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Protesters ready to give Obama a West Bank welcome

by storylinker735 3/19/2013 - 4:57 pm

Palestinian protestors hoisted cheeky anti-Obama signs as the West Bank city of Ramallah prepared for a visit from the U.S. president.

Read the full article at http://feed.vocativ.com/west-bank-protestors-take-liberties-with-obamas-image/

Hey folks. Vocativ is a new startup that does some kind of crowd-sourcing to find uncommon news. I don't quite understand the model, but the stories seem interesting, and Versha Sharma of TPM Cafe is an editor there, so I gave them permission to post links here occasionally. Free free to share your thoughts (and please be polite).

by Michael Wolraich 3/19/2013 - 5:29 pm

I think the more news links the merrier. I don't get those folks who think news links should be rationed so-many-per-poster like blog posts. News links are, after all, by different authors than the poster.

And I think complaining about new posts making others scroll away is ridiculous, it's like complaining about "too much content" on a site. Especially when one can easily open the full page by clicking "more" and click again for previous page if you've missed more than a full page since your last visit here. The only thing I appreciate along the lines of space saving is that if someone has recently put up an article directly on topic, that one posts more on same on the thread as a comment. But that's because I like the collaborative nature of doing that, collecting all recent articles on one topic together, not because it saves space. For me, a fast scrolling  "In the News" section is better than a slow moving one.

by artappraiser 3/19/2013 - 5:39 pm (re: Michael Wolraich)

I would only worry about news links scrolling off before people have a chance to see them. But if that's a problem, we can always make the news section longer. I don't expect vocativ's posts to be that frequent in any case. 

Btw, artappraiser, let me know take this moment to thank you for your contributions to the news section. I should thank everyone really, as the quality of the links has been excellent across the board, but you're certainly our most prolific and regular contributor.

by Michael Wolraich 3/19/2013 - 6:11 pm (re: artappraiser)

I think Versha Sharma did a great job when she worked over at the Cafe.  Cool.  Welcome.  Nice work Michael.

by bslev 3/19/2013 - 6:02 pm (re: Michael Wolraich)

 

Hey there. Thanks for the warm welcome. We haven’t launched yet, but we’re excited to be here and are looking for feedback, so feel free to drop us a line anytime with the good and the bad. We’re putting together a great team and I’ll be sure to let Versha know that she’s got some fans here. And don’t worry, we won’t flood the news feed.

by storylinker735 3/19/2013 - 6:49 pm (re: Michael Wolraich)

Hi Storylinker - I have an idea how to hook you/Vocativ up with some related news sources/aggregate portal - please contact at my gmail acct: decader

Tx, D/PP

by PeraclesPlease 3/19/2013 - 11:32 pm (re: storylinker735)

If there's significant amount of Vocativ material, I'd recommend creating a special section under In The News & Latest Comments, see how it flies for a while. Could spice things up.

by PeraclesPlease 3/19/2013 - 11:25 pm (re: Michael Wolraich)

Let's see how it goes. They're still in beta and pretty hush-hush about what they're all about.

I've often toyed with the idea of adding an automated news feed section. It's not hard to do, but where to get consistently interesting content? What I appreciated about Vocativ's approach to us was that the guy offered to personally submit content that he thought was relevant to dagblog. But I can't imagine that that's their long-term model.

by Michael Wolraich 3/20/2013 - 10:15 am (re: PeraclesPlease)

Who knows, maybe mediated news is more interesting than huge swaths of uncut content. Not that dagblog is the most active target blog they can find...

by PeraclesPlease 3/20/2013 - 2:28 pm (re: Michael Wolraich)

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