Write Better Articles

D

DevynCJohnson

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What do you think I could do to make my articles better and bring in more readers?
 


Just a few general notes about writing.
An article should:
1) Be well-researched
or
written by someone knowledgeable about the subject.
2) Contribute. Either contain new information or a new way of interpreting/explaining something.
3) Be about a subject that at least some people are interested in. For example; articles about minute details of programming would not attract many readers, but an introductory lesson might.

An article should not:
4) Be too long or too short.
5) Be written simply to write one. Repeating what has already been done is at best repetition. At worst it is plagiarism. Quality is better than quantity. Having lots of articles is useless if no one wants to read them.

Just a few points off the top of my head.
 
No offense intended but that Gameing server is a bit too short. What about Minecraft servers? Craft-bukkit and crazy craft? Steam game servers? The list goes on and on...

I think if an article is to be written, it should include all the information available on the topic.
 
I think if an article is to be written, it should include all the information available on the topic.
All information available on a topic? For most topics, all information would require at least one book. A good article is condensed (short and precise).

For example, my master's thesis and my one and only published article in a scientific journal are on the same subject, but the journal article is much shorter. (The thesis was a 200 page book.) I am not trying to brag, just demonstrate the difference between a book and an article. They serve different purposes. Many people will be turned off by an article if it is too long, which would defeat Devyn's goal of increasing interest.

On a side-note; more or better articles will not increase participation on the board. People do not need to join in order to read. Adding a discussion sub-forum would be better for that goal.
 
What do you think I could do to make my articles better and bring in more readers?

Thank you Devin! For what it's worth, I personally enjoy reading you. You seem to be excited about your subjects and that is important. I always come away with something useful.

I think you should write about what interests you. You need to know something about who uses the board or, perhaps more importantly, deduce what areas your unregistered guests (there are 698 guests, some of whom may be members not signed in, as I write this at 1:00AM Eastern) are most interested in.

I don't typically join boards (I got too many user names and passwords already!:)). I hit this board initially because I was looking for the "official" site and the domain name was the 1st guess I made (I detest the noise the big search engines throw in). I guested 2 or 3 times and liked your articles and signed up! Good job, 1 convert!

It's sortta like the 90/10 rule in sales: of your prospective customers, 90% won't be interested 10% will. Of that 10%, 90% will decide it's not really what they want but 10% will. ad infinitum...;)

Just keep on doing what you are doing and the rest will take care of itself.
 

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