<p>Some recent discussion on meta brought up whether (and how) the blog should be integrated with the site, see <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1071/1036">"Is there a way to make the blog more prominent? Should we?"</a>. Part of my biggest concern isn't <em>per se</em> how the blog is integrated with the main site (we can figure that out as it goes along IMO), but I am concerned about getting the community to participate more in writing posts.</p>

<p>Mainly we have had several started projects which ended up fizzling out due to lack of participation. These include</p>

<ul>
<li>The <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/polystats-project-1">polystats project</a> on reputation effects.</li>
<li><a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/question-of-the-week">Question of the week</a></li>
<li>And a suggestion that never got beyond two meta posts, <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/922/1036">Weekly featured data visualization for the blog?</a>.</li>
</ul>

<p>So here we had community agreement on agenda for the blog, but lack of participation prevents us from moving forward. I would like it here, if several individuals simply volunteered to contribute to the blog. I know it is scary volunteering without being specific about the content, but in response I would say</p>

<ul>
<li>The scope of any post does not have to be large (e.g. you don't have to write a paper to make a post). For example, I think many of the example <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/908/1036">data visualizations I listed</a> could be almost copy and pasted into blog posts. Also I don't want the time monikers we've attached to previous endeavors to scare anyone off (we don't need to do anything per week, or month, or on a schedule at all).</li>
<li>I'm not going to jump through your computer screen and make you write a post you don't want to nor ask you to write a post that you do not feel qualified for.</li>
<li>We are likely pretty flexible in the material for the blog at the moment. <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/864/1036">I've suggested in the past</a> that other bloggers could re-blog their material on our site. </li>
</ul>

<p>I'm hoping getting individuals to volunteer will give alittle push/motivation for individuals to become more active. There is plenty of old material we said we would blog about but have not, and we are open to new ideas. If anybody has any other thoughts feel free to share them here, or stop by over at the chat room devoted to the blog, <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/549/skewed-distribution">skewed distribution</a>.</p>
