Community Post

Scheduled Scanner Outage, Site Housekeeping

The CDNews team will be away from the internet for most of the day on Thursday & Friday of this week, resulting in a rare miss of scanner reports for those days.  If there’s any members out there that have a scanner and are interested in filling in, please let us know and we’ll give you the special keys to be able to create posts in the interactive scanner format.

And if there’s anyone else out there with news or interesting discussion topics, please don’t hesitate to jump in and create a post to fill the void.  We will still be monitoring things and will promote interesting stuff up to the front page.

And one quick note about site policy.  Some of you may have noticed that there’s a kind of post that usually doesn’t make it onto the front page.  They tend to fall into the category of “there’s an event next week” type of stories, with a good example being today’s Neighborhood Association Meeting post.   The reason is not because we don’t like the content (for example, we’re big supporter’s of Elvis’s efforts), but because the front page is generally reserved for current news, not the distant-future-news that the event-themed posts usually represent.  

We added the event calendar back at the beginning of the year specifically for this reason.  Some people are planners, and like to lay out what’s going on in upcoming weeks.  The calendar is there to serve them.  But I think a possibly larger group of people are more seat-of-the-pants types who aren’t immediately interested in a story about something a week away.  If it’s on the calendar, you can still catch those people because your event will show up on the front page, above the fold, in the “Upcoming Events” widget.

And I’m not suggesting that people stop doing those posts.  We’re glad to have them, and people who are interested can still find them from the stories tab.  But I want to be clear that they usually won’t make it to the front page and that it’s nothing personal.   Those that pass a qualitative level-of-interest threshold will only be bumped up on the day of or the day right before the event.   But whatever you do, make sure and add your events to the calendar.   That will guarantee that we and other planning-oriented people will see it and make it a part of their plans.

0 thoughts on “Scheduled Scanner Outage, Site Housekeeping

  1. I am guilty of this. I’ve often elected to add something as a “story” rather than a calendar item, because I’ve wanted to add an attachment (.jpg or . pdf).

    Many of the notices we get from others come with electronic “flyers” giving details/maps/etc, and it’s good to be able to pass these on to others (and it’s less work than transcribing the flyer). Also makes the actual flyer available for printing/distribution.

    In brief: calendar items with attachments are the ideal!

    Andrew

  2. Just wanted to say “thanks” for the scanner reports! They’re sometimes freaky and but always entertaining and informative. Keep up the great work.

    By the way, did you catch the event at MLK Way E & E John this morning? (8:40am?) Based on the aftermath I saw it looked like someone started to pick a fight, but wound up knocked out on the sidewalk, only to be arrested once he woke up. Strange…

  3. Thank you for being a part of the site!

    I think the incident you’re refering too from this morning was this one:
    http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2008/08/06/cdn-police-sca#cceO2R9

  4. Yep – that would be the one. From what I saw the caller was treated for a scraped elbow, while the suspect went from lying on the ground to the back of a squad car. *shrugs*

  5. Thanks for the clarification. To work around, write the story and attach stuff. Then put up the calendar item and put a link to the story. This way we get a good bit of any background, can start discussion if there is organizing to do, etc., but the event is on the calendar….

  6. i posted two items–a longer post re: Tuesday the 12th meeting of the CDNA and an event (so that it would show up to folks just looking at the events section). Having the events section high up on the right hand nav is killer as folks can see that as they scan the entire main page.

    Also, I’ve tagged any CDNA content “CNA” (don’t ask), so if you want just info on that, you can use “CNA” to track.