Brett_Tabke - 7:31 pm on Nov 2, 2001 (gmt 0)

>half-baked excuses serving as search engines.

ditto. hehe. If we could ever get those guys to put their halves together, they'd have an awesome se.

>This willingness to be alerted to new content does not

You have to disguise it as a newsletter. Start with a full blown newsletter for 4 issues, and then transition to more and more "pointer" stories linking to your content on your site.

Think of one top SE newsletter (we all subscribe too). It went from large deep content rich articles to basically content announcements. I'll bet it has made a 10 fold increase in traffic at that site.

>The only possible comment was Thank you very much.

Agreed. Thanks Andrew.

>Forums seem to invite musings to reach an open,
>indeterminate conclusion. Articles, on the other hand

There is also a 3rd option: The article with the opportunity for feedback at the end of the article. Like some of the magazine sites are doing. I'm going to experiment with that this month. I think it is a fascinating approach to generate interactivity.

>actively encourage mailing
>list members to contribute articles

I think that depends entirely on the topic sugarkane. I tried it with a couple of sites and got a whole log of nothing for submissions. Promo laced and amateur stuff that wasn't fit for publication.