Carnivals
The new edition of the Military History Carnival is now up at Osprey Publishing blog. It’s a special Olympic themed edition - Mike has done an excellent job of putting it together.
Next month’s MHC will be hosted by Alex Clark at History of Warfare on the 14th September. You can e-mail submissions to alexanderclark999 [at] gmail [dot] com or use the submission form.
We also need hosts for October onwards.
And the latest early-modern edition of Carnivalesque is up at Early Modern Notes. From my experience of carnivals I’d guess that “more nominations than any other post” means about two nominations…
Comment by sharon — 4:58 pm, 18 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
Three. (I think that’s a record for any carnival I’ve ever hosted, actually.)
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 5:23 pm, 18 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
But one of them was from me.
Comment by sharon — 9:40 pm, 18 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
Well, most nominations come from the author of the post IME. Getting nominated by two other people isn’t bad going.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 1:14 pm, 19 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
That’s what I thought but I’ve also noticed that when people who didn’t submit themselves get included they sometimes seem a bit too flattered. Getting into a carnival means you’ve written a decent post but it’s not necessarily the great honour that some people might think. Given the low number of submissions for history carnivals (MHC does better than some editions of HC and Carnivalesque but still only gets between 5 and 10 subs in a typical month) it’s hard to get rejected unless you submit something that’s ineligible or total rubbish. I wonder if low submissions are partly because not enough people have the confidence to submit their own posts or think it would be arrogant to keep putting themselves forward.
Comment by Brett — 11:41 am, 21 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
I submitted three links this time around, none of them got up! So maybe the rejection rate is a bit higher than you might think :)
I never self-nominate for carnivals, partly because it does feel arrogant, I guess, but also because I’m interested in seeing what (or if) other people find interesting on my blog.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 11:56 am, 21 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
I’m shocked! Maybe there were more submissions because we skipped a month, or maybe Osprey are more choosy than most hosts. When I host I never leave out a submission unless it’s irrelevant and/or very wrong (or if there are multiple submissions from the same blog I’d only pick one).
Also I’m not sure if everyone realises that you can submit other people’s posts, although I’ve reiterated it a few times. It’s hard to know what people are thinking, and there might be lots of different reasons why submissions are often low.
Comment by Nick — 12:24 pm, 21 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
It is interesting how people interpret it. Much like Brett, I very rarely put my own posts forward - I’d prefer others to judge whether they’re interesting enough. I see it more as a chance for me to tip the hat to other bloggers whose posts I’ve found interesting.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 7:38 am, 22 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
In my early days of blogging I used to submit my own posts because it’s a quick way to get better known. These days I try to submit posts (my own or other people’s) to various carnivals because I know they might be short of submissions. Having said that I’m often too busy to do it, which is probably a big reason why other people don’t submit much.
Comment by Lafayette C. Curtis — 12:59 pm, 23 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
I also refrained from submitting my own post because I wanted to know if other people found it interesting enough. It wasn’t as good an idea as I thought, because both of the posts I’ve submitted (from somebody else’s blog) got featured, while mine didn’t–which means that I probably should get over my self-modesty and be a bit more bold in doing a bit of shameless self-promotion.
Oh well.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 11:56 am, 24 August 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
Usually so few people submit anything that the probabilities of someone else picking you are very low. I used to trawl the blogosphere myself and submit up to 10 extra posts for MHC to make up the numbers but I haven’t done that for the last 2 editions.