How Can We, As Newsviners, Help With This Transition And Related Questions

I've been posting comments in the various articles about this news but thought it made sense to collect
a few of those.

In the main original article I wrote:

We're about to get overrun by a bunch of new visitors aren't we? Put away all the good
china and put out the paper cups. Millions of cups of punch and cookies.

May I throw out this question: What can we, as Newsviners, do to help if - as I suspect
will occur due to this news - a bunch of new people come to check out this place?

More time spent with the new members helping them figure out how to do links? More time
spent blocking and warding off spammers?

Thura complimented my question and so this is partially an elaboration of that.

I'm sincere in my question - I'm a big believer in involvement. The more involved a group (be it a class I'm teaching, a special needs adult I'm working with or a community here) is involved in making changes and decisions the more they will connected and committed to that work.

we're all going through a big shock here - Newsvine and MSNBC have been kissing and courting for months... without telling us? How dare they!? But I understand the reasons for that.

but now it's like Newsvine just got a new stepdad (or stepmom since I think all the newsvine staff are guys) and we're waiting to see what she's like.

And so I'm thinking that a) We should wait and see what shes like before splitting and taking a position on how she is based on first impressions or past actions, i.e. pre-marriage
and
b) maybe she and us and dad (yes the whole newsvine family) can do some fun things together like decide how best to address this influx of new people.

Would it help to have more of us watching the newcomers to help them avoid errors. I want us to avoid some of the errors made with the New York Times refugrees and I hope we can learn from that.

Is this a good time to institute an idea I suggest once where new members are given mentors (newsviners offering to help them when they have questions)

Are there certain Newsvine help files that need updating as they come in?

One big question is how exactly the feeding to and publicizing of newsvine stories by MSNBC will
play out as we talked about here.

Will MSNBC have a sense of humor about stories like this satirizing the situation? (I wrote that
partially as a test to see if it brought down any warning letters from newsvine or msnbc staff - none yet)

Eric A. (no, the one that doesn't think we're all class thugs) summed up the issues here well and I think he's echoing the thoughts of many who are wondering whether to stay or go (I hope everyone stays for at least a week):

He quoted this part: A larger community (ok, we're not sure how positive this is going to be. The newsvine community does not have a long history of "plays well with large new blocks of users." If we're honest with ourselves we'll admit that we may have a rocky transition ahead - so I'd like to urge everyone to be open-minded and welcoming. We've got the best user community on the internet, for my money - and I firmly believe that if we stick to our guns and do what we do best (that is, interact with respect and civility and genuine insight) then those values will prevail. What we don't need is anyone swaggering over and saying "Alright, noobs, listen up. Here's how we do things around here, and you'll do it or get out..." cuz that trick never works. Ok?

Then this is what Eric adds: This is really the biggest issue for me.

With everything else people have brought up (corporate control of our content, blah, blah, blah) my view is that the staff has really earned a lot of trust from us and I do trust them to not cave and voluntarily destroy the soul of Newsvine for a bigger paycheck.

A huge influx of users, however, is the thing that's hardest for them to control. This site has generally had an extraordinarily high level of discourse. Even the flames on this site have to be couched in at the very least faux-intellectualism. The sort of growth that this new exposure will no doubt bring makes me worry the the signal-noise ratio in not only the comments but also the seeds and articles will decrease.

Honestly, the community is really the only reason I stick around these days and if it gets harder and harder to pull something good from everything that's offered I probably won't stick around for very long (though few would probably notice.)

I wrote: " think it's going to come down to how the stories are fed to MSNBC. If, say, MSNBC features Rob's story on being in the military and that draws people into a good discussion of the war that's great.

If it features a seed that is flame bait and it draws in hundreds of new people into some hate filled generalizations about politics then it could get ugly.

I'd be curious in learning if the stuff being fed in the future to MSNBC would be seeds AND articles, just articles or what,"
later adding, "I can see how they can feature our articles into their web pages on various topics.

but I don't see how they would benefit from seeds since i'm sure they have their own people presumably combing the wires to find other good weird stories.

Other random thoughts:

re: meta I'm wondering if paid moderators are on the agenda (and if so I volunteer to be one) so that flamefests can be quashed as soon as possible. A newsvine flamefest would be more likely to draw media coverage now that MSNBC's name is attached.

It also occured to me this morning that we can probably expect more sock puppets to reappear to try to sneak in amid the crowds. The trick, at least for me, in spotting them is when they sound like they know WAY too much for someone new.

And as I wrote somewhere would you like more of us doing the kind of great work Viki (thanks Viki!), Lauhal (thanks, babe) and others do in crusing greenstalk more often now?

I think we will need a way to distinguish how Newsvine is now versus how it will be after this announcement.
I propose we call it Pre-Microsoft and After Microsoft.

That can be abbreviated to PM and AM.

Oh, wait,that's an abbreviation already used, right? Well, I'm sure Bill Gates can use some of his billions to buy out those currently using that system. Yes, I'm kidding about the AM/PM.

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