Where would you expect the different kinds of blogging content I produce to be found?

I like to group mine like that too and if it wasn't for the issue with external search engines I'd probably continue like that.

I agree that it should be 'Your blog AND..' rather than the current 'Your blog OR...' choice. It's obviously possible to do it with the content-management system because the staff do it occasionally. It's also been suggested at least once before (I did at some point, though there was no response from element14 to it).

Hey jc2048 ,

The problem may be that there are different ownership permissions to account for.   I know with certain things such as element14 presents a video supplier will post a blog as supplemental content in their personal blog but I am unable to modify (such as adding a header to link to the episode doc) unless the blog post is moved to the element14 presents space.  

It's something that I can bring this up as a suggestion to the dev team but not sure how that would work with ownership (permissions) being separate in the different blog spaces.  I know that with certain areas such as the Arduino and Project14 I will use the share functionality so they can show up in both content streams.   It's by far a perfect system but there are permissions in place that work differently for spaces owned by community members than spaces that are maintained internally.   Conversely,  if some permissions were granted universally for spaces maintained internally, such as Arduino or Project14, it would make these spaces more difficult to maintain in a way that would cohesive. 

Aren't permissions already being handled? If I choose to place a blog in another area when I create it, then I can only do that for areas I have permission to access and place a blog in. I also have permission to blog in my own blog. So that covers all the bases, doesn't it? From the developers' POV that should be easier than with you as a staff member where you might be doing something that breaks things in some way that you might not be aware of and so has to be tested for in quite a complicated way.

I'd quite like to hear a response from a staff member as to which groups/communities they think I should be posting to for analogue circuit experimentation and design and for simulation topics if I don't use my own blog area (not necessarily you if it falls outside your remit and you feel it's more appropriate for someone else to deal with).

Hi jc2048 ,

Outside of your own blog I couldn't tell you as I don't know if there is an active part of the community that would be a better place to put analogue circuit experimentation and design and for simulation topics but perhaps there is to be one.

I've added this as an idea as feature improvement of Jive so that we can start a discussion to see if anything can be done to add functionality to Jive that would allow you to simultaneously publish a blog in two spaces.  This should at least get the conversation started.  I've also linked the ticket to this post in case there are any ideas I'm missing so this conversation could at least be used as a reference.

As far as a space were you could put analog and simulation projects other than your own blog, I don't know any offhand. cstanton would be a good point of contact as he manages the overall community and he might have ideas,  or maybe rscasny , e14phil , or jlucas from the content team. I can't think of an active space where that would be ideal and there may be hesitancy to create one if there is a similar space that exists but doesn't get much activity.    Actually,  looking back I like shabaz 's suggestion of using Open Hardware or STEM Academy.   I think those would be your best bets as they are active and could be a good home for this content.

Hi tariq.ahmad Thanks for picking up the point about publishing a blog in 2 places.

Neil

Hi Jon and Tariq and everyone,

I've been thinking about this a bit more, had had these comments and questions..

I was wondering, what is the purpose of the individual user blog space? I've not created any personal blogs yet, so I don't know if there are any differences in capabilities. I believe that the main benefit is that it provides people with an easy way to access all of the blogs written by an author, but wanted to check if there are any other benefits.

If that's the only benefit, then there could be an alternative - when people click on "xyz's blog', perhaps the resultant list of blogs could default to all blogs written by that author, in any space, and have a button or check-box on that page to only view those in the personal blog space. That way, we can use the personal blog for a particular use, e.g. public resumes and personal individual experiences with engineering, and so on, but is still backward-compatible with what we have today.

Here's what the idea could look like, the circled area is unchecked, so the view would also display things that are not in the personal blog, such as the WEBENCH Designer for FPGA blog post, which is actually in the Texas Instruments space. Today if you try to view  Jon Clift's Blog  I can't see the WEBENCH blog post he created, since it is not a personal blog, but I'm guessing 99% of the time any viewer who tries to click on the personal blog, would want to see all blogs that Jon created, regardless of the space.

Is this a good idea or a bad idea.. not sure.. currently if I want to see a person's blogs, I'll click on their name to see all their activity, and then filter on the blog posts, which is a long-winded way and doesn't provide the same nice style view as the personal blogs, but does mean I get to see all of their blogs listed.

