Meta News

Metanews is once more (and always) in need of volunteers. We're looking for two types of volunteers. First, people who would be willing to take on link finding and maintenance for one our set reading lists (LJ, DW, Tumblr, Feedly, Pinboard, and submitted links). Right now there are only two of us, and we simply can't cover everything. It's not sustainable. The only reason we're getting by right now is that one of us is unemployed, but it would be better if that one had time to do other things, too, in addition to Metanews, and didn't end up burning out.

Second, we're also looking for volunteers who would be willing to cover one or two specific fandoms of their choice. This would involve looking for meta in general, particularly in places we don't know about or can't adequately cover (especially Tumblr), and evaluating for quality any links other link finders discover for the fandom(s). We're especially interested in help with fandoms or types of fandoms that we haven't covered much or where the quality of the meta we've been finding isn't great because that generally means that we don't know where to look to find meta for that fandom.

We use Google docs for all of our working documents, so any volunteers will have to be willing to deal with that.

We've been told that we're not doing a particularly good job at posting on Tumblr, and we don't really have many readers there. Neither of us actually use Tumblr beyond following links there that we've found elsewhere and making the weekly Metanews post (which we do by rote). We would love to have someone to take over the Tumblr posting and do it in a way that's more friendly to Tumblr readers, whatever that may look like.

The fastest way to reach us is to comment on this post on LJ or DW or to PM metanewsmods in either place. We don't check Tumblr very often, so things sent to us there may languish for a while. We can also be reached as on Gmail as meta.news.fandom. We don't always check the Gmail every day, so please be patient if it takes us a little time to get back to you.

While we do check the email every day due to it being forwarded, and will attempt to get back to any replies within 24 hours of receiving them, we may be longer due to consulting with each other.

First up, we wanted to say thank you to all our wonderful subscribers. Without your interest and admissions, this newsletter wouldn't exist. we're always thrilled to see how many people are reading, writing and discussing meta. We've had a great 2014, and we hope 2015 will be even better!

There have been some changes to the mod team over the past few months and there will be more to come in the future, which is why we're putting out a call for volunteer link-finders, either to gather links weekly, or to be ready as emergency cover. Link finding is straight forward and doesn't have to take more than an hour per week. You can have some input into where you get your links from, if you really don't like blogs, for example we won't give you that list, or if you're missing the good old LJ days, you can take the LJ list. We're not going to just drop you in the middle of the internet and leave you to it!

Link finding doesn't mean searching out your own links each week. We have established lists of comms and blogs and journals to cover each week.*

So if any of you have a little free time each week, please get in touch, our email is: metanewsfandom@gmail.com or submit an ask/comment to the post. (We're especially looking for people who have some familiarity with tumblr/are willing to learn.)

Thanks!
The mods

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*Don't forget, if you come across a great new place for meta, send us a link so we can subscribe to them!

Calling for more meta!

There's only two types of meta in this world. The type you submit and the type you don't.

The rate of submissions always goes up and down, but we've noticed a bit of a drop recently. So submit your meta, you friend's meta, your flist's meta. All the meta you see. This comm is only what you make it. If you can think of any interesting hunting grounds for meta - journals by excessively awesome people or interesting comms, send then our way as well, we can add them to our existing lists.


Calling all coders!

We need someone who understands scripting, to write a script to port links from Pinboard to DW, LJ and Tumblr. Right now the Pinboard that was so generously donated to us is sitting there gathering dust, because none of the existing mod-team is tech savvy enough to write the script. We know our tagging system is imperfect, we'd love to be able to archive neatly at Pinboard, but that's just not going to happen unless we get some help!


The mod team is still small, even if you have just one day a week to donate to us we would love you forever.