Sorry

[bluwyngz]

I didn't realize anyone was still watching until cnidarian posted a comment.  Sorry I didn't leave any explanation when I disappeared.  I stopped posting because the idea behind the community was that multiple people would post, that it would be a sharing space.  I was kind of the only person posting.  I don't blame anyone for that.  I just got

Comments

[yueni]

I stopped posting because the idea behind the community was that multiple people would post, that it would be a sharing space.

I didn't realise that multiple people were supposed to post. I did think that you were taking on quite a bit by posting what information you were posting for each country.

From my experience with running a community, I think the one country a day according to the alphabet idea, while good, doesn't fit within an internet space. Firstly, it means that the person interested in a country starting with, say, the letter M (Monaco, for instance), would have to wait a goodly long while before being able to post any information that they had on that country. Further, they would have to wait ages before being able to post, there being a large number of countries between Afghanistan and Monaco. Also, they would have to wait through all these countries (that they may or may not know of or have any interest in) before being able to share what knowledge they had about said countries.

To make matters worse, the one-day time line seems a little short. For instance, say that person is really busy the day Morocco came up, then perhaps they might have missed being able to post about Monaco, while the community has moved on to Morocco, which they know nothing about.

On top of all of that, it placed a great deal of responsibility upon you, the community moderator, to provide us with information to start with, when you intended this to be a sharing space. From my experience, people tend to be lazy, and while extremely inclined to share, will only do so when it is convenient for them. For instance, I would be more than happy to post links and lots of information about China or Singapore, but that wouldn't be for a good long while.

What I suggest doing (if you are interested in reviving the community), is making a one-to-two week posting period per alphabet. For instance, for this week, people can post whatever they want about any country that starts with the letter 'A'. Next week, it's 'B', and so on and so forth.

What this does is twofold: 1) It lengthens the allowable posting period for a specific category, 2) It broadens the categories available for allowable posting within a week so that most people will have some information they can post about each week. This will, hopefully, increase the activity within the community.

Also, I think that it should be made really clear that members are supposed to be involved with the posting so that they know that you aren't the only one who can post. (There are certain communities created for that purpose.) You could start each week by posting a list of all countries starting with the week's alphabet and maybe initiate a few links or something.

By making this a weekly thing, this would lessen the burden on you to create content, and yet provide a space for community members to be the creators (or linkers) of content. =)