Why do I like that? Because I’ll briefly look at the new items when I get chance through the day, and anything that catches my interest – I’ll read fully at home in the evening.
As for site graphic design, I’m not particularly bothered either way – content is king!
But that’s just my opinion – you’re the one who is having to spent time running the site :-)
I don’t remember the old style, but I come here occasionally.
The site looks pro to me. As far as following it, I spend most of my blender time at blender main.
willing to help, tho.
Hey Bart, I as well am voting for the old format but I’ll be willing and able to help. Anything that you have available therefore I’ll be willing to do just to keep the old format for the community and maybe alleviate some of your workloads. Thanks…
I would do both. Have the old BlenderNation the way you used to without writing as much since you should have more editors. Keep the Pligg for tutorials and blender models that people want to share. Almost like your links section. I would be willing to help out once or twice a week with art that I found or tidbits, but I don’t know if I could keep on top of it (I’m really bad with time management) and I honestly would rather do it without pay. And I think that the design of the site is nice and clean, but the Pligg site should reflect the main part better.
I generally read this through RSS, so the look of the site doesn’t much matter to me. I appreciate all the work you’ve put in, you make a great filter for Blender-related news for me ;) Adding editors with well-defined duties sounds like a great idea to me, I’m amazed you haven’t done it already.
If this site weren’t around, I’d probably use Feedly to get my blender news instead–it uses a kind of voting system based on Google Reader likes and shares, but it’s pretty good about getting high quality stuff to the foreground. I suppose you might look there for ideas.
prefer the old myself too. and I checked the digg-like system but didn’t participate because I assumed the old would be back in a week or two after your vacation. so I didn’t get into it much.
I’d be willing to help out! but I have no background in writing articles. but still if you need help I think it would be fun.
also I don’t actually use blender on a daily basis… I know I’m a horrible person. but I’m currently LEARNING 2.5 alpha and use maya for school (AM!). emphasis on learning. I would love to find or write articles about blenders animation capabilities and animations made in blender. but like I said I’m not a full blown blenderhead, yet. and I haven’t written articles before… so I may not be your best choice. but I’m available.
Also the hybrid method suggest a few times above sounds neat too.
In my opinion the “new” news section overlaps with the “community news” and “links” sections. I prefer having fewer news on blender nation itself, but their quality to be much higher than simply quoting blogposts. Plus you are close to the Blender Institute and the people involved in this venture, so it is more likely for you to get some exiting news first and not a regular blender user.
Some kind of better/further integration of the existing features would be the best solution and will make your life easier – make the community work for itself. After all most of the stories from the past 3 weeks can be found in those sections already. The guys that post in “your news” don’t produce the news, they just take content from other blender related sites which is duplication of functions imo.
I liked the old style way better. Like what other people are saying, the “yournews” was kind of dull, and the quality dropped significantly because of poorly written and uninteresting articles. Besides, half of them were tiny tutorials, which we can find if I need them. And I think “published” news overlapping with “yournews” would not be such a great idea. Like Holmen said, quality > quantity.
I love it when you write articles, Bart, however selfish that sounds. It’s interesting to read, and is well worth my time. I don’t have suggestions for your problem though, and I’m sorry.
As for a new site design, that sounds awesome! But it is a tricky issue, because the trademark of the BN site design, imo, is its minimalistic design, allowing for the clear, unobstructed viewing of these articles. I say go for a new design, but keep that minimal look that this old one has, because it has worked great so far.
I actually liked some of the new material that came in, I have quite a lot bookmarked from the last 2 weeks. Your problem with there being almost no comments is due to the fact that people were not submitting articles as such, but more an excerpt from their blog and a link to read more.
A comment is to show your opinion or to ask a question, it is more likely that there were more comments on their blogs.
I think a good way of doing this would be like how smashing magazine does theres:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
The main news articles are at the top and halfway down the page is the smashing network posts which is pretty much an extract and a link.
