Carnival of the Capitalists

Hosting

Quick update 1/21/08:

This page will be rewritten at some point, but the key things to know are that CotC has changed dramatically and parts of the below are no longer accurate or relevant.

Hosts will no longer publish their edition of CotC on their own blog. Instead, they will publish it, or supply the text to be published, at bizosphere.com. Hosts will be expected and encouraged to promote their own blogs, businesses or activities in the course of creating the CotC post.

The publication target day is now Tuesday, while the entry cutoff remains 3:00 PM Sunday.

Hosts are responsible for selecting handpicked posts from out in the blogosphere as exemplars of compelling, quality content that might benefit from wider audience and vice-versa.

Hosts are responsible for deciding which self-submissions (or ones from readers) to use out of those that pass preliminary screening.

That about covers it for now, pending a full rewrite of this page and shaking out of details.

Unedited previous text of this page is below:

Please be cognizant of the below first, but the new address to volunteer to host is:
Host at Bizosphere dot com

The quality and reputation of Carnival of the Capitalists depends as much on hosts as on entrants. It is imperative that you go into it aware that it is a serious commitment of time and effort, starting with reading and considering every entry.

It’s a lot of work for what you get out of it. You get the associated links and traffic. You get recognition for a job well done. You get your blog noticed, and an opportunity to promote it, yourself, and what you do or sell. You get the enforced “opportunity” to read every entry, which can be an enjoyably horizon-broadening experience, even with the entries that aren’t so great mixed in there. You get to shape an edition of CotC to your liking, within reason.

Be sure you are up to it and willing to take on the effort.

As a host you are:

Responsible for remembering when you agreed to host, being available or making it known in a timely manner if you won’t be, and requesting the information on obtaining the entries if you don’t receive it by the Thursday prior to your publication date. Implicit in this is a responsibility to ensure you can be reached or else take the initiative, even if your e-mail address used when signing up changes or is down.

Responsible for linking the CotC home page in the CotC post.

Requested to link the CotC home page from your blog on a more permanent basis.

Responsible for making it known if the permalink to the CotC post on your blog ever changes, or if the post goes away entirely. Your CotC post can be archived to the CotC site if needed.

Responsible for making it known when you have posted your edition of CotC.

Responsible for making it known if you expect it to be posted later than the normal window, or if you intend to delay publishing 24 hours in deference to a Monday holiday.

Responsible for screening out entries that are off-topic, extras from the same blog, insubstantial, not consisting of substantively original text (as opposed to links or quoted text), older than three weeks prior to your edition’s publication date, or are of generally low quality/readability.

Responsible for using your discretion in making exceptions or in not making inappropriate or excessive eliminations.

Still requested not to give entries something along the lines of a numerical or letter grade rating, rather than more subtle text or positioning cues, or now eliminating the worst entirely.

Welcome to invite specific bloggers to enter.

Welcome to add posts that were not entered by the bloggers in question, but chosen by you as ones you’d like to include, so long as it’s not to the exclusion of traditional entries.

Requested to join the CotC mailing list.

Requested to make a habit of linking CotC when it’s published elsewhere in weeks other than yours, as it’s the visibility that makes hosting and participating worthwhile.

Responsible for anything else implicit in the further description of hosting here that is not expressly listed.

Frequently hosts have arrived at their week and had no idea the mechanics of hosting. It’s assumed if you want to host it that you are at least familiar enough with CotC (and blog carnivals generally) to know that entries are primarily e-mailed in by the bloggers whose posts they are. If it includes only posts selected by the host and doesn’t involve self-submission, it is not by definition a “carnival.” Those are called link roundups.

Rather than having to e-mail hosts on a one by one basis to clarify, the information is presented here.

First, you request to host. You don’t demand to host. You don’t automatically get accepted as a host. Having been a host in the past doesn’t mean you will get to host again. The fact that a particular date appears unfilled does not mean you will get that date, as it may simply not have been updated on the list. You may find you don’t get your first choice of weeks to host.

In that past, the host list has grown as long as a year ahead. That is directly responsible for volunteers having forgotten, stopped blogging, or changed their minds by the time their slot arrived. The goal is to keep the list no more than a few months long, so don’t be surprised if a request to host too far in the future gets deferred.

When your week comes, it is the week preceding the official edition date of CotC that is relevant. One host uses the entries that have come in through the Sunday cutoff, compiles and posts CotC,and everything tht comes in through the cutoff Sunday preceding your edition date will be your carnival fodder.

Sometime after the preceding host posts their edition, but not later than Thursday, you should receive an e-mail containing the information needed to access the e-mail account.

