Newsvine Guilds Thoughts #005: Existing Guilds

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.

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.

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.

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