For news articles, could you ask artists in blenderartists in the forum gallery to explain how their work came around, an interview, a tutorial, inspiration etc.. I think that would be really interesting..
I liked the old style better as well. The Digg format just seemed like too much to digest when you visited, and it was hard to figure out what was the most recent info or if you had missed something. in addition to the quality of each article definitely went down.
I also lost RSS feed and couldn’t figure out how to get the whole site news to come in again on RSS. It seemed as though you could RSS for a given article or category, but not for all of it at once. I use the google reader to view each Blendernation article quickly then generally click through to the site to get the whole article. I prefer this as there are so many sites I like to at least monitor, I don’t have time to go to each one just to find out “what’s new”.
I’d rather see the old blendernation.com with articles that are less frequent each week (maybe a 3 to 4 day news “summary” articles), than see the new voting format with more smaller articles that people vote on, or see the site go away entirely.
No need to mess with the coloring or style. I think the site looks quite good the way it is, and changing the banner graphic once in a while is enough variety. This is a great blender site, hopefully it will continue.
I had the same problem as secundar: I just missed the post that introduced YourNews.
If quality is an issue, how about having wiki-style editing? Then stories could gradually improve until they gain enough votes to go on the front page.
Thanks for all your hard work over the years, Bart.
what he said:
David Lindsley….
1. Keep your current new page layout, but make the background color something other than white and put the banner back on top.
2. Keep the Digg system – Call it the “Best of Blender Community News” – put it on some page somewhere.
3. Make a “Best of the Best” section where you hand-pick the best stuff to showcase on the main page.
4. Get a couple of volunteers to help edit.
5. Enjoy life
I really have to thank you for your work, BlenderNation is one of the most intresting site about BlenderWorld and the news are very well written. I’m used to visit this site everyday when I come back from school and I don’t want this to be stopped.
I think digging could work well and if it’s the only way to keep this site on I accept.
Be sure I will contribute everyday with my dig.
Thank you again
I think your post will change the way editors submit the stories, and the way we vote (or bury) the stories…for good.
I think, too, this experiment will be useful to us blendernation readers to value your hard work in the past years.
thanks…
P.S.: to comment or vote the submitted stories another account is needed…i think this is one cause of the decrease in the number of comments
Thanks for all the work and time you’ve scarified.
I thought you would have a team helping you out. Running a one man show with a website like Blendernation must be exhausting, and I understand what must be going through.
Since I wish there would be a Blendernation-like site on the internet that covers all the News about the Pro-Applications I’m using, let me pretend that your Website is some kind of unique. Don’t give up your masterpiece, really.
Some serious advises coming from me:
1st – put some more Ads on the page and generate more money. It might help you to recruit some editors.
2nd – try to find some companies that might be interested in buying your site. Since Blender – and foremost Open Source – are sectors with future, give it a try. You have a big community here!
http://bizinformation.org/us/ pretends that your site is worth $1.56 Million – a bit utopistic, but it might be helpful ;)
Selling your site doesn’t mean that you would have to give it up. Try getting hired as the Community-Manager for Blendernation, and make a full time job out of your ‘hobby’. Who would know the community and site better than the founder himself. With the help of a company, you’d might be able to expand and make a business out of Blendernation.
Keep up the good work.
Greets
I totally agree with you about the quality issues. The news isn’t necessarily bad either. Maybe just badly written. There does need to be some sort of quality control. I’d like to see BlenderNation meet somewhere in between where it was and is. It’s awesome to give users the opportunity to participate so I hope that part stays. Not much else to say. BlenderNation is awesome I check it through-out my days to see what’s new. It’s a built-in habit that won’t go away.
I like the old simple design with alternating Blender art better than the new. There is a BlenderNation brand that has been established so changing it up makes it seem sort of foreign…unless it’s a new genius design.