Entries go to a Gmail account, now named thecotc, formerly cotcmail.

You entries will be in the inbox, with everything prior having been archived. Be aware that if there are more than 50 e-mails (or threads, the way Gmail does it) in the inbox, the inbox continues onto subsequent pages. Submissions have been lost in the past to hosts not realizing that.

Gmail uses a concept called labels, which are effectively like folders (but sadly they don’t cascade), and each week’s entries are labeled based on the edition date. Hosts may apply the label, but if not, that will be done before the account is turned over to the next host. Entry e-mails are always labeled before being archived, which clears them from the inbox in preparation for the next host.

No entry e-mails should ever be deleted, whether they are included in a CotC edition or not.

The exception to deleting e-mails is, of course, spam, and then it’s not deleting, but using the “report spam” button on selected e-mails.

Other, temporary labels may be used by hosts in the course of sorting, classifying, and organizing the entries, but should be cleaned up afterward.

Your mission is to read each entry, except the few that can be discarded out of hand. Other than spam, that pretty much applies to multiple entries from the same blog; you may read one and ignore the rest.

You can’t really evaluate the topicality and quality of a post without reading it, and that’s a big chunk of the time involved. Many entries arrive late in the week, but you can make life easier by starting early on what’s already there.

You can readily eliminate some entries. Always could. Is it off-topic? That’s not as common as some might believe, as the range of business and economics is huge, and niche or specilty topics within that don’t automatically disqualify.

Is it substantively original text? That means that the bulk of the text is written by the author, rather than being cited text, or a list or collection of links.

One might have interpreted the “substantively original” guideline to mean “is it substantive text” as well, but that was not explicit. Consider it so. As host, you have discretion and may include very short posts that you consider particularly relevant, useful, intriguing, well done, or of strong interest to the carnival audience. However, you may also consider them easy targets for elimination, just for be insubstantial.

As mentioned, a given blog may have one post per week in CotC, and should really enter only the one they want. Any extraneous posts may be summarily ignored.

If you find an entered post is older than three weeks prior to your edition date (allowing posts hot off the presses during your week, plus anything from the two preceding weeks, which leaves room for bloggers forgetting to enter or resubmitting a post that didn’t make it the first time), you may summarily leave it out. You may also make an exception, but an outdated entry does not get the ebenefit of the doubt.

Beyond that, it’s a matter of balancing quality and quantity. You don’t want to do something absurd like take only the best five posts. It’s still a carnival. It’s still expected to be a significant set of links; just that we want it to be links to solid posts of quality. That’s subjective, and people will just have to accept that they may not agree with the host on what was included.

Hosts have even asked in the past about the details of constructing a CotC post. At heart it’s a list of links to blog posts of possible interest to the readers. That’s all it is. Presentation can be everything, though. It is expected that your post will include a blurb and/or brief excerpt of the linked entry, and there is where you can show off your own skill, bring particular attention to your favorites, editorialize, and make the edition appealing to read and click through.

Adequate white space is a good idea.

Linking to both the main page and the post on the participating blog is polite but not required.

Categorizing the entries is popular with many readers, but not required. Nor is there a fixed set of categories you much follow if you categorize.

Use of a template such as the one Brian Gongol created is perfectly valid, and readers seem to like it.

Create your post. Include a link to the CotC site in it. Include any self-promotion or commentary you might like. Publish it any time after 3:00 PM eastern time on Sunday (the cutoff time for entries for the week), the day before the edition date, through about noon Monday. That’s the normal publication window. Later than that is considered late, and that would be when you’d let me know it’ll be late (if you haven’t let me know sooner).

Once it’s published, send me the URL. That gets it sent, first chance I get, to the CotC mailing list, updated in the past and future host lists, updated at Blog Carnival, and announced in a post here.

Lap up the admiration for a job well done.

A couple other points…

Should you inform people whose entries you aren’t including? That’s optional. If you’d like to give feedback, or invite improvement, feel free. It sounds like a lot of extra work.

Should you inform entrants, included or otherwise, when CotC has been posted? That’s optional. It’s a nice touch and a good way to invite trackbacks if you use them. Participants are being asked to be sure to link the edition they are in, and that gives them the link in a timely fashion and encourages the links. If you’ve sent them a trackback from the CotC post, that amounts to the same thing, but that too is optional, and can be a major pain.

This probably goes into too much detail and rambles a bit. It may even leave something out. If you have any questions, or are looking to contact me, e-mail jay at this domain. To volunteer to host, e-mail host at this domain.