During the massive, unbelievable Fireblog session we recently had, a lot of people were asking about the Mothership "thing" and how all the liveblogging business worked. I've been meaning to an intro diary of sorts, explaining the ins and outs of what we've devised, but just didn't get around to it.
Having seen lots of new "faces" in the fireblog diaries, I don't think I can put if off any longer - more cats to herd! So, lots of nerdy process/systems info below the fold. But first, a step out a level, in case some people are new to liveblogging itself.
In the earlier years of the naughty aughties, a new phenomenon began spreading across the tubes of the internets, only those two memes hadn't come about yet. But we'll ignore that. The phenomenon was an online journal, essentially, where users posted commentary about news, their cats, our alien overlords and the plot to conscript Chuck Norris into the USPS. Whatever...the point here is that these postings came to be known as "web logs," because it was a log (they're not just for Captain Kirk, you know!) maintained on the web, the worldwide one.
Modern times being as they are, with interminal time constraints and heart attack-inducing pursuit of efficiency, "web blog" just became too cumbersome a word. So it was shortened to the -- let's face -- inelegant "blog." But we ♥ blogs, even if the name does sound like, well, the name of an alien overlord!
Like all good phenomena, "blogging" (Mrs. Alien Overlord?) spurred subgenres, such as "the rant," "meta," "action items" and so on and so forth. One of the most curious spinoffs, though, was the group ritual known as "liveblogging."
"Liveblogging" is basically real-time coverage of an event, usually a media event. Congressional hearings are the runaway favorite and let me tell ya, you can catch some real gems watching that stuff - quotes that would otherwise never see the light of day, etc. Pressers are also great, although they just haven't been the same since Scotty o'Puffy McMoonface left. But really, as the SoCal fires showed us, liveblogging format can be used for anything.
The problems with liveblogging, though, especially in a community blog as large as this, are myriad. Watch this:
email me the code?
At least a dozen Kossacks just shuttered. I gar-awn-tee it. Anybody who was here back in the day remembers the rec list being filled with two or three versions of a liveblog diary. It was crazy-making trying to keep up.
So donnamarie started making calls for volunteers - the first attempt at all this cat herding. It was wonderful and totally eliminated the problem of "who's on first?" "i dunno...what's on second." But we still ended up with overlap and still managed to clog the rec list.
So I created the Liveblog account, with Markos' blessing, to be used by a a handful of kossacks to manage the mayhem. A group of us has the password to Liveblog's account, so any one of us can make updates. It's been really cool watching it take and ironing out the kinks with the Liveblog team. And it seems to be taking off so I think the "intro" diary is a tad overdue. It's a bit cumbersome to try to detail it all out essay stylee, so I'll just discuss the separate points of the system.
The Muthaship - What is there to say? It's the Mothership. It's a diary; it's a placeholder. It's a map; it's a cat-herding clearinghouse. The Mothership is the first diary of our liveblog sessions and the only one to get recommended.
Kossack Liveblog only ever posts during liveblog sessions. If Liveblog posted it, you can pretty much count on it being the Mothership. If you see "Mothership" in a diary title, the Pavlovian response should be to rec it. Mothership = Recommend.
This has eliminated the problem of multiple liveblog diaries being on the rec list. The Mothership is our rec list anchor, if you will, and directs people to the current diary, where all the action really is. The Mothership's title will always (ideally) contain the current diary's number.
The current diary number is in the title because sometimes the Mothership gets unwieldy with comments. Having the number in the title lets everybody know where to go without having to actually click into the diary. Another way around this load problem is to open the Mothership in a separate tab and turn the comments off. If we ever need to launch an additional Mothership, the one on its way out will be named "Unrecommend me! Go to Part..." This will ensure that you can never go wrong with the Mothership = Recommend response.
"So, wait...if all the action is in the liveblog diaries, how does the Mothership get unwieldy?" you ask? Because it is cat herding central. After watching the fireblog sessions, it became clear that this was the best use of the Mothership. It will keeps the process out of the diaries and contribute to the seamlessness of it all. The Mothership will be the place to manage the diaries, keep the volunteer list up to date, etc.
The Diaries - Diaries do not get recommended, they just get all the action. All the coverage, commentary, analysis, etc. We learned long ago that they start to bog down somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 comments, which is why we go through so many. There is no hard and fast rule on when to publish the next diary, because it depends on several factors - pace of commenting, time of day, etc.
When the current diary hits 200 comments, it is time to start paying attention. The goal is to have a new one up when the old one is close to 250. Posting a new one at 200 comments, especially when things are at a fast clip, barely allows for breathing room.
The Volunteer List - where all the wonderful diary volunteers unwittingly expose themselves to demon code and sleep deprivation. This came from donnamarie's Call for Volunteers diaries for rustling up livebloggers and it's, obviously, a super important part of the process.
Cat herding being what it is, though, things happen. And it can be pretty tricky trying to gauge when one will be up to bat for posting. So sometimes, volunteers can't post at their slot time - when this happens, we just fill in the gap. Trying to move the whole list all over the place in accommodation is sure to induce an aneurysm.
I hope this made some sort of sense and was maybe even helpful? An attempted summary:
Mothership = Recommend
Diaries = All the action, no recommend
200 comments = start watching for switchover
volunteer casualty = fill in the gap
Wow...I shoulda started there! Hahaha!