Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Forgive me if I missed any past discussions that already covered this...

More than a few folks on this forum post GURPS-related content on their own blogs, or read such blogs to some degree. Simple question for anyone:

Should a blogger who posts some GURPS-related article announce it on this forum? Which of the following would you agree with:

1. "Sure! What better place to announce it than here? Title and URL, please!"

2. "Yes, though I'd prefer to see the actual content included with the announcement, so we don't have to chase off to some other site to read and discuss it."

3. "Nothing against announcements themselves, but I don't want to see the forum littered with 'New Blog Post!' posts. How about a dedicated (even sticky?) thread for such announcements?"

4. "Meh. It's fine to bring up blog posts within a relevant thread, but otherwise keep the announcements to RSS or Twitter or whatever you use."

5. "Ugh. If it doesn't live on this forum, I don't want to know about it."

6. "I have an idea better than any of these, and will now reveal it!"

What say ye, Forumites? (No fair rolling d6 to reply. : )

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

3.5

I like to read some blogs about GURPS topics, and I read play reports from GURPS and D&D games as I find them. I like the interfertility that takes place between these forums and Douglas Cole's Gaming Ballistic blog, to pick an example. I see them as different in their roles, though.

The forum, as I see it, is a place better suited to give and take. A thread here is not "hosted" by the original poster, and I don't expect a thread to have the same sort of coherence that a blog post (on a blog I read regularly) should. A blog article probably stands on its own better than a single post here, and may or may not merit discussion, independent of whether it is interesting reading. I regard blog reading as a more passive interaction, usually, than the forum, which is much more active interaction. Stated another way, I consume blog material, but I participate in the forum.

I lean toward blog posts being mentioned on the forum as they are relevant to a thread. I think it is legitimate to use a thread to gather different viewpoints or insights or whatever prior to a posting blog article. I think it is less legitimate to promote individual entries to a blog in posts here. Partly, I think that it is borderline spammy, partly I feel this way because a comment thread on a blog item that is also being discussed here is less tidy, with a chance for confusion about which conversation on the same topic has covered what ground.

Promotion of blogs in sigs is the way to go. I'd hate to miss a specific awesome article on a blog I check less frequently, but for my specific current interest, GURPS DF, there is a Google+ group that keeps me pretty up to date. For others, I don't mind getting behind, then suddenly discovering a wealth of cool things I haven't seen. I wouldn't mind a single sticky thread that notifies forum users of new blog entries, but new threads all over seems like a potential irritation.

And with that, I'm off to see what's new in the Diner. :)

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I pretty much am seconding Dammann here. An announcement thread plus relevant references in other threads plus advertising it in your sig (optionally updating your sig to advertise your latest post). I'd also like to see a GURPS Planet set up to aggregate GURPS blogs, if there's enough of them; I might even be encouraged to set such a thing up myself if enough people are interested.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I suspect option 1 would violate the forum's "no link-dumping" rule, depending on how it's done...

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I would love to see a sticky with a list of blog-links.

Adding a new post with each new blog entry would be nice.


---EDIT---
I mean to say, a new reply with each new blog. So, 1 single thread which includes any and all blogs.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I like knowing who has GURPS-related blogs, but I don't need notifications of individual posts.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

What I try and do is link to posts on my blog when they're relevant to the thread at hand. Occasionally, I'll post the entire thing, but some of my posts get long.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

While I do read both TBone's and Doug Cole's blogs, forums posts makes it easier to aggregate the information (sad but true).

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

<MOD>

We love GURPS blogs, podcasts, fansites, etc. (and gaming blogs/etc. in general) and want you to share yours with the world -- including here on the forums! But please don't start a new thread every time you update. That's just excessive and is arguably spam (albeit extremely on-topic spam).

Our preference is that you make one announcement when you start your new blog/etc., so people know where it is, how to find it, and so on. Then use your signature to denote when you've updated it. See my sig for a good example; every time I add significant content to MyGURPS, I change my sig to reflect this. And obviously, if one of your blog posts (old or new) is truly relevant to an issue being discussed in some thread, don't hesitate to link to it.

Regardless of the outcome of this poll, please follow these guidelines. Thank you!

</MOD>

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I'd be for a sticky with any and all updates posted to it. I don't think it'd be link-dumping if there's a one line summary included.

