Because JU is a diverse place
JoeUser.com is becoming a diverse place with diverse writers and diverse readers. For instance, there are quite a few who write about politics, but others that don't really care about politics but love writing about sports. Now, the "Channels" help to point people in the right direction, but I think JU could be set up a little better, and here is my idea:
The articles that are selected each day to be on the front page seem to get a LOT more attention and more replies. I believe that Brad selects these articles, and I have no problem with that. He owns the site, and has every right to do that. Furthermore, I think he does a pretty good job of selecting a diverse range of articles. But his interests can only be so wide. The articles picked for the front page tend to be politically-related, computer-related (especially pertaining to Windows custimization), or Joe-user-related/blog-related in general. Again, no complaints, but the range of interests at JU is perhaps too diverse for any one man (or woman).
My idea is to set up a handful of JoeEditors. Brad could pick several people who are regular users and he knows he can trust to be fair and competent, but the goal would also be to select a wide range of people. These editors would search the channels each day for the best articles of their interest (or maybe assigned topics) and then post them on their own editor subdomain. (JU is already partially set up for this, since groups can be set-up to make group sites.) Brad's job, as Editor-in-Chief, would be to select the best articles from these "edited pages". Thus, competition will be set up for the editors to really choose the best articles they can find in the hope that "their" article gets posted on the main site.
I think this idea would really help to improve the quality of articles at JU with this added competition, and also help the visitors better find what they are looking for. Some people will take a liking to certain JoeEditors, and might always dial directly into that page (Or there could be links at the top to each editor's page, so you could jump to it that way). It also, I would imagine, will help make Brad's job easier, since the articles he chooses from to put on the main page is from a smaller number of sources, and he knows these articles are sort of "pre-edited."
What do other JoeUsers think about adding JoeEditors?