Disappointed - My opinion

I personally think its the authors and our responsibility as you say, to step in and suggest to authors from time to time where needed.

The worst would be where we no longer have a blank canvas for a blog post, and end up with templates : (

I prefer it when individuals have creativity and their own uniqueness on their blog posts, but perhaps some training or link to hints could help, to suggest to authors on what they can do. I recall Spanner Spencer wrote an awesome blog post on how to write blog posts : )

I still recall bits of it, since it was quite interesting and informative.

I'll try to dig it up..

Hey shabaz,

I would really like to know how to better use hyper links within posts to jump between sections. If you can dig that post up it would be greatly appreciated.

Kas

Hi Kas,

Ah, I know that one, because I did it recently : )

Basically, once you've written your blog post, and any section titles have been marked as such using the Editor tools (i.e. marked as Heading 1 or Heading 2 etc) then click on the first line of your blog post, and go to Editor tools and select from the tools the ">>" button (for "more tools") and then select Table of Contents. A symbol appears in the blog post. When you save the blog post, the symbol is replaced by a table of contents with hyperlinks!

found it..

How to Write Your Design Challenge Blog Posts

shabaz,

Thank you for the information I wonder if a new group would be helpful. The group could be for tips and pointers for things like this. I remember a while ago one roadtest had a lot of good info about taking pictures of displays. The issue is all this great and useful information (taking pictures, linking sections, etc.) are scattered around the site. If someone wants to find it, it can be very hard. If there was a group where such information could collated for easy finding and referencing it might help not only those new to blogging but even some of us who have been doing it for a long while.

Kas

The worst would be where we no longer have a blank canvas for a blog post, and end up with templates :

Yes! The blogger should have as much creative freedom as possible. There are many posters that make good-to-read articles and beautiful posts in their very own style. I love it.

Content Creators Rule.

Hi Kas,

That's sounds very useful. Maybe called Documentation and Productivity Tips? or something like that perhaps?

Hehe I like the coloured hand-sketches : )

shabaz  wrote:

 

The worst would be where we no longer have a blank canvas for a blog post, and end up with templates : (

I wasn't thinking templates, more like tools on the editor such a widget that does "home, all, previous and next".

So you'd add that to the bottom of post 6 and when you wrote post 7 then page 6 would show the link to post 7 without having to go back and add that in. There would also be a button linking back to the first page for the challenge. The "All" would give you the list of all posts in the series.

I'm all for such editor tools : ) I believe the template discussion was about some general readability consistency, and how it could be achieved, and the consensus is that we want flexibility, and not templates : ) i.e. we were ruling out templates before anyone suggests it as a solution.

I was considering the possibility that lack of tools, and templates are maybe not the root cause of many difficult to follow posts. I feel sad if features get implemented, but the root cause is also not addressed.

In the earlier example, the title of the blog post is not optimal maybe, and the content does not explain what the project is about. Many readers might not click 'home' or 'previous' in such cases, even assuming they were curious enough to navigate to a blog post just titled "Week 8 Putting it Together" - I have no idea what that blog post could be about in any detail.

Following that train of thought, I though nice blog posts like Spanner's one, and even training like an Essentials quiz on writing design challenge blog posts could be useful perhaps. A group with tips as Kas mentions could also help too.