The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at MyMoneyBlog. If you’re interested in participating or hosting, more information is here and next week’s host is Five Cent Nickel.
There’s a lot of discussion surrounding the Carnival these days. Much of it stems from the fact that the universe (specifically, the personal finance blogging universe) is expanding. How do you host a Carnival when there are sometimes more than fifty submissions? People are looking to create a “rule.” Although I don’t really want to, since I kind of initiated the Carnival of Personal Finance, I guess I’ll say a few things.
I’ve always maintained that it’s up to the host for the week, but I like to see as many submission included as possible. It’s becoming a lot of work to host a Carnival, so perhaps those who are unprepared for the time and effort needed shouldn’t volunteer to host. Yes, there are many submissions that aren’t top quality, most notably mine. Many subpar submissions—by those looking for a quick traffic bump—will disappear as the hosts realize Carnivals don’t drive as much traffic as they once did because:
1. There are so many Carnivals related to personal finance now,
2. Instapundit doesn’t link to them, and
3. The number of bloggers is growing faster than the number of non-blogging readers.
If you read other Carnivals in other genres, you’ll find that many others manage a large number of submissions. Take a look at a recent Carnival of Education as an example. (It is interesting to note there is no “Carnival of Elementary School Education” or “Carnival of Standardized Testing”—one general Carnival seems to be sufficient.) The most recent Carnival of Cats has more submissions than the Carnival of Personal Finance ever had—people love to blog about their cats. (Again, no “Carnival of Tabbies” or “Carnival of Cat Food for Older Cats.”)
Just to be clear, I’m okay with the other Carnivals in the pfblogging world. The capacity is there, and no one’s getting the short end of the shaft, so it’s all good. If things were to get too crowded, I’d probably drop the CoPF first and let someone else manage it. Now back to the topic…
There’s no one right way to host. Personally, I liked when someone sorted the submissions by word count and listed the longest entries at the top of the post. I heartily agree with the host picking out his or her favorites as “editor’s choice” submissions, as well.
Think about real-life Carnivals. They’re messy, crazy, fun, and those games are usually scams. People go to have a good time, get a taste of a lot of different foods, and go on a number of different rides. I think that’s the spirit that a blog Carnival should take. Let’s lighten up about it.
Subscribe
Makes sense to me. However, it was a little shocking last week. Word count, pulling it out of a hat, alpahbetical, whatever, let’s just make sure it gets up on time and their is some organization to the posts.
Anywho, I was unaware that instapundit didn’t link to them anymore. Are the carnival author’s still emailing him a clean link once a week when it is published on their site? He had no problem doing it for me, but that was a little bit ago.
I’m really glad you chimed in on the subject, and you’re absolutely right on all counts. Carnivals are a big time investment, but I imagine they’re also a lot of fun to put together. I just hope that all future hosts continue to see it that way and put together some really fun to read carnivals with their own unique personal touch added in.
I agree – let the host make the executive decision. It’s unlikely that “everyone” would ever come to some agreement about creating a standardized “rule” anyway…
This is a really tough call. On one hand, I agree with everything that Flexo has said above. On the other, it can sometimes be hard to read because there are so many submissions. Sometimes, I just don’t have time to look through them all, so I end up just getting frustrated and skipping it all together for that week.
Amen Flexo-this should be fun!Future hosts of the Carnivals can learn from last weeks mistakes!
1. The link to Instapundit is incorrect.
2. He does link to carnivals now (I just got one for Carnival of the Vanities)—though it it sporadic.
3. I’ve had enough of the “politics” associated with PF carnivals and plan to only submit here and there from now on. It’s simply not worth it.
4. The Carnival of the Vanities post I just did had 38 submissions. I’ve done carnivals with more than this as well—and always include everyone unless the submission was off topic (i.e. submitting an investment article for the Carnival of Debt Reduction). It just seems like it’s more in the spirit of carnivals. I agree with your position: “perhaps those who are unprepared for the time and effort needed shouldn’t volunteer to host.”
5. If you want to minimize the time crunch on a Sunday night, start putting your post together as the entries come in—starting on Wednesday or so. Granted, you’ll get the highest number of submissions on Saturday, but any advance work you can do will make the final post a lot easier.
Thanks for letting me know about the link. It’s weird that one transposition turns instapundit.com into isnt a pundit.com. Glenn has not once linked to a Carnival I’ve hosted, so I’ve stopped emailing him. I was always friendly and provided a clear link, but what can you do?