Dow writes:
The front page is full of nepotism, which makes it quite boring. I concur it needs to be reinvented.
Eh? I don't make the connection there.
Gangolf handles the TRs, and I believe David fills in when he's away. I've noticed no favoritism at all with TR selection. When I was doing TRs, what was posted was pretty much what came in-
if it was good enough to warrant extra attention from SP's membership. Sometimes TRs can get pretty dry and there's just nothing worth submitting to the front page. But things are otherwise the same. We work with what we have, and if there's a period when someone writes a series of reports and they are all good enough to be posted, yeah it might appear there's some favoritism going on, but that's not the case. It's what's available at the time, that's all.
The featured page display is looked after by me EVERY DAY. I try to keep it current, but I follow no hard and fast "things must change this much every other day" rule. Things change as needed. Sometimes contributios are going crazy and I can't keep that display moving fast enough! Other times it's pretty quiet so I take that opportunity to rotate through some classics, and I always try to find some gems by the "old ones" to post periodically.
New submissions from current regular contributors, such as Dow, Gangolf and rpc are great to see, but I'm NOT going to post each and every one because they're awesome. I want to try to get everyone some exposure on the home page. SP has plenty of great contributors besides our regular stars. So if Dow had one up recently and he submits four more in the following weeks, out of fairness, I'm going to post great work by other contributors. I've had folks tell me to post my own work (which I've done at their urging), but man, that feels weird.
But I don't play the neopotism card. The favorites I go after are
well done pages, full of info and good route photos with good captions. Of course there's many exceptions which happen frequently, and I don't mind. Folks in Europe and South America have more leeway.
I also like to see variety. I like to see area pages and canyons, too, and we've been fortunate enough lately to have a nice mix of stuff. I'd love to see more well done route pages, but again, I work with what comes in or I go digging into the old stuff (usually by member). If I see an older contribution by a member that's not yet appeared on the front page, I'll note it and eventually get around to posting it. I usually go with recommendations from members for pages to be posted, too.
Simply click on the link at the bottom of the display to view past postings, viewable in descending order. The variety of members and material speaks for itself.
Dow percieves the font page as boring and full of neopostism. Everyone's perception is different, and I take that into account and try hard to have a good variety on the front page display. TRs and Articles don't have that luxury sometimes. Judging by fairly constant feedback I get from SP folks, the front page display works well and most perceive it to be a success (especially for those not wanting to wade through What's New). I try to stay in touch with the majority consensus of the membership, knowing well that I cannot make everyone happy, but I simply do my best on a daily basis, choosing good pages to display. I guess if that's favoritism, I stand guilty as charged. But so far no one's called for my lynching yet, so I'm guessing it's an endorsement and to stay the course.
I'm on vacation the next six days, and I hope to have SP access, but if not, sorry-the display might get a little stale. But I'll be tending to it if I can, and certainly of course after I return.