24 August 2005

Thinking About Tomorrow

For some time I have had a certain impression about Tomorrow and today at 6:05 pm, I decided to do a random check to see how accurate my impression really is. I checked the 20 most recent Tomorrow posts (essentially, everything that appeared on the first page) to see who had submitted them. I found that nine out of the 20 posts came from the same two persons, Lancerlord and Cowboy Caleb.

We don't need to get overly mathematical about this. But my point is that Tomorrow probably hasn't turned out quite the way its editors originally envisaged. It was supposed to be a public bulletin where absolutely anyone and everyone could and would submit content for the editors' consideration (and as long as any two editors out of 10 approved the content, it would be published). Because anyone and everyone could and would submit content, Tomorrow would truly, in the words of its own editors, "highlight the diversity of the Singapore blogosphere".

The reality is that just two persons put forth a significant percentage of Tomorrow's content. Tomorrow is therefore heavily influenced by the preferences and tastes of these two individuals, and their ideas of what is interesting or not interesting. It is very difficult to say that Tomorrow can really "highlight the diversity of the Singapore blogosphere" when just two persons propose so much of its content.

Of course, before Cowboy Caleb starts hopping up and down and misdirecting his angst and annoyance at me again, I hasten to add that this state of affairs is certainly not Cowboy Caleb's fault nor Lancerlord's. The two of them never stopped other bloggers or blogders from submitting more.

"This time ... I ... must control ... myself ... and ... NOT ... hop."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is totally unrelated, but do you think you can head down to http://studentssketchpad.blogspot.com/2005/08/legal-threat.html and give a comment? i'd love to pronounce that as an obvious hoax but having no legal background i don't think i have the required expertise... save the kids, mr wang! thanks!

Agagooga said...

Well the thing is we get a lot of rubbish submitted, so there's no point publishing it if it sucks. And if no one submits interesting material, we can't publish it, can we? Lancerlord and Cowboy just happen to be very free so they can submit stuff. And we don't publish all of their submissions too, so.

I believe the 9/20 is just a statistical blip. If you have time to plough through the archives you might get a more complete picture :)

Unknown said...

Fwah. You go and count ah!

I like to clarify from a submitter point of view. I also submit rubbish. A lot of post I recommend do not get published. Maybe I submit 3-4 post in a day and only 1 or none gets approved. So what is shown in tomorrow.sg does not mean that I submit sure pow jia can get posted at tomorrow.

Another point to clarify. I not free. I have to make coffee for boss one. kekeke...

Cowboy Caleb said...

Most of the contributors are anonymous, and we don't count anonymous contributors.

I usually begin to submit stuff on slow days, when the submissions are either lacking in quantity or quality because I start getting edgy that not enough new content is getting published.

And no, I am not very free. But I am very committed because I signed up for this out of my own free will and therefore will do the best I can.