Every two weeks, I’ve been posting, generally on Sundays, a short item and pointers to the blog carnivals
that I’ve followed. One by one, though, many of the carnivals have disappeared, from lack of sponsorship, lack of submissions, or just general lack of interest. The Carnival of the Liberals found that it couldn’t maintain critical mass once the Evil Emperor was deposed. The Skeptics’ Circle quietly went away, for reasons of which I’m not sure. Three versions of education carnivals vanished. Two mathematics carnivals now share time, and the Carnival of the Godless seems to be chronically late these days, though it does always appear eventually.
I just don’t see the sense in highlighting them any more, the three that remain, with only two showing up each bi-week. So this will likely be the last of the Carnivals!
posts, unless things pick up. Keep up with them yourselves, if you like, by finding them at blogcarnival.com: Godless, Mathematics, and Math Teachers at Play.
Pointers to this fortnight’s blog carnivals:
- Carnival of Mathematics #67.
- Carnival of the Godless #145 (without further what?).
3 comments:
Time to time, I see you post something titled “Carnivals”. I always wondered what they are and wanted to ask you about them. Of course I could have followed the links and after a while figure them out, however being on the slowest dial up connection in the world, it’s just impossible.
I think of a blog carnival as sort of a blog magazine. Periodically (weekly, biweekly, monthly...) someone — often a guest host for that issue, but sometimes the same person does it each time — serves as editor and collects submissions of blog posts appropriate for the carnival in question, usually posts about a particular topic (such as mathematics, for the Carnival of Mathematics). The posts selected by the editor for inclusion are posted in a blog post on the host's blog, with some description of each post and a link to each.
Some carnivals are selective — the now-defunct Carnival of the Liberals usually chose the ten submissions that the editor considered "best" for the two-week period — and some will include all submissions except obvious spam, however poor they might be. There's a lot of variability in the quality of the carnivals.
The carnival serves as a way to collect and publicize posts on a particular topic, and to steer more readers toward those posts. It also gives publicity to the host, so everyone wins.
All Carnivals are facing competition from Facebook and Twitter; many people's "issues" blogging habits have changed drastically.
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