Hey Bart,
Firstly, you’re awesome. Your website is a major center where the whole Blender community merges to interact and read news. I think you’ve done an indescribably brilliant job. I visit this site about 5 times a day – every day. Seriously, I’m so impressed with what you’ve built.
I completely understand why you’re burnt out and am amazed you’ve lasted this long! A testament to your resilience for sure.
I’m sure you want to get out of your current role pretty quickly, but if you take the time to set up a good plan for continuing your work when you’re gone then this brilliant site won’t die.
Some off-the-cuff observations:
> Digg system doesn’t work for supplying the best quality news – just look at digg, ‘news’ has become ‘funniest jokes’.
> How do you do what you do? If you could write a brutally honest ‘how-to’ for the current way you manage the site, submissions and community then we’d have a better idea on how to foster the same attitude and quality.
> We all think you’re awesome!
Bart, if you’re still powering through these comments, here’s some more ideas.
Why not have a slightly less free system? You have a group of admins, and a vote section. Any user that wants can vote an article up or down to make the front page, and after 10 or so “thumbs up” it goes to an admin that approves it. This ensures that the news is quality even before it makes it to the news page. The Admin assures that the 10 people who voted were in their right minds at the time.
Admins are free to submit without the preliminary voting, so you would be able to slip a few articles in when you find the time and motivation.
MLIA has a system like this that works fairly well, however it lacks the admin factor, so occasionally some awful MLIAs slip through because the writer has enough friends to vote it through.
Also, the volume of submissions would be toned down. In the past, articles were submitted in manageable quantities, guarantying that comments wouldn’t be spread out and lacking on posts. Hopefully this should rectify the issue.
First, thanks Bart, for all your efforts.
I actually did like a lot of the things that popped up but a lot of it wasn’t really news either. The Octane post is actually a pretty good example; on the one hand it was pretty much advertising but on the other it was actually an interesting post.
The problem that I can see with keeping Your News is that you’ll really have 3 services – the normal posts, Community News and Your News. Keeping them separate might have it’s advantages but would it be possible to merge the Community News and Your News, keeping the voting system?
Also, perhaps you could set it up so that posts in the “* News” section come up on the side bar (prominently) and that if an item hits a certain threshold of votes, it is automatically copied over to the main news posts? Copied so that you can get the community interaction happening on the post, rather then just re-direct to the original post.
That gets you additional source of content which is pretty sure to be of interest on the main page, without too much additional work.
Edit:
I just remembered that the Community News is auto-generated – so merging isn’t much use! If you added the rating system to those feeds though, that might be another way to generate posts for the main page?
I say combine it. Have a feature articles that bn writes or edits and then have the digg style system below it. Maybe you could “promote” your news articles to feature ones now and then. so it will appear
Feature Articles
———————–
quality article.
quality article.
———————–
Your news
———————–
people liked this article.
people liked this article.
people liked this article.
———————–
and simply scale the quantity of feature article to what resources you want or can put in.
Both the old and new, is my suggestion.
the point of this discussion is to lighten up the workload on Bart..
why are people suggesting having two systems instead of the one that’s already taking him too much effort to maintain?
@anon
I don’t think the idea is that he maintains any of it – please note that in the summary Bart also asks what peoples opinion of the new ‘Your News’ section is and also asks for ideas.
In fact, if done properly, you could use the new ‘Your News’ section as a way for admins to source good stories and then spruce them up a bit for the front page. This cuts out a lot of the work in sourcing articles.
I personally think keep both. But as many others have said, you’re work is superior. ONe thing about the theme: You’ve got all these great pictures, but how can i get to the page where you got the image from (or at least a bigger version of the image). I want more deskotp backgrounds DAMMIT.
You’re dong a great job.
Blendernation is a site I keep up to date with everyday. Apart from my email, there’s no other website I visit everyday. But I also know how much work goes into keeping an up to date website running. In the end Bart, you have to do what’s best for you. The digg system kept me going through the holidays, but it wasn’t Blendernation, it was filler articles until Blendernation came back! I think a combination of the two approaches might free up your time, but if I had a vote on the matter, I say old Blendernation please!
