Newsvine
  • Welcome
  • Help
  • Report Bug
  • Conversation Tracker
  • Your Column
  • Replies
  • Friends
Type Comments Since You Last CheckedArticle Source Last Checked Stop Tracking All Clear Tracking All
Advertise | AdChoices
Log In | Register
Close the Login Panel
Existing users log in below. New users please register for a free account.

New Users:

Existing Users:

E-Mail:
Password:
Forgot Password?
Please enter the e-mail address or domain name you registered with:
E-Mail/Domain:
Back to Login
Log Out
  • Top News
  • Local News
  • World
  • U.S.
  • Sports
  • Politics
  • Tech
  • Entertainment
  • Science
  • Business
  • Health
  • Odd News
  • More
    • Arts
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Fashion
    • History
    • Home & Garden
    • Not News
    • Religion
    • Travel
Visit Mykola Bilokonsky's column >>

MYKOLA BILOKONSKY

Home Page
What's the point, really?
Articles Posted: 294  Links Seeded: 263
Member Since: 11/2005  Last Seen: 2/28/2012

What is Newsvine?

Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.

Get a Free Account
Help
Fun Stuff
  • Your Clippings
  • Leaderboard
  • E-Mail Alerts
  • Top of the Vine
  • Newsvine Live
  • Newsvine Archives
  • The Greenhouse
  • Recommended Articles
  • Wall of Vineness
Put a Seed Newsvine link on your own site

Newsvine Guilds Thoughts #005: Existing Guilds

Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:46 PM EST
technology, newsvine, guilds, newsvine-guilds
By Mykola Bilokonsky
Advertise | AdChoices

There are currently several user groups active on newsvine - VineSeeders, VineChat, and now most recently Tangle come to mind most readily.

In this short post, I just want to bring your attention to these organizations. Consider: do they add anything to the newsvine experience? Do they fall victim to some of the concerns you have for guilds? Which? Alternately, are you a member of one of these organizations? What insights have you had, based on your experiences? How can a built-in guild infrastructure add value to your endeavor? What features would you like to see? If you could rewrite Newsvine to better suit your project, how would you do it?

I find it very exciting that we're starting to get users who are grouping together based on common interests, and then pooling their resources to offer the community something that would be harder to ofer as an individual. What do you guys think?

-------------------------
For a list of recent guild discussion, please go here: Other Posts in the Guild Series

If you appreciate this post, please don't forget to vote for it!

  • Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.

Back To Top | Front Page

Published to:

  • Mykola Bilokonsky's Column, All of Newsvine
  • Groups: none
  • Regions: none
  • Public Discussion (9)
Calvin Tang

Mike and I are down here at SXSW and one of the things we've discussed over this trip is the great need for us to provide the community more tools to interact. Expect a big push toward features that will enhance the social nature of Newsvine, soon.

  • 5 votes
Reply#1 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:51 AM EST
Matt Kennedy

I'm rather apathetic to the whole idea behind guilds. First of all, the name was picked without so much as a real, tangible vote when there were far better ones listed that don't imply this is some sort of MMORPG. Second, some of the people talking the most about these guilds already seem like they have a firm dominance over the front page here, whether it's deserved or not. Third, two of the three "guilds" you mentioned seem like they're some sort of Newsvine fan club, and the third is about debating about Bush. Maybe it's just me, but... I see that all over the place here, why the heck do we need another place to do it?

Perhaps it would help if you listed a "guild" that did something "guildy" related to the news. Or are they simply meant to be exclusive little clubs where the regulars hook up to scratch their collective backs about how they feel about the world and gang up on those who are "unbelievers"? Because if they are, I'd like a really easy way to ignore them completely. That's what blogs are for.

  • 2 votes
Reply#2 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:29 AM EST
theannalog

Hey Matt, Tangle will debate a number of subjects. The first one will be the Bush administration, but afterwards we're taking suggestions. Also, we'd like everyone's help in keeping us from becoming

exclusive little clubs where the regulars hook up to scratch their collective backs about how they feel about the world and gang up on those who are "unbelievers"

there's a lot of fear on the vine about this kind of unbeliever-squelching right now, and it would really suck if too much of our community became like this. I think debate actually will encourage different and discordant voices, rather than squelching them. But we'll all have to be vigilant to make sure everyone gets heard.

