Carnival of the Liberals: Call for submissions!

[brainshrub]

Next week will be Brainshrub.com's turn to host the Carnival of the Liberals. (CotL)

A blog "carnival" is when bloggers who share similar interests on a topic submit their best posts, or nominate other peoples posts, to a central host-blogger who then collates and promotes them as a carnival.

The carnival happens on a regular schedule, and the host of the carnival alternates with each issue. The host is expected to do everything in h/er power to promote the carnival and present the links in a creative way. Sometimes, a theme is invoked. For example, in CotL #5 Modem Butterfly used the theme "The Twilight Zone."

CotL is a bit different than most other carnivals because it is more selective. The host is limited to ten of the entries.

Think of Carnival of the Liberals like the Utne Reader of the liberal blogosphere; it is a way to showcase up-and-coming writers and increase their site traffic.

I've been looking forward to hosting this for months. For this edition I am planning to combine two of my favorite things: Political writing and haiku.

For blogs that are selected for the CotL #8 "The Haiku Edition," I will write a descriptive haiku about the essay.

For example, if I selected this post for CotL I might write something like:

CotL #8 The Haiku Edition

A blog carnival.
March fifteenth, two thousand six.
At Brainshrub dot com.

If you're interested in being considered for the carnival, use this entry form to send a submission. The deadline is 11:59pm on Monday, March 13th.



Please kick or nominate this.

[salvorhardin]

1. How can I not kick this?

:-)

[brainshrub]

2. Kick. One more vote, and this gets on the Greatest page.

Will someone do the honors?

[EstimatedProphet]

3. There ya go!

BTW are you talking about submitting posts from DU? I don't know how this works.

[salvorhardin]

4. As a general rule, a blog carnival is a collection of blog posts

As for why we post about Carnival of the Liberals on DU, there's many reasons:

• Many DUers are also bloggers, and DU will be implementing its own journals (blogs) for members soon as well so it's applicable
• Both Paul and I are long time (Paul much longer than me) DU members and we like to share our other projects
• Blog carnivals are a wonderful method of exposing people to blogs they might otherwise never have discovered -- there's been some seriously good writing in Carnival of the Liberals, especially from B and C list bloggers who deserve the exposure -- and we want to spread the word about CotL

I'm not opposed to including a very well written forum post but it would be unusual. However, the host of each edition has almost 100% editorial control so the decision would be left up to the individual host. Brainshrub, in this case.

You can find out everything you need to know about guidelines, dates and even hosting an edition of Carnival of the Liberals at our site: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com

On edit: Forgot to add, the best way to get acquainted with the concept is to check out the past editions of CotL. Some editions have themes, some are more straight forward.
CotL #7: The Video Edition http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2006/03/01/cotl-7-the-video-edition
CotL #6: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2006/02/15/carnival-of-the-liberals-6-is-here
CotL #5: The Liberal Zone http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2006/02/01/prepare-to-enter-the-liberal-zone-with-carnival-of-the-liberals-5
CotL #4: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2006/01/18/j-r-s-got-it-goin-on-with-carnival-of-the-liberals-4
CotL #3: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2006/01/04/its-back-and-its-better-than-ever-cotl-3
CotL #2: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2005/12/21/woo-hoo-its-the-second-edition-of-carnival-of-the-liberals
CotL #1: http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/cotl/2005/12/07/cotl-1-has-been-posted

[brainshrub]

6. Wow! You answered my question before I even asked it!

You must be psychic!

[brainshrub]

5. CotL is for bloggers.. but I suppose it would be okay to submit a DU post.

That's a good question.

On one hand, DU is a forum not a blog. Also, DU doesn't need the publicity.

On the other hand, if someone writes something particularly astute... then I suppose it would be brash to disqualify it.

I'm inclined to treat DU submissions just like a regular blog entry. Salvorhardin happens to be one of the co-founders of CotL and I'll let him weigh in on this within this thread.

What do you think Salvorhardin? Can people send us their DU posts?

