My first impression of Madison Commons was positive. I was impressed by the unique concept of the Web site and intrigued by the blog post titles that flood the right rail. The sections for top stories, MadStubs (wait, what’s a Madstub?), feature images, and the recent stories kept me intrigued long enough to forget that my room was shaking (thanks, upstairs apartment throwing Mardi Gras party).
The site is clean and crisp, simple to navigate, and contains an ‘About Us’ section that clearly lays out the goal of MadisonCommons.org, to “gather stories from all of Madison’s neighborhoods in one assessable place.” As a journalism student, I think this concept is great.
As I continued to navigate the site, I noticed one glaring issue. The “top story” is dated January 24th, 2010. Alright… that’s not too long ago. I clicked over to “recent blog posts.” I presumed the first post, “Finals Time,” was written this past December, but was surprised to see it dated as May, 2008. Another post, “Ogg Hall demolition delayed,” is clearly outdated. User contribution and regular updating of the site appear to be a major issue.
I was impressed by the capability to click on specific neighborhoods for localized information. The “UW Campus” section brought me to the usual (stories on Halloween and finding jobs) and the unusual (Indigenous Peoples Day and a Regent Street makeover). Again, timeliness became an issue. Of the four previously listed articles, three of them are dated in 2007.
My favorite section of the site is CommonMaps. Want to know who has the lowest gas price? Want to find a good bike route? Curious which neighborhood in Madison produces the most police calls? All this information can be found out, via maps, in the CommonMaps section.
The Forum, Workshops and CommonsQuiz section all appear sorely underused. A poll on the left rail asks users to vote on whether or not they support the referendum to raise taxes for Madison's public schools. So far, 61 people have voted. I assume that the poll has been posted for quite a while.
The MadStubs tab left me rather confused. The “What’s a stub? How do I contribute” button brought up an error message. It appears to be a section where local events and volunteering opportunities are posted. While I do love Cathy Deshano and the wisdom she imparted on me in J202, I do which some posts were done by other community members.
Despite its flaws, I’m overall very impressed with the goal that MadisonCommons.org sets out to achieve. I’d plan on coming back often, but the site isn’t updated often enough to attract me back on a regular basis. In addition to expanding the staff in order to update the site on a regularly, I suggest Madison Commons create a larger base of blog contributors . A campaign (or, more realistically, a Facebook/Twitter campaign) could help spread the word about the site and attract regular visitors.
I think this post really address one of the most important features concerning contemporary news: timeliness. Although Katie had a generally favorable impression of the site, its lack of timely news may deter her (and probably other users) from visiting the site frequently in the future. Social media sites, specifically Twitter, are constantly updated by users worldwide, and more traditional forms of journalism are struggling to keep up with these social media sites. I agree with Katie's suggestion that Madison Commons implement a Twitter or Facebook page into their media plan. Unfortunately, much of journalism today is a sort of "keeping up" competition-- new technology that offers increasing immediacy and availability of news is constantly emerging, and traditional forms of media are struggling to keep up.
ReplyDeleteWhile I applaud the goals of this site, I think there are two major problems preventing Madison Commons from achieving success: timeliness and contributor originality. As pointed out, many of the articles are outdated which detracts from the appeal of the site. Included in the "recent" blog posts is a post from May 5, 2008 titled "Kat's top 5 free things to do in Madison". In my opinion, this post is the exact opposite of the goal of Madison Commons. Rather than listing ideas specific to Madison, two of the five ideas are Walmart and Barnes & Noble - places I could visit in almost any decent-sized city. Two anonymous users commented on the post asking how the editors of Madison Commons let this post slip through the cracks. However, if more people contributed to the site, editors would not be needed as users and fellow bloggers would "edit" the content itself by posting their own top 5 lists or starting a dialogue about why a particular activity should be included on a given list. I clicked on that post because I wanted to add to my list of Madison-specific things to do before graduating. Walmart will not be added to my list.
ReplyDeleteI agree on all fronts - especially the part about loving Cathy (she was my 202 TA also! : ). However, the largest issue I took up was with the "events" section. While I understand it wouldn't be possible to list all events in Madison, it seems to me that a large focus of the site is not only to gather news about Madison, but also to give readers a way to actively engage with others in the community.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, only one event - Dialouges on Homelessness - is listed on the calendar from now until the end of April. Obviously there's more going on in Madison than that. I think this goes right along with the timeliness issue Jen discussed. In order for the site to be successful, it will need continual attention that it's not currently getting.