Output from the meeting last night:

- we'd like to talk it over tonight at 9pm (via MSN) and hopefully allocate jobs!

We mainly concentrated on how to manage putting articles onto the site's front page: Currently, the shedman's  doing 90% of it, and wioll either burn out or fail his exams or both if it continues like that. 

We've got the following volunteers to help out: 
Rob, Drew, Sally, Arka, Guy (GC77), Matt(XCW4EVA), and Steven (on the rankings).

I'm not sure how many of us have worked out how to post on the Blogging system so far - Do let us know, so we can point you in the right direction!

The first thing is to acknowledge that we're all doing this in our spare time because we enjoy it, that different people will be able to put in different amounts of work, have different interests, and have different talents for generating reams of text: as a result it'd be suprising if David didn't continue to be the biggest contributor - but hopefully we can cut that down from 90% to somewhere below 50%.

In the two Monday shift's I've done, I've realised that a lot of the articles just require sourcing a picture from somewhere on the net, finding a good quote on the board, stating the facts, and cutting and pasting previews/descriptions from the relevent thread. 

A number, though need more research, or an extended article with a match review or preview, and so need a load more work/creativity/tennis knowledge.


What we do need to ensure, though, is that we cover all the news we should, as soon as we can: I found myself on the morning after San Jose, without the time to write a review of the two brothers' success, but knowing that we'd probably get more new visitors that day than any other as people hear the news.  I ended up quicly thoeing a headline, a photo, a quote and the bare facts up, and promised "more later" - David fulfilled my promise admirably,. that evening


So, if we agree on the requirements, how do we make sure we fulfill them?

We've come up with the following system - and remember, because we're all volunteers, it'll have to be flexible.

First principle: don't worry about stepping on people's toes: if we need to have an article up there, please post it. If an article needs correcting or adding to, please do it.

Second Principle: don't get too territorial: If someone changes "your" article, or posts something you wanted to post, or posts inyour specialist area, please don't get upset.

Third Principle: communicate: We're opening up a thead in British Mens Tennis for the site: Please post on there if you're planning to write an article on a subject, and don't want someone else to start doing the same. Please post what articles need to be written. Please let us know if you can't help out... MSN's good way of spotting who's online to help out.

Special Correspondents: We'd like to acknowledge a team member (or two) who can specialise in a particular area: Juniors, Women's tennis, Futures players, the middle six(Richard, Josh, Jamie, Greg, Alan, Jonny), doubles,  whatever... We'd expect a specialist to post the articles on their subject. The other articles (Andy, Tim, Boggo......) would be done by the non- specialists.

Daily Editors: To make sure something gets posted each day, we'd like to have a rota: one editor per day of the week.  That person would be responsible for making sure that the articles get written: Either by co- ordinating with a specialist, posting a short "stub" article and getting someone else to write it, or by posting articles themselves. the exact amount of work will be up to the individual - we'd rather have half an hour of your time than none!

Review: The system we start with will need changing - hopefully that will happen as we go, and as we work out what does and doesn't work.


So, please have a think what(if anything) you'd like to specialise in 7 days a week, and what day you'd be willing to be the daiy editor.

At the moment, I've offered to do rankings and Monday. Arka's offered to do juniors and Saturday.

- See you at 9!

Rob

Tonight we'll talk this over and see if it makes sense