The Good, the Bad, and the Evaluation...
We're gonna talk about the negatives:
Two weeks ago we looked at the good of the A to Z Challenge. I think it's fair to say that from all the feed back we've received through the Reflections posts and your comments, the positive aspects of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge far outweigh the bad.
Some of the negatives that have been cited are more personal and were covered in my post on The Negative Responses to the A to Z that appeared last year. You can go to that post if you want a more detailed coverage of negatives.
Repeatedly this year we saw essentially the same negative aspects brought to our attention. Some of these we tried our best to fix and I'm not sure how we can change them.
The dreaded Captcha:
The matter of Word Verification or spam filters rests with individual bloggers. On this A to Z site, on co-host sites, and on some of your sites requests were made repeatedly for bloggers to turn off spam filtering devices to make comment access easier. Some of the co-hosts and participants even went so far as to leave our requests in the offending sites' comments. We were somewhat effective, but many blogs still remained that required visitors to get through Captcha to leave a comment. We tried.
No play, no stay:
After sign-ups closed we eliminated about 200 blogs from the list that were advertising or non-participant blogs. Nevertheless many of you discovered more that we missed. Also as the Challenge progressed there was an attrition rate of bloggers who fell by the wayside. I'll cover a bit more about this topic of the "blogs that waste our time to visit" next Monday when we evaluate the Challenge as it stands now and ideas on how to make it better.
What if we don't agree with content?:
There were also some complaints about certain blog content that some deemed as inappropriate. The co-hosts labored over this issue to a great extent and concluded that it was not necessarily a good thing to get into the business of censorship. We came to the conclusion that some blogs needed content warnings, but we would not want to be excluding any blogs based on content as long as the other A to Z stipulations were being followed. We'd like to get some feedback on this issue as we don't want to alienate any of you who sincerely want to participate in the April Challenge.
The Biggest Problem is the biggest aspect:
The most oft cited problem pertained to the overwhelming size of the list. Over and over I saw requests to label the list entrants, break down the list into categories, or limit the number of participants. I think the last solution is not a good one and for me is out of the question. One of the main objectives of the A to Z Challenge is to build community and we have been doing a pretty good job of this. Limiting entrants would create a spirit of exclusivity that would not fit well into the idea of reaching out to expand our reach to build communities.
There are some viable alternatives to labeling and categorizing that I think would present a very workable solution to the problem of the large list. Some of you are in opposition to breaking things down, but I truly think I have an answer that would be an attractive way to approach this problem. Next Monday I will explain my plan in detail to see what you think.
Were there any other major negative aspects that you think I missed? What more could we have done to get bloggers to co-operate with what was explained many times? Were there any blogs that you found offensive and if so how do you think they should be handled?
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| Artwork by Ada Z at Collagepodge.com |
Two weeks ago we looked at the good of the A to Z Challenge. I think it's fair to say that from all the feed back we've received through the Reflections posts and your comments, the positive aspects of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge far outweigh the bad.
Some of the negatives that have been cited are more personal and were covered in my post on The Negative Responses to the A to Z that appeared last year. You can go to that post if you want a more detailed coverage of negatives.
Repeatedly this year we saw essentially the same negative aspects brought to our attention. Some of these we tried our best to fix and I'm not sure how we can change them.
The dreaded Captcha:
The matter of Word Verification or spam filters rests with individual bloggers. On this A to Z site, on co-host sites, and on some of your sites requests were made repeatedly for bloggers to turn off spam filtering devices to make comment access easier. Some of the co-hosts and participants even went so far as to leave our requests in the offending sites' comments. We were somewhat effective, but many blogs still remained that required visitors to get through Captcha to leave a comment. We tried.
No play, no stay:
After sign-ups closed we eliminated about 200 blogs from the list that were advertising or non-participant blogs. Nevertheless many of you discovered more that we missed. Also as the Challenge progressed there was an attrition rate of bloggers who fell by the wayside. I'll cover a bit more about this topic of the "blogs that waste our time to visit" next Monday when we evaluate the Challenge as it stands now and ideas on how to make it better.
What if we don't agree with content?:
There were also some complaints about certain blog content that some deemed as inappropriate. The co-hosts labored over this issue to a great extent and concluded that it was not necessarily a good thing to get into the business of censorship. We came to the conclusion that some blogs needed content warnings, but we would not want to be excluding any blogs based on content as long as the other A to Z stipulations were being followed. We'd like to get some feedback on this issue as we don't want to alienate any of you who sincerely want to participate in the April Challenge.
The Biggest Problem is the biggest aspect:
The most oft cited problem pertained to the overwhelming size of the list. Over and over I saw requests to label the list entrants, break down the list into categories, or limit the number of participants. I think the last solution is not a good one and for me is out of the question. One of the main objectives of the A to Z Challenge is to build community and we have been doing a pretty good job of this. Limiting entrants would create a spirit of exclusivity that would not fit well into the idea of reaching out to expand our reach to build communities.
There are some viable alternatives to labeling and categorizing that I think would present a very workable solution to the problem of the large list. Some of you are in opposition to breaking things down, but I truly think I have an answer that would be an attractive way to approach this problem. Next Monday I will explain my plan in detail to see what you think.
Were there any other major negative aspects that you think I missed? What more could we have done to get bloggers to co-operate with what was explained many times? Were there any blogs that you found offensive and if so how do you think they should be handled?