I am a new Blender user and have found this site as one of my “go to” for news and knowledge. if change is needed, then do what you must to keep this interesting for you again!I would hate to see this site diminish or close its doors.
Bart, ever think of running bigger (i.e. more expensive) advertisements, say the kind of full-window ads you get on The Onion, and perhaps adding a subscription option so that people could subscribe and bypass the ads? It seems to me you get a ton of traffic here, and there must be a way to monetize it enough to make it worth your while. Plenty of people (me included) would be happy to buy a subscription just to support the site out of principle/appreciation, but having ads you could bypass would give people a sense of getting something for the subscription, plus there’d be the ad revenue.
The new BN makes it really hard to find relevant news stories. I much prefer the old ‘edited’ style, even though it may have been more of an effort. I completely stopped visiting BlenderNation after the redesign, which also made the site very messy. The old layout could well use an update, but I’d prefer that BN sticks to simple news stories, presented in a minimalist, clean way with the articles as the main attraction.
I like Tony’s idea.
Subs and ads. Keep it like the old. Get rid of the new if it’s more work.
BlueSock’s idea is interesting:
It could theoretically distribute the task of filtering news articles among the most dedicated visitors (or at least the ones with the most free time), give all of the editors less work to do, and present the majority of viewers with the same kind of news and site layout that we’ve always had, with just the best of the community instead of all editors’ choice, or all community plugs.
The timing here is unfortunate; I think a lot of Blender users may still be recovering from the drastic change presented by the 2.5 series. To have our number one link to the community go through a big shift at the same time is a little scary. But sometimes change is unavoidable, and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. I hope you can find the best solution to this problem.
Thanks Bart!
:D it reminds me of the “New Coke” ruckus.
Most of the “I love the ‘old’ blendernation” seems to be missing the most important point, the quality of the news come at the loss of quality of life.
I’d prefer to have one news a week and know that there are less burden for Bart.
I think the Pligg system should stay alongside the ‘old’ news. Like people get to yahoo for quick news and still get to the New York Times for serious informations.
Still it should be tweaked.
1/ Requires more than 5 votes to be published.
2/ News older than 24 hours are flushed and the submitted news page reset. Because given enough time any news can reach 5 votes. They clog the pipe and interesting news are zerged by uninteresting fluff that float around for days…
3/ Only registered people can vote AND submit news. (to avoid spam)
Favor quality by allowing people to give a 1-click feedback on the news (“Interesting” or “Nice” or “It’s not what we are looking for”).
The most important point is that it shouldn’t add workload.
As for Blendernation ‘Classic’, maybe it comes from the users themselves, but I think they are spoiled. They rant if they don’t have their Daily News.
Well, you can’t have a new Blender release everyday, and open movies are not rendered in an evening. Maybe this means that “daily” is just asking too much.
How about “fresh news every Monday, Wednesday, Friday”? Or “as they come”?
PS : a suggestion for a “weekend news special” : “How Blendernation makes news”. Because it is still a bit mysterious to me. What happens once someone click the “submit” button?
This way people might appreciate the work, and most importantly suggest how they can contribute. How about that?
It seems like it has all gone down hill very fast.
Like so many here I would like to start by thanking you for all the time that you have put into this site over the years.
It will come as little surprise that I agree with most when I say the “old” style was a much more professional and informative. I think, however, you may be trying to hard to force this site to be what you want and given the tools that you have the site is already very complete.
Return the main page to well written articles. You’re going to have to find what’s comfortable for you to do. If this mean that we only get updates 3 times a week that’s something the community well have to understand. Perhaps new contributes well come on board to fill that gap, but you need to find what is comfortable for you. To often sites like this that relies so much on an individuals contributions can have that person totally burn out and then the site dies, and no one wants to see that.
