Could we have an Ask Ubuntu blog?

Question

I am thinking we should have a community blog for Ask Ubuntu. Yes, I know I am poking the older discussion of the same topic.

The reason why I am bringing this about is because, recently I took up the task of blogging monthly updates of Ask Ubuntu on the Ubuntu planet. As I just started writing the next post, I started wondering why I am doing this updates on my blog instead of doing it on a standalone blog for Ask Ubuntu. Surely, that is the best way to go about?

Having a separate blog for Ask Ubuntu makes the monthly updates more meaningful. It is much better to be on a "official" blog than on some random guy's personal blog. The blog could also be used for other purposes like highlighting awesome users through interviews and awesome question, amongst others.

I wouldn't want to consider our blog competing against other well established blogs like OMG!Ubuntu! and Webupd8 because our scope is much different than theirs. Ours is about Ask Ubuntu and its community and not the entire Ubuntu universe itself. It makes having a separate blog all the more necessary.

Some of the issues that comes to my mind at the moment:

Potential problems

• Blog might not be updated regularly because
  • Not enough contributors
  • The contributors' interest and motivation level might drop off over time

Potential benefits

• The blog can be a perfect way to showcase our community
• We can use it highlight great content produced in the site
• We can also use it to highlight and propagate our community decisions over a wider audience.

---

So, given the above situation, would you think it is ideal for us to have a community blog?

Answer 1

First of all, thank you for helping to promote Ask Ubuntu on the planet and the community at large. Your efforts are much appreciated.

I still wrestle with this idea, I'm always one for jumping in feet first and giving things a try. However, as I mentioned in the previous post the majority of other blogs on the network cover far more than the happenings on their respective sites, and if we were to pursue a blog it would need to be more than just Ask Ubuntu. They help fill a void by becoming an authoritative source for blog posts on their subject matter. We have some great sources of subject matter reporting already in the Ubuntu eco-system. If we're to go through with this, we need to figure out how we'll fit in and bring unique and compelling stories at a relatively regular rate.

Another argument against this is the Ask Ubuntu Google+ Fan Page. Currently eight people have access to this page and it's hardly updated. I'd much rather the idea of a blog arise as a need and not a probative measure. For me to say "we need a blog" I'd want to first see engagement in things like the Google+ page and other already established areas of outer-community outlets.

One solution to this would be to allow more trusted community members to post on the Google+ page as a trial run for if we could use a blog. I'm much more interested in that idea than say just trying another thing (this blog).

Answer 2

I think a tumblr snap-in to post link contents in pinned posts might be useful. This way AU could endorse a particular statement.

This way you could have a blog with only contents that were mod-starred. I can think of only about 5 users that have had pinned statements in recent history. It would allow a way to grab pinned data very quickly or subscribe to an RSS feed of pinned posts for exceedingly important data.