Looking for suggestions on how to make these weekly “best of” roundups better. Got any ideas?
With somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 posts per week, the Just Rolled into the Shop subreddit is a pretty active place. It’s a lot of fun putting these roundups together, but it’s a lot to go through sometimes, and I’ve had to find creative ways to streamline the composition process. I’m open to suggestions...
My first question is, are these posts too long? I feel like they’re too long. I keep wanting to spotlight just 10 or 12 entries, but damn it’s hard enough trying to whittle these posts down to about 25 entries! So much good stuff out there...
I’m almost tempted to drop the brake and tire entries, but nah, I think those need to be a recurring feature. I know some redditors like to comment (on reddit, that is. I haven’t seen any complaints here) that they are tired of seeing those kind of posts, but I think they’re the most important repair/maintenance items and should continue to be shared. At least as a PSA. Besides, they’re a great way to bookend these roundups.
I’ve been noticing a lot of oil/sludge posts on JRitS, but I’m not sure that I can count on there being one every week to include as an “obligatory” post. And I can’t think of any other regularly-posted items to add to the weekly tire and brake entries.
In case you’re wondering, the “week” referenced in the title of each roundup post begins and ends at midnight (Saturday night/Sunday morning) EST, and I’ve been scheduling these posts to go live Sunday afternoon. How’s that working for everyone? Should I change the publish time?
I gotta admit, Reddit’s videos are a constant source of frustration for me. Almost every week, I find myself encouraging readers to “click link for video” because I can’t figure out how to embed them in Kinja. Best I can do is a screenshot. The Reddit posts do have embed links, but I can’t get it to generate something that I can use here. Any ideas on how to make that work (without going to all the trouble of trying to download the clips and re-upload them to YouTube)?
I’ve been working on trying to include more quotes from the uploaders in the interest of clarity, and less of my own puns/comments. Are the pics, videos, and quotes clear enough, or do you think we need more explanations of what we’re looking at in each entry? I don’t want anyone to be afraid to ask questions here. This isn’t just a place for knowledgeable people to point and laugh; it’s a place to learn, too. I know I’m still learning...
Anyone having trouble with embeds or other items displaying on these posts? I know there’s still an issue with inset links not displaying when visiting a page from a comment permalink, but it seems to be working just fine whenever I load a post normally. I doubt that any of you are visiting the post from a comment permalink (unless you’ve already read the post and are returning because Kinja sent you a notification). So do I need to provide text-only source links, or are the inset links good enough?
What about the related sorties module down at the bottom? Is it just clutter at this point? I think my introductory paragraph makes it clear that this is a weekly feature, and since older posts can be found through the tags at the top of the page, maybe it’s time to stop plugging older roundups. Thoughts?
And I dunno about you but I hate the new redesign Reddit adopted last year. As you may have noticed, all of my source links are pointing to old.reddit.com instead of the new www.reddit.com. Is anyone having any weird compatibility issues with the old format? Do I need to post links to the new one?
Anything else on your mind? Questions, comments, criticisms, AMA. I hope these roundups are as fun for you to read as they are for me to compose. If it ever does become too big a task for me to keep up with every week, I hope I’ve encouraged you to check out that subreddit on your own. JRitS never disappoints.