Seeking help with a front-page post

[brainwane]

I'm pretty interested in the life of Dilip Singh Saund and am working on a front-page MetaFilter post about him. infini posted partially about him in 2012 but I have found some interesting materials to link to that I think weren't in that post. I would appreciate help framing and editing what I have.

A nonprofit hosts an instance of Etherpad, a collaborative document-editing platform, for anyone to use, so I've started an Etherpad to use in working on this post. There you can see the links and rough sequence I have so far.

I worry that I have a tendency to go on too long and cram too much stuff in to a post on the blue, so I would welcome "here's what I think are the most important/interesting parts here" comments so I can be more concise. Or "this is all great! Making a post that is everything including the kitchen sink is fine!" would also be welcome. Or, if you want to take over and write and post it to MeFi yourself, go ahead! Just speak up here and say you're going to do that, and credit me somewhere in the post.

Comments

[calzephyr]

Do you have a title yet? Those are always a good hook :-)

[brainwane]

Thanks! I don't - should pick one.

[sciatrix]

I am definitely a kitchen sink kind of girl, me! Generally, if I approach an FPP with an eye to telling MeFi about a cool topic (vs. finding a link and wanting to share that), I'll basically use my links like sources. I'll dig up a bunch of links like you've done here, often with a sentence to the effect of "this source is good for XYZ," and then I'll compose a brief explanatory paragraph, using the links to "cite" each sentence or clause. Here are a few examples of that style. It's something I usually do if there's no good single post to introduce folks to the topic.

It usually works really well as long as you aren't hurt if people only read some of the links (or, sometimes, none of them).

[brainwane]

I gotta remember that, you know, the world is a rainbow of many different people, like the song from elementary school goes, and if some people prefer big linky posts and some prefer essays and some prefer short one-link posts and so on, well, that's just the rich tapestry that is MetaFilter!

[sciatrix]

That's right--it's like any other kind of creative endeavor; I think the best thing to do is to just get in the habit of trying to practice throwing stuff out into the world and seeing how it does, and viewing errors as just information to teach you what to try to fail better next time.

[brainwane]

Posted!