Comment RA39 Re: Please let's focus on filling the pipe

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Please let's focus on filling the pipe (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2015-10-22 07:42 (#R8HW)

Love this site, and thanks to EvilViper we've had lots of content to read and appreciate. But when EvilViper doesn't post, write, edit, and submit articles, the pipe is otherwise mostly dry. That's this site's single weakness - on the technical side, it's unsurpassed.

If we could make it easier for people to submit articles we could fill up the pipe, get interesting content, and build the user base. But sitting down at a keyboard to write and submit is too much of a hassle, which explains why so few people do it. I'd even say it's a limited risk at this point to establish an email mechanism where you could establish a pipedot whitelist, establish an inbox that routes messages into the queue, and go from there. Point is, we've got to make it easier for people who like |. to populate it with interesting content. When you've got editors writing, submitting, and posting all by themselves, there's a problem.

Would like to reiterate my appreciation for the fact that this site remains focused on science and technology. I still read and like Soylent, but their content is increasingly wandering into social or even political topics that don't interest me at all.

Congrats Brian on a great platform - love the functionality of this site, and it's the only one I can stand to read on a small screen.

Re: Please let's focus on filling the pipe (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-10-22 16:45 (#RA39)

Bryan did include some relevant ideas:

"automatically created stories generated from popular stream articles." And "share this page" buttons could both help fill the pipe more.

In addition, the pipe does act as a time-suck for me, too, so eliminating that would also help (unless you'd like to jump in). With any luck, readers will see how their direct involvement affects this site and might submit more. If nothing else, it can keep going with an even smaller base and no dedicated editor.

My submissions look a different recently, precisely because I've been submitting from my rss reader on my phone... The final step involves copying to clipboard then submitting via web browser, but it works. An email address for submissions could be nice (though somebody needs to fill in the category) but that last step doesn't take much time.

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