I have to abandon the Top 100 Sri Lankan blog posts in a book project. I barely have the time to spit out a blog post to even think about organising a selection process of any sort. Nothing much has happened over the past weeks/months so I’m making it “official”.
If anyone wants to take over, feel free to grab the list of nominated posts.
For those keen to see their nominated post in print, the only immediate option is indi’s kottu supplement on the Sunday Leader. Assuming of course your nomination gets his attention AND earns an editorial grunt of approval by the Sunday Leader. For some understandably, this will be worse than swallowing rusted razor wire without the right wine.
A harder, genuine way to go about this is to write a post on your own blog about your nomination with a link to one of indi’s “printing kottu” posts. Your post should clearly state why the nominated post is worthy of a dead tree. That involves more than just spitting out “X has written a good post” followed by a URL.
Nominating your own posts is a definite no no.
On the long term development I’d like to see a human driven nomination process. Ideally with a succinct nomination written in a social bookmarking service such as
Digg.com Such plans are now in the paws of others somewhere in the fog of the future.
Giving this up is a concession I make in the face of higher time priorities. I’ll leave the page on this blog for archival purposes. Many thank yous to everyone who contributed.
I hope one or some of you will take the idea forward.
Cerno 
“For some understandably, this will be worse than swallowing rusted razor wire without the right wine.” – sounds like Kasippu? 😉 lol
I hope someone will take the idea forward. I was thinking the other day how a simple thing like nominating a post on twitter with a hashtag unique to the book project would be an easy way to get some nominations, since almost all the bloggers have twitter accounts. But I guess the selection/editing process would be the hard part…
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No time? Don’t tell me you are going to make babies now… 😉
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Aiyooo… don’t give up on it!
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I nominate RD!
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Chavie: Its all a time eating process I tell you 🙂
Serendib_isle: 😆
Angel: Easier said than done 🙂
DD: 😆
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Cerno, please educate the ignorant 🙂 Why is it important to have it in a book form ? Is that not the whole point of using an electronic medium , to stay away from the traditional rather quickly outdated print medium ?
Can the top 100 Sri Lankan blog post thing continue online, as it has done so far ?
Can it not become a regular feature where people nominate as and when they see a good post ? Is it not far easier to keep it more up to date that way ? Is it not far easier to look at how the patterns have changed in 20 years time ?
I have read some of the posts and the majority of them are related to the situation SL was at the time and I think it would be far more beneficial to keep it online than go towards a print medium at all. That way we can eventually see after the country or the environment has changed in 20-30 years , as a reflection of the authors who write the posts. It is a reflection of a generation that is brought together by an identity of a single country. All this is very interesting in
digital ethnographical sense.
Apologies for the rant and rave.
I just cannot understand the fascination of the bloggers have with the print media. If it was up to me I wold suggest we continue as it is and make it to top 1000 blog posts or whatever the N number that people want and just keep it online.
This archive can only grow in value with time.
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Very good comment there. Thank you 🙂
The book/print thing started out as a fund raising tool/idea to help IDPs. The original post about it has some background.
I guess there’s bound to be an information design/graphic design interest in translating dynamic, linked digital content to traditional media.
Another factor is archival. Print doesn’t require an external power source. It is also immune from file formats, software backward compatibility etc. Blogs are essentially databases and their archival capability will depend on the back-end database software being current and compatible with future systems. There’s no guarantee that will be the case in the future.
Then there’s the data itself – text is a fairly basic form of data but whether future systems will read its structures is another question mark.
Overall I think the blog format is very cumbersome on print. Specially things like external links etc will lose their meaning on paper.
As for nominating posts ect – I think it would be a good habit for people to do on their own blogs – sort of like the tagging stuff that’s been going around lately.
Its just that I don’t have the time to centrally manage/co-ordinate such an activity.
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BTW, you’re tagged!
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Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Thought I got away with it…
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cerno, i was very impressed by your enthusiam for the top 100blogs project.. and after retuning to the lankan blog world after a long break i am saddened to see a project which had so much potential now ran out of steam..
may i second someones suggestion of a website rather than a book. maybe along the lines of top100lankanblogposts.com (or cheaper domain) with a couple of ads keeping the overheads paid in time.. dont worry we’ll be clicking those ads in true sri lankan fashion haha
after all the internet is where blog posts live 😉 putting them on paper carries a lot of financial risk too.
also a voting system might be better implemented in a dedicated website rather than a simple comment box as with wordpress.
i know cerno is a busy man(assumed from mentions of mrs cerno.. haha).
p.s. can we ask help from kottu, im sure their stats can be factored into a voting system.
bye for now
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You’ve got it quite well thought out – think you should take over the idea and go with it 🙂 Like you said (VERY correctly) I’m quite a bit swamped.
I have no objections if you set up the site yourself and even make some $$ off it. If you want to go with it I’d suggest you contact indi who “runs” kottu and sort things out at the stats end – if you want to keep it that way.
Personally I think the process should be human centred – and that the posts should be good enough for people to bother writing about them. That I think will raise the bar higher and differentiate the site from being just another aggregator…
The flip side is the time and the effort evaluating the recommendations.
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i think i chew a bit too much thank i can possibly swallow, nevertheless making money out of other people’s work would be a bit snidey haha
i certainly wouldnt mind contributing to the cost of purchasing domains and hosting space untill the break even point is reached (if its from go daddy i can just buy it and nominate you as the guy who has access- i know they have that option to nominate etc)
sadly i have neither the time nor the required web design competance to pull this off.. i now the pain lol
tc bye
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I think you could do it through wordpress.com for a start. I’m afraid I don’t want to be involved with ownership of domains etc – got more than enough commitments on my plate right now 🙂
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Guys can someone recommend a blog writer living in Lanka who is looking for a fulltime position supporting a social networking site by writing articles blogs, and news updates.
Thanks in advance
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