But I'm one who only discovered worthwhile blogs, such as Gaming Ballistic and Dungeon Fantastic, recently, so I'd like to see something more visible on the forum. Sig's are ok, but everyone has one, so they can get lost in the crowd.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

A single thread in which people announced new (or newly discovered) blogs might be useful -- as long as people didn't start announcing every time they updated.

If anyone wants to start one, go ahead. Link to it from here please, so everyone here can find it (and to avoid duplicates). If time shows that the idea has legs, I'll sticky it.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

What about a semi-official sticky thread with links to known GURPS blogs?

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

As I said, make the thread. If it ends up being used (and useful), I'll sticky it.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I like this idea. I think it would be interesting to be able to read the story of a sequential adventure.
Also, depending on the level of mechanical detail involved it could act as a guide on how to run certain scenarios (which is certainly within the scope of this forum).

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Here are my feelings as the GURPS forum's primary mod and one of the superadmins of forums.sjgames.com:

• It is acceptable to post links to GURPS-related blogs in the GURPS forum. I hereby exempt such posts from the "no link-dumping" rule on my forum. If anybody gets shirty with you, direct them to this post.
  
  
• It is not acceptable to start a new thread whenever you make a blog post, however. Instead, start a thread named after your blog. Keep announcements of new content, associated URLs, and all spin-off discussion in "your" thread. Save your thread's URL so that if it scrolls off or otherwise appears to be missing, you can find it and post to it despite the fact that the forums are being stubborn about displaying it.
  
  
• It would be especially nice to have a single thread for all blogs. In that case, we can give the thread a creative title like "GURPS Blogs" and I would be happy to make it sticky. (I would not want separate threads on several blogs made sticky, because that would eventually fill the first page of the forums with sticky posts . . . yuck.)

And entirely self-interestedly, I consider my LJ to be such a blog, covering as it does both GURPS news and my campaign. I would be happy to participate, if only to set an example.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Well then, now I vote for the "Grand Unified GURPS Blog Update Thread" sticky. That would be the best way to get the information to everyone (1) without clogging up the forum, and (2) making sure everyone knows where to go to find the updates. I quite like that as a forum user and blog reader.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Might be worthwhile to find & install a vBulletin plugin to display a blog feed in one's signature, or in the Grand Blog Post—probably need to limit it to the last post, though.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I'd go with number 3 myself.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Well, then, never mind what I said there... <g>

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I've done exactly this over here. :-)

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

This seems to be the most logical.

An "update" post if a blog has been inactive for some time but then resumes activity, would also make sense.

(Note that my blog isn't about GURPS. It is sometimes about worldbuilding, but never specifically about GURPS game mechanics or GURPS campaigns, except for IIRC one brief reference to one of the deeply retarded aspects of the GURPS Magic magic system.)

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Exactly the same for me. Advertise the blog itself, like in your signature, not the individual blog entries.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

And everyone who has such a blog should make a post with a link, so we all can visit and add it to our RSS readers.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

My thanks to the many respondents. It's a point of forum etiquette I've wondered about. I hesitate to appear spammy by tossing up posts that say, "Hey, come read and talk about this GURPS stuff I wrote!" At the same time, "Hey, I want to read and talk about GURPS stuff!" is what defines people who gather here...

(I also bring up the question because of the recent death of Google Reader and subsequent discussion over the future of RSS. Looks like the hubbub is just a hiccup for RSS and its users, but it's also a reminder that there's more to track than just RSS feeds.)

So, trying to distill comments into a wrap, here's a summary as I see it. Please critique as warranted.

(For simplicity, I'll use the term "blog" to mean any off-forum resources or commentary concerning GURPS, including social network group, wiki, forum, newsletter, and campaign website; and the term "blog post" to mean any post or individual entry made to these.)

1. Feel free to do these things

1.1 Do create a forum thread to announce a new blog. People want to know this stuff. (Also feel free to announce a blog per 3.1 below.)

1.2. Do mention and link to relevant blog posts as part of normal discussion within forum threads. There's nothing new or problematic about this.