  • 1 vote
Reply#3 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:22 PM EST
Mykola Bilokonsky

Perhaps it would help if you listed a "guild" that did something "guildy" related to the news.

Well, sorry if the current crop of user groups doesn't tickle your fancy just yet. The example I'm always throwing up is a Science Guild - it would be great if we could get a group of scientifically-minded and qualified viners to provide in-depth analysis of breaking science news, commentary on science debates, and an overall more specialized attention arc to notice stories relevant to people interested in this subject.

Science not your bag? Perhaps a guild devoted to your favorite basketball team, covering them in much more detail than the AP would. If you think about it, the possibilities are near limitless.

The current crop can, I suppose, be dismissed as self-congratulatory newsvine fangroups, if you're feeling particularly malicious. The reason for that, though, is probably the fact that the only people motivated enough to start these groups before the framework is included to do so more easily are those people who have a vested interest in directing the growth of this community. If you have concerns about the direction that flow will take, please voice them - this is our best chance to participate.

Also, just to address a final point - you say you see enough bush debate and newsvine meta-commentary already and why do we need even more of it? Well, don't think of a guild as just another name cluttering up your front page - think of it rather as a box into which related content can be filed. Exclusive filtering - as a complement to the inclusive filtering provided by tags - is a significant component of the whole guild project, at least as I envision it. Theoretically, then, the inclusion of specialized guilds should help you avoid running into the things you don't want to read about.

  • 1 vote
Reply#4 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:04 PM EST
Calvin Tang

First of all, the name was picked without so much as a real, tangible vote when there were far better ones listed that don't imply this is some sort of MMORPG.

Not to jump all over you Matt, but I just want to add to what theannalog and Mykola wrote. On the issue of naming the groups or guilds or whatever you want to call them at this point: consider that every other feature of Newsvine has been named without even a discussion, by the Newsvine Team. The Greenhouse, Conversation Tracker, Seeding, Doppelganger..... I could go on and on but you get the point. We don't plan to turn the naming of each upcoming feature into a democratic discussion, but since the idea of guilds was put forth by a user (Mykola), we figured we'd let the concept - including the name - develop on its own among the members who cared to have any input on the matter. You're welcome to join in on the discussion, or if you don't think it's your cup of tea you can rest assured that it will be implemented in a tasteful way that won't detract from your experience here at Newsvine. If anything, it will make the site a lot better.

  • 3 votes
Reply#5 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:52 PM EST
Mykola Bilokonsky

Yeah, I meant to bring up that exact point, Calvin - thanks.

We had the big long thread on what to call "guilds" and myself and Neil (the one who put forth the name "Branches", the other major contendor) have agreed to have a more thorough discussion and possible second vote on that point in the future.

Speaking for myself, I can say that the word "guild" has been used to describe this concept from the start, so it'll be a big mental gear-shift to change it in my mind - but it's not my decision. There was some talk of using the word "Branch" as a specialized part of a guild - for instance, the modernist branch of the literature guild, that sort of thing. But ultimately this isn't a democracy, and even what little "authority" I seem to have stumbled into regarding this idea stems entirely from the fact that I'm willing to talk about it. Anyone else is free to jump into the discourse and engage the community on this subject. We'll see how it develops.

  • 2 votes
Reply#6 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:13 PM EST
cp33

As a new user, I agree with what Matt said earlier. If you find someone who is an expert on a topic you are interested in, wouldn't you add them to your author's list? What if you only "liked" what 1 person of the guild said but not the other, would you still have to subscribe to the whole guild? If I created a guild on my own topic (say a minor league baseball team) how many other people are going to sign up and be experts on that?
Why divide the group down even farther?
I'd rather see the energies of teh vine focused on promoting the unusual/unique/interesting article and or author. The same authors seem to pop up on the main section pages. I am not tooting my horn here by any stretch of the imagination, but I would like to see a change in the people who are there all the time.

