This diary is inspired by “Three pieces of news today that I found titillating” which begins:
This is not a typical diary. But three pieces of news today that I find . . . titillating.
It got me thinking about the number of times I’ve wanted to post just a quick thought, link, video, or tweet without writing much about it. I often see breaking news or opinion pieces that I think would interest the community but don’t post a diary about them. For breaking news, I don’t post because the news is developing faster than I can write about it. For opinion pieces, writing about someone else’s opinion is too meta for me when the only thing I really want to say is “I read it, I thought it was good, and I think others will, too. Here’s a paragraph or three to get you started.”
From a reader’s perspective, some diaries on the Recommended list are only the length of a comment, highlighting a link, video, or tweet that’s self-explanatory. Sometimes it’s a rant. It may be worth sharing, but I hesitate to tip or recommend such non-diary diaries because they might take up space on the Recommended list and IMO, the Rec list shouldn’t contain a bunch of comment-length diaries, however popular they are. Some diarists put a lot of time and effort into a really good diary that doesn’t make the Rec list because of a viral video or tweet.
I have a suggestion, and if it’s popular, I’ll pitch it to the admins for a future release: Add a “Quick posts” section for “one-offs” that are comment-length standalone pieces for sharing quick thoughts, links, videos, comics, and tweets.
Conceptually, when a diarist clicks the Publish button in a new diary draft, s/he would be prompted “Is this a full-length diary or a quick post?” It would be up to the author to decide. The question would be used to determine which section the piece will show up in, Recent Stories or Quick Posts. The section would appear as a link on the News or Community menu. It could also be a new section on the front page below the Recommended and Most Shared lists. It would be harder to get a quick post promoted to the Recommended or Most Shared list than a full-length diary, but not impossible. Hopefully, authors will honestly evaluate their content and choose appropriately.
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