Sunday, October 16, 2005

Help With The Interviews?

The Blog Interviews have gone well. I think so anyway. In fact, there's been so many people agreeing to be interviewed that we had to double up. That is, do two a week instead of one, like we had planned.

If we had stayed at that level, we'd have enough lined up to take a year. 52 weeks.

So, we doubled up. But that still means we have 26 weeks of interviews lined up! That's six months! And that's a lot.

Now, we're still taking volunteers to be interviewed. But just be aware that there's a line.

And that line bothers me. A lot. Really. A lot. And I'm about to make this problem worse, I'm afraid. But I'm gonna do this. Let's see what happens.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to ask the bloggers to ask their readers to submit questions.

Why is that a problem?

Well, if you look at the Blog Interview page, you'll see this:
The date of the interview will be scheduled based upon the following, in this order:

  • The schedule of the blogger

  • The number of questions for the blogger

  • The order of interview acceptance

  • Random chance

That's what's been there from the start. Notice the second item.
"The number of questions for the blogger."
That's good and bad.

Good because if lots of questions come in for someone, I want to move them to the front of the line. A lot of people want to know about them, and we're just trying to meet that desire.

Bad, because someone could volunteer early and get scheduled after someone who came in later. Even by someone who came in much later. Now, let me say right here that no one already scheduled will get bumped, unless they ask for a delay.

But, I put that criterion near the top for what I thought was a good reason: Readers' interest will help drive the order.

Now, let's address the bad. The part about someone who volunteered early getting scheduled later because of someone with more questions.

Here's how we want to handle that: Get your readers to ask questions!

That accomplishes several things.

For one, it gets questions for you lined up. Which means you'll get closer to the front of the schedule.

Next, it generates interest in the Blog Interviews, which we hope will generate interest in all the bloggers participating.

And it will generate more traffic here, but that's not what this is all about. Not really. But if enough people have concerns about me getting all the traffic, we'll turn this into a Carnival, okay?

That's what I thought.

But bloggers awaiting scheduling of your interview: Get questions sent in!

And it wouldn't hurt to ask questions of the others either, would it? No, it wouldn't.

Anyway, help promote the Blog Interviews and get the questions sent in.

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