[EstimatedProphet]

7. No biggie-I was just wondering how it worked

[salvorhardin]

8. Sure, the more the merrier

And you're the one who has to wade through them all this time. :-)

You know, that brings to mind another reason in favor of blog carnivals that we don't talk about a whole lot. They're addictively fun, more so when you're the host and get to put together this unified edition out of all these disparate submissions. When I did CotL #2 it literally took me almost 8 hours to whittle down the 30+ submissions down to just the 10 best ones.

[brainshrub]

9. And it does wonders for your Technorati stats.

You're right, it is a lot of fun hosting a carnival. It does take a lot of time 'tho. I've got all day Tuesday set aside for it.

Added bonus for hosts: Getting lots of blogs to link to your carnival does wonders for your Technorati stats.

[salvorhardin]

12. Heh. I'm almost afraid of the traffic we'll be getting on April 12

When Pharyngula is hosting. PZ Myers gets more traffic in an hour than I get all day (on a busy day!).
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula

[brainshrub]

13. I want to have a blog that that some day.

Someday, our blogs will get that kind of traffic.

Have faith, keep plugging away.

Here's a handy chart to help:



ON EDIT: Blogging-wise, I consider Brainshrub.com just above the Suck Threshold.

[salvorhardin]

14. Hah!

At least Brainshrub is consistently above Sucky. Neural Gourmet alternates wildly between Kicking Ass and Sucky with the trend toward the Sucky mark. :-)

One of my biggest challenges to overcome is I need to find a way to balance my reading with my writing. They're interconnected and I like to draw upon a wide background of knowledge for every blog post so it's not surprising that my writing suffers for the reading. I need to train myself to write more smaller posts that make a single point or ask a single question. On the other hand, since I tend to go into exhaustive detail in researching a particular topic or aspect of a topic I think that'd get boring fast for my readers as I explore every increasing minutia. I really respect someone like yourself who is able to consistently write solid blog posts on a regular basis.

[brainshrub]

15. Don't feel bad.

While you have to write something every day to build and maintain traffic, I feel most good blogs only write one article a week worth reading. (Including my own.)

Right now I'm trying to think of something to write for tomorrow before I go to bed.

*sigh*

This would be so much easier if I was rich and famous.

[salvorhardin]

16. What's amazing to me

Is that anybody actually reads my site and that Neural Gourmet has gone from being a Z list (my term -- no readers) to a solid B list site in just the past few months. I think they're there to read Modem Butterfly's stuff. ;-)

[brainshrub]

18. What's your traffic like now?

I noticed that your pagerank jumped to "5" recently. What is your traffic like now?

According to SiteMeter.com, I'm at 586 unique visits a day. However, that number varies depending on what you measure. For example, BlogTopSites says I'm getting over 4500 unique hits a day... I swear, I don't understand how they are coming up with that number! (My server logs say about 750+ unique visitors, but I like to quote SiteMeter because they are more standardized.)

There was a time when I was thrilled if more than a dozen people visited Brainshrub.com.

ON EDIT: It would be interesting to have a conversation as to what is an A, B, C or Z-list blog.

Here's my thumbnail:

Kos, Wonkette = A list (Known even to non-bloggers, 10,000+ visitors a day, pagerank of 8+)
DU, ThisModernWorld = B list (Known mainly by people who are political wonks, 10,000+ visitors a day, pagerank of 6+)
NickLewis, TheRudePundit = C list (Known mainly among hardcore bloggers, 1000 - 10,000 visitors a day, pagerank of 5+)

I don't want to get into D+ lists because it's so arbitrary. Furthermore, being on an ABC list is no sign of quality. For example, by my measure, FreeRepublic is a B-list. (When I talk about quality, I am refering to layout, content and user-interface - not the politics.)

[Mythsaje]

10. Since I usually post to my blog

anything I send here that's well received, I suppose I'm killing two birds with one stone.

:)

[readmoreoften]

11. My entry

Oh, Stupid Monkey
Now we have Theocracy.
Thanks alot, asshole.

[salvorhardin]

17. Morning bump n/t