I think it could be a good idea, because it will encourage people to place the content in the best space that suits the content (or in the case of Jon it could help highlight that there isn't a space fully suited, in which case it could either go in an approximately close space, or a discussion could be had to create a new space), and still have the option of the personal blog space.

As a side story, in the past I've had to try to figure out how to organize diverse content on a single site for different users (lets say sales, engineering, legal, etc)., and a lot of content was historically in a 'Miscellaneous' tab on the website, because people didn't know where it should reside. The content in that tab was huge, and made it hard to find stuff. To help resolve that a little, we deliberately deleted the Misc tab name, and forced all of its content to fit in other spaces. It did work, several years on, no-one has suggested to re-create a Misc tab. I'm not suggesting the personal blog is a Misc tab, but instead it can take on a more important role, i.e. it becomes a link for people to see all blog content by an author by default (by leaving the check-box unchecked), or for seeing all content that doesn't fit any other space for good reason, e.g. as in Jon's case, or say blogs on personal experiences in engineering).

What do you reckon? Good or bad?

A Miscellaneous group would be wonderful. I'd vote for that! Complete with subgroups for Curiosities, Ephemera, Small Doodles, Total Monsters to Debug, How Did They Ever Design it Like That?, and the all-important Magic Smoke one.

The reason I nearly always post to my own blog is that when I first came here the existing categories didn't make much sense to me and it was much simpler just to put everything in the personal blog, but I did also like that it was all grouped together and presented nicely (my own personal 'channel' on a small scale, as it were). Since I joined, that presentation has been degraded somewhat.

If it wasn't for the 'fact' (not proven, just my impression, though element14 do, so far, appear very quiet on the subject[see Dudley's comment above]) that it doesn't seem to have search engine visibility, I'd have happily continued and we wouldn't now be having this discussion.

I think your solution achieves much the same thing as choosing multiple places to have virtual links to the content, but places control in the hands of the viewer rather than the creator. I don't think I'd have too much of an issue with that if it were easier to implement.

I'd have expected to see most of your stuff in the Analogue group (or Analog) but there isn't one.

Open Source hardware sounds like a good second best.

Or maybe we should set up the Analog(ue) group ?

I share the reservations expressed by others re. STEM - its far too broad in actual meaning (covers everything on E14) and certainly has schoolkid connotations of a bad kind in the UK.

MK

Thank's for the reply. We can see if any of the people you've referenced want to say anything.

I really think you all should be having a conversation internally about the Groups/Communities and how they get used. Although my content isn't anything special - I'm not the world's greatest engineer and my interests are a bit dated and somewhat off-beat - I would like it to have some visibility to the outside world and it should be a concern to you that perfectly ordinary stuff about circuit design doesn't really fit anywhere other than a personal blog area. I'd be happy to use the Groups/Communities to that end if I knew where to place material (particularly if it could be presented either in the way that follows from what Neil and I have suggested or the way that would result from what Shabaz is proposing), but so far people are just suggesting shoe-horning it into spaces that don't seem to me to be really suitable. Open Source Hardware should be for complete designs that are licenced and it's unfair to the people already using the space in that way to 'dump' unsuitable content there. STEM is even more difficult because it's not where a degree-level engineer coming to the site would even think to look for such content and, the other side of the coin, it disrupts the educational side by introducing material that isn't well structured and appropriate to that end.

..doesn't seem to have search engine visibility

Sorry, yes, my comments didn't address that point, I forgot about that. I hope we find out more about that.

Anyway, the reason why in my old work we liked the idea of strongly encouraging a user to decide on a location other than Misc, is that during blog creation, is the best time to add all the metadata, since the author knows best what the blog post is about, so they should be encouraged to add tags, choose a suitable space - we considered that to be metadata too (and, unrelated, also a selection concerning who the author felt the content was targetted for, and even a hidden priority number tag which was more for managers, and could allow them to push up some stuff to appear first., but all this was because it was an internal business site, not a community site - so not suggesting any of this is relevant at all), not only to allow the automated search tools to perform their job better, but to allow the users doing the searches to have more powerful radio-buttons/checkboxes for influencing or refining searches, since there is almost zero processing overhead having a radio-button to select a space.

As Micheal says, this discussion has revealed that an Analog or similar space would be handy.. then maybe I would have put some of my content there too, instead of Open Source Hardware.