I'm trying too, Paola, in my own small way. I reviewed some of the stories, broke my own rule and reviewed some poetry, and have posted and reviewed in articles just now for possibly the first time.

I didn't make a close study of it but I've seen submissions in the Arena by people who haven't/don't review, and how anyone can get Spotlighted these days if that's the prevailing attitude, I don't know. I wonder if stuff was to remain in Arena till the required number of reviews have been received rather than just a set number of days, and writers were required to review before they could post, that would change anything? Probably not; it's the same old chestnuts.

I can't really keep up with the blogs - half the time I don't get round to reading the blogs I want to read or even checking my own, let alone search out new ones. They're good fun but exponentially time consuming.

It really is a problem, Paola. I find that if I spend time on the blogs I honestly don't have any over to spare for the WL site. I was hoping the forum etc. would somehow be moved over/incorporated into the blog site. Maybe that will still happen, but it does seem an awful shame that the community feel of the parent site is being lost because of the increased activity on the blogs.

Hi Paola,
Well done you!
I do agree that writelink could do with some more momentum. I have been trying to keep up with the forums and reviewing some of the comp entries.
But I might as well admit now that much though I do want to support the site I won't get round to more reviewing than that. I have reviewed a fair amount in the past but gave up for a variety of reasons when I stopped submitting at all to the arena (I never submitted much to the arenas as opposed to the arena comps anyway). My reasons included not enough time, feeling my comments/views weren't necessarily valid/correct, feeling that in any case that they weren't always useful/felt to be useful, plus the general pressure caused by the lack of reviews, calls for people to review, the imbalance/unfairness in the case of work by people who never review themselves, and debate over the type of review people wanted etc.
On this score I'll also admit that I very rarely star rate on the blogs either, though I will comment in a forum style.
I don't think that writelink is supposed to die to leave space for the blogs but I do believe that the two sites will and should merge. If you look at Sue's post in (I think) the development section, the ultimate aim (as I read) it is for one site offering all the good things that both the blogs and the main site currently offer (though some maybe in a slightly different format), plus some extras eg podcasts etc. I do think the potential is enormous provided we're willing to accept some change and move forward (after all there have been a fair few moans and calls for various changes in the forums over the years).

I'm wondering whether newcomers who join Writelink are aware of the blogs and all the action over this end...

Good question. I don't know.
There has been a big piece in the resources news about the blogs, though I was a little concerned that it said it could be accessed through the drop-down menu under my writing desk wheras it's actually on the drop-down menu under community.
The blog site's been repeatedly mentioned in newsletters and many of us ahve links to our blogs in our profiles and signatures on writelink. David and others have also duplicated blog posts in the forum section.
I don't know if the welcome email to all new subscribers mentions the blog site and how lively it is? Other than that it's hard to see what we can except publicise it ourselves by raving about it in the forums.
I think your plan of reviewing more etc on teh old site is a great one. I will put more effort in than usual.

I pop in every day - or most days, but it's eerily quiet. I'm still reviewing, but not at the rate I did before - largely due to the time element. But I will do a few per week, come what may... well, you know, all being well etc.! There are 'older' members who have still to venture over here, as well as new members, so I suppose - for the sake of the community - we need to make sure it all keeps ticking over. We can but try!

Well, I'm a newcomer both to writelink and to blogs in general. I do have one of my own on my site but it isn't a proper one in the sense of having feedback and comments etc [by the way what on earth is a pingback?] so finding my way round here has been a learning curve. I still don't understand the arena and didn't realise the two were separate, although i had noticed that if I came here, I couldn't get back to the rest of rightlink [seems to be one way traffic].
If arena is not well supported, I suppose it could be because it is ephemeral. I mean what we write here [I think] stays on record but I posted something on arena and this morning there was an email to say someone commented so i clicked the link to go and read it and thank the person [that being what I'd do on ukauthors] but I got there and found it had run out of time and was gone, so I don't know who commented and can't say thank you.
Perhaps the suggestion above of deleting after a set number of comments is a good idea. With a day to see the last comment.
Please excuse such a newbie for meddling.