  • 1 vote
Reply#7 - Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:39 PM EST
Mykola Bilokonsky

cp33 -

A good question - if you are interested in the writings of certain authors, you're certainly able to disregard the whole guild scene and simply watch those authors. Guilds give you a slightly broader perspective, tho - the guilds we have listed here so far mostly represent projects that a single author would have a hard time pulling off. If you are more interested in single writers, it would be a lot easier to crawl through a guild devoted to something you're interested in looking for good content than it would be to crawl the whole vine, right? They're just another tool to help you get the information you want.

One way I've taken to looking at guilds is, mini-newsvines within the newsvine. They can seed content from the vine, they can have their own code of honor, you are able to log into them (without logging out of the vine first, as must be done currently), etc.

Again, try to look at the whole thing as simply an additional way to control what content you see - if you are concerned about guilds in any way limiting your experience, you can rest assured that that's not what we're going for. Guilds are about empowering the users and providing 1) content that wouldn't be possible without them and 2) access to content that you may not find without them.

  • 1 vote
Reply#8 - Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:16 AM EST
Jimmy G

Mykola,

I am one of the "members" of the Vine Seeders group. I want to start by saying that I don't believe we should be considered a Newsvine fan club. I had the idea to start Vine Seeders for a couple of reasons. First, I really enjoyed Newsvine, it was new and fresh and I wanted to be involved in that in whatever fashion that may be.
Second, my friends, Shaun and Bob who do the podcast with me, had always loved to dig through the news on Newsvine and bring it up at work and just talk about it. So I thought why not do it on a podcast. We get to do what we love to do and maybe someone else may enjoy it as well.

What I do want to say is one of the things we try to really do, and that is to focus on the people who make up the Newsvine community. I found myself adding more and more people to my watchlist, people like yourself and Carl Howe and theannalog, who are writing such great stuff. If you listen to the show, we always have a featured writer and try to "showcase" their work on Newsvine. As for the stories we discuss, we also really try to use ones that are seeded by others in the community. Our show notes always point to listener to the peoples Newsvine columns. We want to drive people to these columns that people write and seed. From there the listener is able to see some other things that person may have written.

Another goal of the show is to bring content to the readers/listeners that they might not have otherwise seen. I receive emails all the time saying that a story we discussed was great and that if they had not heard it on the show, they would have never seen it. Obviously we cannot cover everything, and don't profess to. but we try very hard to bring a good mix of popular stories and ones that are not so popular.

We don't want our show to be closed. We want others to join us. For our feature writers, we always try to have them on a show shortly after we feature their work. We had a great chat with Carl Howe. We are having theannalog on this week so she can bring us some stories that are important and interesting to her. If somebody has something, we always invite them to let us know, not so we can take it, rather to get them on with us and tell us about it and discuss it.

As you stated in your column, we truly want to add to the Newsvine experience, and hopefully to some degree we are fulfilling that goal

    Reply#9 - Tue Mar 14, 2006 9:26 AM EST
    Leave a Comment:
    You're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead.
    You're in XHTML Mode. If you prefer, you can use Easy Mode instead.
    (XHTML tags allowed - a,b,blockquote,br,code,dd,dl,dt,del,em,h2,h3,h4,i,ins,li,ol,p,pre,q,strong,ul)
    Newsvine Privacy Statement
    As a new user, you may notice a few temporary content restrictions. Click here for more info.
    FUN STUFF:
    • Leaderboard |
    • E-Mail Alerts |
    • Top of the Vine |
    • Newsvine Live |
    • Newsvine Archives |
    • The Greenhouse |
    COMPANY STUFF:
    • Code of Honor |
    • Company Info |
    • Contact Us |
    • Jobs |
    • User Agreement |
    • Privacy Policy |
    • About our ads
    LEGAL STUFF:
    • © 2005-2012 Newsvine, Inc. |
    • Newsvine® is a registered trademark of Newsvine, Inc. |
    • Newsvine is a property of msnbc.com