Soccer Dad

A changing of the guard

As I wrote last week, I'd like to thank all of you who helped in the various aspects of producing Haveil Havalim. I don't remember what I thought of Haveil Havalim when I started it, but in three years it has grown pretty big. It also appears to be one of the longest running blog carnivals on the web. I greatly appreciate that Jack's Shack volunteered to take over administration of the project when I announced that I was stepping down.

Jack has been the most frequent host of Haveil Havalim over the past three years. Hopefully he'll get more volunteers than I have.

I'd just like to share a few observations.

1) I haven't counted recently, but last time I did that about half the entries were submitted and half were gleaned by the host.
2) While I like to encourage submissions, it's important to keep in mind that the time involved in putting together an edition of Haveil Havalim is about 3 hours.
3) Ideally a blogger should submit one or two posts for Haveil Havalim. It shouldn't be the host's job to sift through someone else's submissions. It is more time consuming than you might think.
4) A blogger shouldn't wait until the last minute to send submissions. Roughly one third of the posts are submitted on the last day. If the host is working on assembling Haveil Havalim during the week, this means a lot of last minute reconfiguring.
5) Submitting a post is not license to have it included. Haveil Havalim is done at the host's/hostess's discretion. There is one rule that I've regretted violating. I linked to a few posts that included profanity. That was a red line I never should have crossed. But again each host is different.
6) I expect that Jack will probably attract more participants given that he's not as set in his ways as I am.
7) I wish that more of the high traffic Jewish/Israel blogs would link to the host especially when they have a post included. Obviously the inclusion is often done without a submission and reciprocal links are voluntary. But such linkage would be beneficial to the J-Blogosphere overall. I very much appreciate those who do. I just wish that there were more.

Again thanks to all of you who have participated. I expect that under Jack's leadership Haveil Havalim will become even greater.

UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot this. If you have a post for the Kosher Cooking Carnival please submit it by Wednesday.

haveil havalim, blog carnival.