1.3 Do mention blogs, latest blog posts, or whatever you like in your sig. It's your sig.

2. Please don't do these things

2.1. Don't create a forum thread to announce a new blog post. Too spammy. (Conversely, creating a forum thread for the purpose of normal forum discussion, with reference to a new blog post as optional added reading, should fall under the innocuous 1.2.)

2.2 Don't do anything else frowned upon in the forum rules.

3. New ideas

3.1 Let's make a single thread to announce our blogs, creating a directory. (Hey, Ghostdancer already made it!) To keep this thread useful as a directory, announce blogs, not blog posts.

Ideally, this thread will be made sticky. (Announcement threads per 1.1 should not be sticky.)

4. Things I'm not sure about

4.1 Echoing one comment, it would seem OK to invoke 1.1 and create a new thread to re-announce a long-dead blog upon resurrection. But perhaps it'd be ideal to do this by making a new post in the original announcement thread, not by creating a new thread?

4.2 Similar to 4.1: Once you've created a forum thread to announce a blog per 1.1, you could keep using that same thread (not new threads!) to announce new blog posts or make other occasional blog-related announcements. (Or is that somehow problematic?)

4.3 Should gaming blogs that aren't GURPS-specific make announcements per 1.1? Hmm, judgment call. (Rule of thumb: If you're an active contributor to the forum, think the blog would be of interest to members, and expect to reference the blog's material within GURPS discussions, then use your judgment. If those don't hold, then please don't post the announcement. Sound sensible?)

===

Thanks again. I don't want to over-think a topic that really boils down to "use common sense", but it seems a useful discussion.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

I'm not sure why people are against announcing new blog posts.

a) It's what Kromm does, for one, in an essentially off-topic thread.

b) If the announcements are all in the single blogs thread, I don't see how that would be spammy. Either you follow new posts in the thread because you're interested, or you ignore the thread because you're not. This is presuming that the thread is closed to comments and discussion.

c) I'd be interested in seeing what blog posts have gone up, without having to remember to check on them every so often. (I don't use RSS, by the way.)

d) If there is a risk of spamliness from a particularly prolific blogger, then they could limit their updates to weekly blog recaps.

e) Active bloggers will attract more attention, while the blogs who announce their existence in this thread, but only have one blog post and tumbleweeds will get less attention.

f) Already, nearly every other thread quickly goes way off-topic for pages and pages, so I'm not sure how a thread with just regular blog post announcements, presumably only a handful a week, could be seen as spammy.

In any case, I'm not likely to be starting a blog, so whatever behaviours are agreed upon won't really affect me, I was just curious about the emerging consensus.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Without going back to re-read the thread, I think people overall agree with you there. If you start a new GURPS blog, it seems most forum members would welcome your creating a new forum thread to announce that, as well as later forum posts within that thread to announce new blog posts. As you say, those who aren't interested simply won't follow the thread; no hassle for them.

What many people don't want to see is a whole new forum thread for each new blog post. Lots of blogs x lots of blog posts would create a big mess o' forum threads.

That's my understanding, anyway. It also sounds sensible to me!

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Some people might have been saying "no new threads for each post" but I read the above comments as referring to "no update announcements even in one thread".

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

To elaborate on what I said:

1. Yes to a single, sticky thread containing only posts with links to and descriptions of blogs, wikis, and so on. Each forum member could have one post in that thread, containing all of that member's sites, and edit that post as necessary to announce new content on an existing site or add a new site. New posts would be from additional members adding their sites to the list.
   
   
2. Yes to a single, non-sticky thread per blog, wiki, etc., updated when there's new content. Each forum member could have one such thread. New posts would be from that person, to announce new content, and from followers of that content, to discuss it. If the thread scrolls off for lack of activity, so be it – I won't agree to make it sticky and I'll infract for "bumping," which is inappropriate behavior.
   
   
3. No to a series of threads, one per update of a blog, wiki, etc. That's just spammy. Yuck. I'll infract for that, too.

People can choose 1 or 2, and I'll be happy to accommodate that here.

Re: Question for and about those people who blog about GURPS stuff
 

Ill say that a combination of one and two might be ideal.

You have the master stick thread for blogs, and people can if desired create threads to discuss specific subjects pertaining to a blog.

Im saying this assuming the thread can stand on itself and is not merely a glorified comment session for said blog entry.

Overall if I had to chose id chose option one of Kromms 3 choices.