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29-09-2018, 23:35
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#1
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2015
Boat: Hanse 531
Posts: 1,076
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700 sailing blogs - now what?
Cheers,
I think I've reached some kind of milestone (let's call it version 1.0!) with my hobby project of making a "community of sailing blogs" page that aggregates and retrieves fresh information about all the sailing blogs I've been able to find.
So what next?
I'd really appreciate feedback on what further functionality would be good, and/or if there's anything in the current page that annoys and should be scrapped.
My two main ideas behind this pet project were:
1) To create some sense of "community" by bringing lots and lots of sailors/sailing blogs together in one place in a visually appealing way. (An initial thought was to see a world map with all the blog/channel entries geolocated in the correct places. Most blogs don't use geotagging, though, yet.)
2) To make it easy to find interesting and relevant sailing blogs/channels. (I think Netflix does a reasonable job at user interface and navigation, so I might have borrowed an idea or two from there.)
So, I don't know, but if anyone wants to get excited about this and suggest further developments, I'd be very happy
The address to the page is https://nakedsailor.blog/sailingblogs/
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29-09-2018, 23:40
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#2
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: New Zealand
Boat: 50’ Bavaria
Posts: 1,809
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Personally, I'd find it much more useful if the blogs were classified in some way. You could perhaps crowdsource this information I guess.
Tags such as world/local/mono/cat/couple/single/refit/newbie/experienced would be interesting
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29-09-2018, 23:54
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#3
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2015
Boat: Hanse 531
Posts: 1,076
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tillsbury
Personally, I'd find it much more useful if the blogs were classified in some way. You could perhaps crowdsource this information I guess.
Tags such as world/local/mono/cat/couple/single/refit/newbie/experienced would be interesting
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Yes, true! Tags/labels would be a great addition.
The crowdsourcing mechanism is more challenging
I do think that each blog owner (the active ones at least) could be interested enough to update their own info, but there needs to be some "claim my site" functionality for that.
Additionally "anyone" could suggest labels to any site and these would have to be approved by someone else (admin or site owner, I guess).
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30-09-2018, 00:19
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#4
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: New Zealand
Boat: 50’ Bavaria
Posts: 1,809
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
One way is for someone to moderate, but another is to allow anyone to classify and use the data when two or three agree, perhaps? I’ve used this system before, which gives you data without requiring logins, but gives you a little defence against idiots.
Ideally the long term vision would be for me to say that I like Sail Life and Keep Turning Left, for example, then your site could suggest other similar ones I might be interested in. That would be a really useful website.
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30-09-2018, 00:25
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#5
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2015
Boat: Hanse 531
Posts: 1,076
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tillsbury
One way is for someone to moderate, but another is to allow anyone to classify and use the data when two or three agree, perhaps? I’ve used this system before, which gives you data without requiring logins, but gives you a little defence against idiots.
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and thank you!
Quote:
Ideally the long term vision would be for me to say that I like Sail Life and Keep Turning Left, for example, then your site could suggest other similar ones I might be interested in. That would be a really useful website.
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"There is a new blog you might like!"
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30-09-2018, 09:31
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#6
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cruiser
Join Date: Jan 2017
Boat: Retired from CF
Posts: 13,317
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Rating / voting to create a Best Of page as well as recently updated
Tagging, ideally you accept crowdsource taxonomy suggestions but curate them
Then per user feeds based on tags and popularity, in recent update order
A forum for discussion
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30-09-2018, 09:50
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#7
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Annapolis MD
Boat: Building a Max Cruise 44 hybrid electric cat
Posts: 3,194
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
I know you've set-up bots to locate the information, but from what I've seen, it seems accuracy is really poor. Each site could do things to improve their ability to be 'found', but in reality, I can't imagine many doing that for the algorithm.
Matt
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30-09-2018, 10:51
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#8
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2015
Boat: Hanse 531
Posts: 1,076
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by funjohnson
I know you've set-up bots to locate the information, but from what I've seen, it seems accuracy is really poor. Each site could do things to improve their ability to be 'found', but in reality, I can't imagine many doing that for the algorithm.
Matt
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Yes, the bot isn't very smart yet, but it's trying its best
I looked at your site and tried to make it smarter. Now it found your YouTube channel, Facebook and Twitter, and you jumped from 16 "activity points" right up to number three overall behind Vagabonde and Guiding Light!
But yes, feedback like this makes me aware of the shortfalls so that I can make improvements, so thank you.
The strategy, btw, is to use mostly/only stuff that already is needed for basic SEO and Facebook (OG graph tags etc) and so making the page easier for Google and Facebook to interpret, should also make it easier for my humble robot.
Cheers!
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30-09-2018, 10:52
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#9
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2015
Boat: Hanse 531
Posts: 1,076
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by john61ct
Rating / voting to create a Best Of page as well as recently updated
Tagging, ideally you accept crowdsource taxonomy suggestions but curate them
Then per user feeds based on tags and popularity, in recent update order
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Many thanks!
Maybe it could be integrated with this one
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30-09-2018, 11:05
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#10
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cruiser
Join Date: Jan 2017
Boat: Retired from CF
Posts: 13,317
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
No, just point a /forums/ subdomain at a phpBB instance, if you don't want to spring for Vbulletin.
Help keep these social / career / marketing topics away from the existing forums.
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30-09-2018, 12:28
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#11
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: On a boat
Boat: Amel Super Maramu
Posts: 13
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
We (as parents) spent ages trawling through video blogs to find a good quality family travel and sailing blog to watch with the kids when planning our circumnavigation. One that didn't involve too much nudity, swearing, drinking or lengthy 'talkies'.
Eventually found a couple but perhaps a quality control filter (not sure how) and a family friendly/age rating.
A self policing site with simple star ratings and reviews may be the best way to go with this.. with a minimum amount of moderating obviously.
We eventually started our own YouTube channel but I don't want to hijack the thread with self promotion, so if you want to know more just PM me and I can give you a perspective from both a user and creator POV.
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30-09-2018, 19:24
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#12
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Boat: Roberts 45
Posts: 1,033
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mglonnro
Cheers,
I think I've reached some kind of milestone (let's call it version 1.0!) with my hobby project of making a "community of sailing blogs" page that aggregates and retrieves fresh information about all the sailing blogs I've been able to find.
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Interesting approach, well done!
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01-10-2018, 03:59
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#13
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Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Lakewood, OH
Boat: C&C 27
Posts: 4
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
What a great idea. Thank you for taking the time and putting in the effort to aggregate information. As a few have suggested tagging and categorizing would be great. Another suggestion would be to add alt text for the thumb nails. Perhaps with a brief description of the channel/blog/facebook page.
Keep up the great work.
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01-10-2018, 04:06
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#14
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cruiser
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Probably in an anchorage or a boatyard..
Boat: Ebbtide 33' steel cutter
Posts: 5,030
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mglonnro
I'd really appreciate feedback on what further functionality would be good, and/or if there's anything in the current page that annoys and should be scrapped.
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Might be worth looking into making the home page smaller with less data needing to be downloaded to view - it's a load of data just to load the page, and quite lot of the traffic might come from boats where bandwidth/data cost becomes an issue.
Nice idea though
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01-10-2018, 04:12
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#15
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Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Lake City Florida
Posts: 39
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Re: 700 sailing blogs - now what?
Great start thanks for taking the time.
__________________
Happiness is only one thought away....or really happiness is just one sail away
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