A Complaint to Some of the Bloggers of Lockergnome
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(NOTE: This doesn’t apply to EVERYONE, but still important nonetheless.)
With the release of the brand new WicketPixie theme, things seem to have picked up quite a bit here Lockergnome. A lot of people seem to be blogging now, which is great news!
The problem is, a lot of the new bloggers don’t understand what their role on Lockergnome exactly is. Lockergnome can be considered as a home for geeks (anyone really) who want to have their voice heard, but don’t have the means to get people to notice their own web site.
Lockergnome allows its users to create their own blogs in front of a massive audience, and even make decent revenue thanks to Google AdSense. I myself am proud to say I will be receiving my first paycheck from Google next month.
This is where my complaint comes from. A lot of people are creating crappy posts that lack any originality or interest. I’ve seen a number of posts that are hardly made up of two sentences. Other times, people just copy and paste an article from a entirely different site on to their own blog. If this is all you’re doing then Lockergnome isn’t for you. You really should be on twitter.com, since they specialize in short posts and link sharing.
If you’re going around Lockergnome, you need to be original and creative. Of course it’s OK to link to other articles, but the least you could do is voice your opinion or thoughts about the subject! If I just wanted to read headlines I go to a news site. Lockergnome is there so you can share information and your own opinions with other members.
A perfect example of how blogs SHOULD be is The Blade by Ron Schenone, MVP. Read through his work and get an idea of how things should be done. Ron is one of the most active and successful bloggers on Lockergnome if you ask me.
Basically the thing I’m asking is that you be creative and original. Lockergnome can’t be successful if most of the stories that it posted on it are complete crap. If you don’t know what to write about, just share some tips and tricks you know.
The best way to find out what popular at the moment with the community is to ask the community themselves! Check out what other people are writing about, or head over to the chat room at LIVE.PIRILLO.COM and see what every was talking about. Trust me, that rate is so full of ADD you’ll have all the topics you could ever want.
7 Comments
Robert Glen Fogarty
June 12th, 2008
at 11:17pm
Amen! If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to point people to this post in the future when I’m trying to explain why their entries aren’t really up to snuff. You’ve put it all into words quite nicely and simply.
The twitter comment is spot-on.
Thanks!
Bob
P.S. I will confess to editing your post — it’s just plain ol’ “Lockergnome” (as opposed to LockerGnome). Just one of those things that makes my eyeballs pop out whenever I see it. Sorry! No harm or offense intended!
–
Robert Glen Fogarty
Editor, Lockergnome
Griff
June 12th, 2008
at 11:52pm
None taken what-so-ever!
Glad to hear that you really liked it! And of course you can use it! I would be honored if this post was used as a tool for Lockergnome. Oh, and sorry bout the capitol. its a bad habit ^_^;;
Ron Schenone
June 13th, 2008
at 6:28am
Hello Griff,
Thank you for the kind words. You have expressed the feelings of many of us who have been here for some time.
Hi Bob,
I am glad to see that you and Chris are aware of the problem. We all look forward to you continued support to make LG the best web site available.
As a side note: I believe we ALL are aware that FF3 is being released on June 17th after having it being posted 4 or more times yesterday!
These ‘one liners’ add nothing to the quality of LG.
Matt Ryan
June 13th, 2008
at 6:31am
This is a great post, and the points are very valid. It’s hard to maintain a presence as a group of knowledge-having individuals when you have to sift through anyone re-posting articles they found written by other people in their own blogs, or even worse the corporate media. Plagiarism may get you through creative writing class in high school, but it won’t add to your subscribers and readership any on Lockergnome.
I do tend to write about current “headline” news though, and I’m unsure of how that fits into the post I’ve just read here. Usually I’ll write an article with the idea in mind of reading it on my daily tech podcast, and post it here in written form. I’m not sure if that may be a shunned activity, though at least everything is written by myself.
Lockergnome has been a long-standing community of enthusiasts and geeks from all walks of life. It’s great to see it flourish, and with all things I’m sure good will out. Great article Griff.
mhz
June 13th, 2008
at 10:10am
Well said. I use LG for my home page, b/c I wanted a brief look at Tech headlines when I open the browser. I liked it better before, when the headlines were one-liners squished together so I could review them at a glance.
About the time it changed looks, I noticed that all sorts of other content showed up as well, with many articles just having a short sentence or question, followed by a “tell me what you think”, which look blatantly like a lazy-mans attempt to gain Ad revenue.
For the last couple weeks I’ve been considering changing to a more tech-related home page, just because of this. Just one guys opinion, but obviously I’m not the only one.
Lockergnome Bloggers: Make It Count! ~ About Us
July 3rd, 2008
at 1:41pm
[...] If you can’t bother to post at least a full paragraph or two, please don’t bother posting. This has been a big problem that we’re trying to resolve — even other contributors have made note of it. [...]
Matt McCarty
July 20th, 2008
at 5:13pm
Wow so I am commenting on this a month later and the problem still exist. I hate clicking on headlines from Lockergnome to be greeted to a blog post shorter then this comment.
Great article by the way!