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Making writing sites better – adding categories and helping automatically moderate some posts

Someone once asked me why I post columns like yesterday. Well, the easy answer is the awesome community here steps up. Yesterday is no exception! I got two great additional ideas yesterday that I wanted to bring to the community as a whole and examine those ideas a little more. I did want to say thank you to every single member of the community that voted, commented, and discussed the tops of yesterday. We have a great community here, and I enjoy the opportunity to share ideas and conversations with those of you that did comment! As I said out of yesterday, I got two opinions. I am going to list the concepts and then describe what they might look like in-depth.

  1. What if the unmoderated posts went into view called unmoderated. If a post there got enough likes (or opinions or comments), it would move into the official site. Allowing for this would reduce the wear and tear on the admin team (and reduce their workload), allowing them to run plagiarism checks on more posts, including the verified users).
  2. Fewer categories on the site but many more subcategories for writers
    1. Lifestyle –
  • Fashion
  • Vacation spots
    1. Technology
  • Robotics
  • AI/ML
  • Computers
  • The internet
    1. Literature
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Other

You get the idea to have 5 or 6 main categories and then have authors choose the ones that best fit. We could then have the author moderators move things out of their moderated areas (say I was moderating technology and someone posted how to make Chocolate Chip cookies, I could move that into lifestyle cooking)!

So let’s dive into the first one – the concept of all posts being life, but posts that are not moderated would be managed in an unmoderated view. Doing this allows for posts to be automatically moderated once they reached a specific threshold of views, comments, or upvotes. That number is something we should discuss (please do in the comments)!

The second is merely taking the idea of new categories, and adding the concept of reduced classes overall (say 10) but adding 20 or 30 additional subcategories. It allows people to view the site without having to view things they are not interested in. The reverse of course that they could view posts in a specialized area (say Poetry). Thanks to everyone that contributed yesterday.

Other posts

https://virily.com/virily_poll/making-writing-sites-better-new-categories/

This work is Copyright DocAndersen. Any resemblance to people real or fictional in this piece is accidental (unless explicitly mentioned by name.)

  • Question of

    what if we asked for top level categories and then sub categories?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    What about new unmoderated posts available in an area (unmoderated) if get gets x views or x comments it is moved to the full site?

    • Yes
    • no
  • Question of

    Thanks to everyone that commented – great ideas all!!!!

    • Yes
    • no

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What do you think?

10 Points

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

43 Comments

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  1. I have been out of Virily as contributor for quite a long time so I think I am not in any position to give opinion on the topic. I want to say, however, that sifting the quality of writers too would help. I read posts before which left me feeling bleh afterwards. I remember you calling out this too in one of your old posts so I will not elaborate. You would know better than I if that still exists today.

    1
  2. Q: WHAT IF WE ASKED FOR TOP LEVEL CATEGORIES AND THEN SUB CATEGORIES?
    Yes (6 votes) – 86%
    No (1 votes) – 14%
    Q: WHAT ABOUT NEW UNMODERATED POSTS AVAILABLE IN AN AREA (UNMODERATED) IF GET GETS X VIEWS OR X COMMENTS IT IS MOVED TO THE FULL SITE?
    Yes (5 votes) – 83%
    no (1 votes) – 17%
    Q: THANKS TO EVERYONE THAT COMMENTED – GREAT IDEAS ALL!!!!
    Yes (5 votes) – 83%
    no (1 votes) – 17%

  3. I think if there was a view called unmoderated, all of these stuck authors would be motivated to read at least each other’s posts, and to comment on them.

    We would be helping each other to get each other’s posts posted.

    If there were bad posts there, not worthy of being posted, they would not get any likes or comments, from other authors.

    Comments, likes, and upvotes, would not count from the author themselves, of course.

    1
    • (you replied at the end of another authors thread so I have to respond here).

      I don’t have a good answer for you, other than with the issues globally, i suspect the team doing the admin work is stretched very thin right now.

      1
        • they normally are, the issue is how the site was developed. As they created a queue for “posts” there is probably a selection that has to occur to run the test.

          There used to be an author here on the site that would say if the admins approved the post it must be true.

          I know for a fact that the admins don’t actually read the posts. I have asked them to pull offensive posts that they moderated several times. They always do responding sorry, we don’t actually read the posts.

          1
  4. I think these are good ideas, but judging from the LAST TIME i was active, which is a month ago :p That some category will probably have little views and no comments at all. So that say, they’ll never be moved to the official site… or are we to set different criteria for different categories? Or that no matter what you write on, they’ll have the same criteria, which eventually I think users will start posting in certain categories only.

    Of course, hopefully the views and activities are getting better now and we won’t have such problem.

    2

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