Tumblrpon Help Exchange is undergoing some changes.
A few problems with the blog have come to our attention and we need to take steps to address them.
Engagement has been consistently falling. The announcement post for the blog currently has 388 notes, most of which it ran up in the first 48 hours or so. This was really encouraging when we started up! It seemed like people were really enthusiastic about the idea and ready to support it. However, this is more than the follower count of THE has ever been. Most days the list has only received 10-12 notes, only half of which are reblogs. (Likes don’t do anything to help.) Many reblogs have been from people who are themselves on the list, which defeats the object of the exercise of signal boosting. That number has been steadily declining over time, and in the last week or so, some days’ lists have no notes. None. Considering the premise of THE, this is utterly failing at its objective of trying to amplify the reach of peoples’ calls for help by concentrating them.
Curating the list is an unsustainable amount of work. We are only human. We have our own work and lives to juggle along with trying to chase 15-20 people about their situations, some of whom may be unreachable, we have to coordinate with each other about who’s talked to who, there are time zones, and generally it’s a bit of a mess. The list sometimes isn’t posted every day, and the monthly review being weeks late has become normal. Some cases have been on the list since December, renewing on a monthly basis, and we don’t know when they were last updated at all. This is not a state of affairs that we can let continue, and we need to find another way.
We have no data on the success rates of listing. We honestly don’t know if being listed gets you any more donations. That was the idea, but we can’t get the feedback to know for sure. For all we know, the giant list below the break is easily glossed over on the dashboard, and completely impenetrable and paralysing to donors. We can’t assume it does and keep doing something that might not work.
What we need to do is clear:
Alter the format to be a more sustainable workload while still providing the core service of curation of help posts in a meaningful way, and other secondary services like helplines, advice for people in stressful situations and help with setting up help posts
Present the curated content in a way that catches the attention of browsing users instead of being passed by
Gather data about how listing has affected cases
How we approach these tasks remains to be seen. For now the list will be suspended, and suggestions are welcome on steps to take.
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