Keep the Community News as is. This is a great way for everyone to see what a vibrant community Blender has, but it may not front page material.
Add Your News as it’s own thing. Leave this for the info junkies, you know the ones that want new information every hour. It may not be the best written but at least it’s new.
Like I said I think you already have all the pieces for a great information hub for Blender, just refocus on what made it great in the first place and let these new pages take some of the load off your great work.
I also agree on that the voting system does not work.
I see this similar to a news submission by why vote on it when it is publicly visible?
The old site design and usage is good, I dont think it has to be changed at all.
People come to read news and thats it.
I think what is more of concern is how to keep the old system going.
You, somebody aiding your work, or new people overtaking the active news submission.
What might work is that you propose a format people have to use for writing an article
and you or staff can than simply accept it, or reject it.
I also agree on mentions here that sometimes what was submitted and what was only
published did not make sense. Hardly anything I ever submitted was not published.
If this should be news about Blender than the spectrum of what is being covered has to be
broader and more open. Otherwise it does have a taste of I post what I like.
Again a common format writers have to stick to can help in this case.
Probably a tag system will help, such as Blender in the industry, workshops, tutorials, demo reels, interviews, and and and.
I think this way the work on your side will be much lower since your and staff do not have to
reformat entries and the richness of the news spectrum is increasing.
Claas
You could agglomerate the user-submitted news stories, an RSS feed of BlenderArtists post headers, and whatever other Blender related feeds you could, and then have a top-story that could change every couple of days, plus, say, a random or semi-randomly featured story from the archives. This all would provide fresh content daily. The BA links could drive traffic to BA but also provide another reason for people to make BN their first stop, so it would benefit both. I know I’d hit BA more often if I saw a post feed for it here. Then find a couple different ways to rank and organize stories and slap as many ads and affiliations on it as you can fit, with a big, obtrusive ad that people could get around with an annual subscription.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this (I can’t read the whole novel because I should be reading my psychology book…), but have you thought of having a hybrid of the two styles? The editor stories would remain at the top of the list for a few days, while the user stories are constantly updated below the editor stories. This would hopefully allow for a higher quality news post every week or so, and still have a very active site, run in most part by the community.
Thanks.
I vote for the old design also, and as so many said quality > quantity.
We can realize now what you did for us (community) the last 4 years!
I’m a regular reader of the bn since 2006. If you need help i assume that are many tallented people that can help you continue this great site!
Summa summarum, please don’t let this site abandoned…
hello Bart !
First of all Thancks for your great job during all these Years !
I’m a very regular FRENCH reader and I’m enjoying it every time to visit this great Blog !
It’ s a great source for tutorials and stuff turning around the great BLENDER !
And It must be a lot of work YES to keep this blog online …
I love your sence of perfection and Is’ s great to have someone like you in our community !
About the graphik style I do not have really an opinion !
It’ s good how it look like !
It could be a little more pretty, but It works !
Maybe the theme from BLENDER should be more present ?
More colours related with BLENDER ?
Or User Galeries classified from beginner to pro ?
Or only Pro ?
It woold be nice I think !
The tutorial classification is great from Month to Month .
It shows greatly all the time and work you’ve spended into the development of this blog !
thanks for this blog !
I woold like to contribute but I do not know how to …
It brings me an idea into my mind …
Why not a YOU TUBE channel ?
to bring together all the different vidéo based tutorials ?
and the results from VERY SELECTED users ?
Well it would bring even more work for you …
Yes the time is come to build a BLENDERNATION crew !
you are the Captain, BART !
thanks for reading !
Hi there Simpson,
The other Original BlenderNation site has a better view of its contents.
1.Perhaps,a simple thing as to change the display pictures to the right side of the text
would work.
The democratic of voting ,are just like everything about……………………
not always a good thing but,just what are displayed with more votes,
that it doesn’t mean anything much.
That this way things must be at its categories,but what at the front page?
i say Microsoft,but hey Linux other say,then hey whatever …
Blender.
