I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find time to complete Missing Link lately, despite squandering huge amounts of tiem tagging promising posts. I had hoped that using a feed reader would make the task easier, but in fact the opposite is the case. There are at least 150 new posts in total every single day generated from the blogs I have listed in Google Reader. It takes a couple of hours at least every single day to peruse them all and tag them with a star, another couple of hours to cull the starred posts down to a short list, and then another couple of hours to write Missing Link itself. Moreover if I miss a day or two, the unread posts list in Google Reader rapidly mounts up to more than 500! It’s time I just don’t have available with university duties now resumed after annual leave.
Moreover, the whole process of perusing so many blog posts and selecting the best of them is becoming increasingly tedious and unpleasant. It’s also absorbing all my available blogging time (and then some) and preventing me from writing about topics that actually interest me rather than summarising what others are writing about.
I still believe Missing Link is a worthwhile concept that could do a great deal to expose excellent blog writing to a wider audience. Unfortunately it will take someone with greater patience and available free time than I possess. Thanks to those who subscribed to Missing Link, and especially to Jacques Chester who implemented the email subscription system.
A pity since I only just found your missing link, and had been starting to compare it to Crikey’s blogwatch… Given it takes you so much time and effort I guess that means we DO have to pay for this service then…
The ones you did were enjoyable, Ken. Blogging can take a lot of time and energy and it can be easy to devote too much time to it.
Just a thought – was the university effectively paying for the Missing Link?
I thought they were very good too – but I did wonder how you found time!
We’ll go back to doing our ‘Around Ozblogistan’ posts again, Ken. They won’t be as good – or as comprehensive – as yours, and will reflect Jason’s and my tastes, but at least it’s something. Thanks for doing such a great job over summer. Like Patrick, I did think you must have been spending hours not only finding the pieces but writing witty tag-lines (I’ve been a sub; I know how long that takes).
I’ll make that beer I promised a carton of your choice when we do eventually meet.
Perhaps the solution is to not worry about being comprehensive. I assume that part of the purpose is just to bring interesting sites or issues to the attention of readers who read the same old blogs all the time, and lack the time or imagination to explore. You could achieve this is large part just by sifting through the daily catch until something catches your eye, and maybe stop at three.
For what it’s worth, I would trade a dozen Missing Links for one of your law posts any time.
Well we could also do a roster.
I’m happy to volunteer to do one week every couple of months. Perhaps volunteers could share a Google reader ID and that way catch up with where the last one finished off.
Does this mean we can have Chris Sheil back now? Oh Goody!
The roster is a good idea, though might be tricky to coordinate – and I’m not sure how many witty tag lines I could come up with in a week!
Thanks for the hard work Ken. I guess it was unrealistic of the Oz blogsphere to expect/rely on one mere mortal to bring us the highlights – twice a week, no less!
sorry to see missing link go,
the australian index usually has a good roundup of australian blog posts, however without the categories and editorialising
Thanks to thiose who have commented.
The rotation/roster idea might work if we could get enough volunteers so people only have to do it (say) one week in six. We already have Nicholas and myself as volunteers on that basis (well, Nicholas atually said once every two months but I’m sufre he’d do it every 6 weeks at a pinch). I’ll also interpret Paul Mitchell’s comment above as a volunteering offer as well. Helen Dale also volunteered to assist previously, as did Darlene Taylor with the arts side at least.
If each of the above is prepared to tackle Missing Link once every six weeks, and we get just one more volunteer, we might yet keep the feature going. Moreover, it would then have more of a blogging community self-help co-operative endeavour rather than just a solo effort. Obviously there would be differences in style, approach and selection between volunteers, but that isn’t a bad thing. It will mean that over time readers would gain exposure to the blog reading tastes of various editors, and may therefore find blog writing they really like that I would not personally have selected.
Logistically, co-ordinating such a collaborative endeavour should be fairly easy. I could simply make my Google Reader logon available to all 6-8 volunteers, so we’re each working from the same resource/database. We would need to agree on a roster, but presumably would often/usually be able to swap weeks with another team member if work or other commitments made it impossible for one of us to stick to our rostered week. Moreover, other team members could even assist with tagging (or rather yellow starring) promising/outstanding posts they happen to spot even when it isn’t their rostered week, not to mention adding new and worthwhile blogs to the subscription list. The whole thing could actually work extremely well, but only if we can gather a team of 6-8 volunteers willing to put in the time for one week every 6-8 weeks.
As I observed earlier, my experience to date is that it takes around 6 hours in total to put together each Missing Link post. Moreover, I think we would need to leave it at not less than 3 Missing Link posts per week for the project to be workable, otherwise the number of posts to review for each edition becomes too overwhelming. Fortunately the work of “starring” promising posts and then culling and short listing them can be spread out to some extent over the couple of days before publication, but it’s still going to take around 3 hours (and possibly a little more) to write and compile the Missing Link post itself on each day of publication. Of course, you can start the compilation task the night before if needs be, to fit work commitments.
Anyway, I’ll email Nicholas, Helen, Darlene and Paul separately about this, but any additional volunteers would be most welcome. Either indicate your interest here in the comment box to this post or contact me via the sidebar “Contact Club Troppo” facility.
[…] Ken pointed out a few days ago, doing justice to Missing Link was one helluva big deal solo, so he had to let it […]