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Please post who wrote the article you're Sphinning!
Went Hot: September 4, 2007 - 12:10 am
Posted By: Jill 670 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Sphinn Zone
I personally know that certain author's articles will be better than other author's articles and would truly appreciate it if you would please mention who the author is when you Sphinn someone else's article.
You could actually make or break the number of Sphinn's someone else's article gets due to this (especially if you as the submitter are not a recognized Sphinner). Once an article is Sphunn and it doesn't mention the original author's name, it appears that it can't really be easily added in later so that people can see it.
This comes up simply because I was going to Sphinn a great article I saw on Search Engine Guide by Diane "Torka" Aull just a bit ago. I hadn't noticed it previously posted, but when I went to submit it, Sphinn told me it already was posted. I was surprised when I saw that the original didn't mention who the author was, as I know I would have read it had I known it was one of Diane's.
Just a little rant for those of you submitting articles!
7 Comments
Comments
There was an article when Sphinn first launched which effectively suggested cleaning up messy titles that highlight the blogs name and author.
Some of the best articles on Sphinn are written by people most have never heard of (I am finding new high quality blogs all the time), and some of the worst are written by industry "luminaries" on popular sites commenting on a news item posted elsewhere without actually adding anything.
Even when submitted by an unknown user, those articles will most likely reach the front page anyway.
Maybe the "jump to" address could be a little bolder, but in many ways that defeats the point of "social" recommendations
I know on Digg people often include a source to try to make it more official, but in many ways there are only a few "official" sources in this industry, though I am not sure we all trust them.
I sometimes edit titles (of other people's submissions) to remove the blog name, because the titles end up being too long to display the entire thing. I'd rather the title of the submission be about the content of the article than the person who wrote it. As Andy mentioned, the jump to link is a good way to see where the article is coming from. And over time, people may also find that they like a particular Sphinner's submissions.
I'm also with Andy about discovering new blogs. I've learned about lots of great sites I'd never heard of before here.
Unfortunately, the jump to address doesn't always provide info as to who the author is. For instance, in the case of Search Engine Guide, they have numerous authors -- some better than others! :)
I'm not suggesting the Title of the article should be changed to reflect the author. I do think mentioning it in the description would be helpful in many cases.
This is not to say that I only read stuff from people I've already heard of. I just don't want to miss anything good, and conversely, I don't want to waste time clicking through to an article written by someone that I already know I won't be interested in.
Like it or not there are some people whose articles you know will be good, and others who you know will be bad (too long, too boring, poorly written...whatever!).
Jill, I like your suggestion that the author could/should be included in the description. That seems to be the best way to do it. Of course, the problem is educating submitters to do this. :)
FWIW, I also edit out blog titles and other garbage from headlines. Danny wrote about it here:
http://sphinn.com/story/1523
About 1/3rd down under "Better Titles"...
Whilst at first I thought this would be a bad idea as it would handicap new and upcoming writers as people flock to the old timers.
It would help a writers brand. If good, solid articles are attached to an unknowns' name, then they will soon be known.
But getting Sphinners to do this will be like herding kittens, I suggest leading by example. But then, if you want to get to the front page you will include a highly respect name in your title, as I have done in my latest post from Bill Slawski. If I was going to submit an unkown it wouldn't make sense to announce the name in that way.
There is also the reputation of the Sphinners. Most people seem to only submit their own stuff. but if someone consistently submits good stuff from others, they will be the reason why you read and not the author.
Interestingly, the Economist magazine has no authors listed on articles. The brand of the magazine is enough to lend weight to the articles as a Sphinner will lend weight to a submitted article.
The best way to get that to happen is to include a separate field for it. Until then I'll see if I can manage to remember to put the author at the beginning of the description.
I agree with Lyndon that who Sphinns something gets my attention more than who wrote it because we all post lots of information for a broad audience and much of that won't fit here. (For example, I write for beginners too so the folks here would probably skip those posts.)
Particular Sphinners only post the best (where best equals what Sphinn is looking for) from any given author so those Sphinns catch my attention first.
We'd almost certainly NOT add a field for author, sorry. Many blog posts don't even make it clear who authored an entry. Plus, people have enough trouble just getting titles and descriptions right. I'm with Jill in that a good description and/or title that mentions the author as appropriate is useful. Sometimes it makes sense to say who wrote something, and in those cases, put it in the existing fields :)