And what is Blender?
The software.
What is the software?
How it works.
How it does works?
The “professional” part to tell it as an user are needed.
Its all about a Default book about.
That then the user contents,that is what they understand of.
The community?
Cannot be made of “dumb” but must have the “professionals” to tell
whats wrong with what was posted as a user Blender Content.
Ok,thats my FREE not so sure Professional knowledge about how the professional things
would work on the so called GNU licence thing.
Thanks.
I know that I have already said that earlier, but as I have seen many submissions since I posted my last comment, I come back to that point :
The vote system is not perfect, and most of us agree that Bart’s great work is difficultly replaceable, but I want to say one more time that each of us , both submitters and readers can do a lot to improve the quality of the content of the site.
I have recently seen some more submissions including only an URL link pointing to a video on YouTube. No article, no tutorial, no news… in short, no informations !
IMHO, this is not the kind of thing that desserves to be published here. Even if the videos shown are awesome, if they are not put to illustrate an interesting and informative article, they are not at the right place.
And the most deceptive part is that enough people voted for these posts to get them published.
Friends, when posting please keep in mind what was published before, and what is expected and will be really useful for the community.
Hey Bart,
First of all thank you for keeping this website running for such a long time. Maintaining the motivation without a hard incentive is really tough unless you don’t have a kitchen to run.
Having volunteers doesn’t mean they’ll stick around for long and certainly is not a reliable way of growing and developing the website in the longer run. What you need is paid help and for that you need funding. You need to devise a way to do that. Arrange regular funding, either through subscriptions or merchandising. Advertising on the internet isn’t such a lucrative venture unless you’re willing to go big.
Another option would be to do a merger or sellout. This should be with those who’ve already got a successful business model set up and working. Maybe someone like CGTUTS or SMASHING MAGAZINE. This of course is just an idea but it might also work.
One thing is for sure. Without an incentive things are surely bound to go down the ditch soon enough.
Hope my suggestion spark something new for you.
Best regards,
Shariq Mushir
Please save us from the disgraceful articles that are posted on the front page of blender.org this way.
“5 things Blender should do to be succesful in the industry ” Come on! that is a forum post, not a news article.
“Blender 2.5 Tutorials and Documentation Blog ” a blog that exists for one day? allready on the blender.org front page?
Please stop this or stop linking to this crap from blender.org if you want to be taken seriously as a community.
If you feel overworked then just ease up, let is slip a bit and post less articles. thanks for all the fine news anyway!
I want the old site back.
great stuff… I’m glad we’re back to normal – I definitely concur that quality dropped quite sharply over the holiday period.
as to the design – I don’t see any radical need to change it, works fine for me – better to focus on content as more important.
good luck with how you proceed.
I’m not here enough to really comment on the old site vs. new but if it’s “Digg style” I might have a Popular News or like a Live Reporting thing on CNN where users submit content. The backbone of the news content should be up to you and whoever you choose to be your partner in crime to share the burden of generating new and entertaining content. Make it two sections where main news is in one place and popular news gets it’s own block to live in or its own page.
If I can get up to speed with Blender I may be able to help but I’m not even a novice with this software. I’m just an old Maya user who’s looking for a free alternative.
I absolutely loathed the yournews layout. This layout is fine.
I also noticed you had to register on yournews to be able to comment. I almost never do… So that could be an explanation for the dropping in the number of comments on yournews.
I also think blendernation news was better quality. But if you don’t have the time… There’s little you can do about it.
I read but I rarely comment…
No matter what happens, you have done a great job over the years and I have appreciated your website immensely.
actually i liked the community based news. i recognized it as a sudden jump to more news per day there was also a slight tendency of more news being relevant to me. the difference isn’t big as you are doing a good job too and i understand all your personal reasons to dislike the community solution. but some more non-blender related news now and then doesn’t hurt i think.
That’s bad news alright but hopefully won’t affect the future of blender I hope.