Good news: Our tech team has greatly improved Open's blog feed import system. As Thomas wrote, in the past few months we've been struggling to accommodate the influx of new users, and imported posts faced long delays (or, sometimes, simply didn't show up).
Now, cross-posted entries should show up within four hours after they appear on the original blog. To be sure that your posts do come through, you'll want to avoid importing more than 20 entries at a time.
Breaking Bad Season 3
Thomas Rogers
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Mark Belinsky
Salon.com
Comments
First, it is my already-stated opinion that if Open Salon fails, experts will not do a post mortem that contains the phrase “If only more posts already available at other sites had been imported, the site would have succeeded.” No matter how much content OS offers that is available elsewhere, it will not distinguish itself. It will distinguish itself by focusing on the people who are committed to posting content unique to this site, by allowing the character of this site to be something you can't get elsewhere. If it just wants as a goal to have all the content of the internet, it will at best just be the internet. And people can get that by just connecting to a browser, they don't need to do that by going through a site that offers up the content in a more rigid format, more slowly, and going offline at 4am every day for maintenance.
And from the point of view of a content producer who has worked very, very hard to produce unique content tailored to this forum, not available at other forums, and seeing that content often not featured when content that is available at other forums is featured, I have to say it's just downright demoralizing. This feature, which OS has worked so hard to create, is a slap in the face to anyone who has been trying to pretend that writing stuff for this site was something that might be appreciated or lauded. It makes it less likely that things people write here will be seen, or that there will be time for anyone to read it. It makes it impossible to tell who is offering unique content and who is just an echo of elsewhere.
Imagine if Congress spent its time trying to solve the “problem” of making sure that foreigners could freely import their political messages during campaigns... Imagine what people who were in the US and thought their opinion should count as much or more than foreigners would think. It's a direct analog.
Having someone hook up a firehose of external content to a forum where people routinely gripe about how hard it is to get seen is just hard to see as a positive. But maybe it's just me.
I want the absolute best for this forum and for Open Salon. I just don't think this is it. And I know it's hard to ask people who've spent money on something to rethink. Cognitive dissonance is a huge thing to overcome. But really, it's worth a moment to consider the thought that this is a feature that might be better off dismantled.
http://open.salon.com/blog/from_barren_rocks/2010/03/03/a_man_with_no_name_an_os_story
Thank you
Can you PM me the info (screen name, email address) for your old account? Then we can get to the bottom of what happened.
@Leon Freilich
Imported posts are posts from users who want to cross-post entries from their own, outside blog on Open. You can learn more about them here.
Besides, Open Salon is about what WE want to make it. Just because we write on other places does not mean content from other places is not relevant to Open Salon.
Judy, thanks for getting the import feature fixed!
I see OS as sort of the Associated Press of the Internet. Or maybe the Reader's Digest? I don't know if either of those analogies is accurate or not, but my point is that there is a loyal audience here, and I think it's growing.
I have written unique content for other sites, but to be honest, it's OS that I keep coming back to, mainly because of the great people here who keep reading, writing, and commenting. That's the key factor that makes Open Salon what it is.
As for the import feed, I stopped using it when it started having issues. Now I just manually enter my blogs posts. My original blog still exists under its own domain name, and most of my readership probably comes from OS, but I also get readers on my Blogspot site, and via Kindle subscribers, so I have no objection to crossposting.
If OS ever required only unique content that I couldn't post elsewhere, I would probably post less often, because I just wouldn't have the time, which is what slowed me down from posting original reviews on other sites, like Blogcritics.
So, to be clear, I don't at all deny that there are people like you made happy by this. What I do actively and affirmatively and unabashedly challenge, with due respect is the notion that catering to that particular set of users, the ones also posting elsewhere, is what this site ought to be about.
Ultimately, if OS doesn't reform its policy, I may myself begin to post elsewhere as my primary location and perhaps I'll throw OS a few pages just to attract audience elsewhere. But OS will not be stronger for that shift. And I will not take that action out of a desire to do injury to OS, but rather out of a long-emerging sense that OS does not aspire to win, and I can only invest in failure for so long.
Or maybe OS will win by just importing what is already elsewhere. That's a peculiar form of winning. I want not part of that either. To me, what it is to win is not to make a copy of something else people want. It's to enter something unique that is its own identity and to stand by the merits of that. I've tried personally very hard to invest in OS based on a theory that's what they were about. But I am gradually coming to a belief that's not it at all.
It isn't necessary that you or anyone agree with me. But that's my opinion anyway. You're welcome to claim victory once I've been beaten down on the matter.