WRITING
The Illumination Time-Delay Anomaly Is Contracting
A data-led story about one publications’ commitment to support and recognize all its writers and how we can improve as a team
As a writer and editor on Illumination, I was delighted to read Dr Mehmet’s list of writers whose work was recognized. A selection of articles that were acknowledged as high quality and distributed in relevant topics.
Congratulations to everyone on a wonderful achievement.
As I read the entire piece, I checked some data points for reference. I soon discovered that a few of the articles I’d written were missing.
Hmmm … I thought.
Can you get the smell of burning rubber?
Knowing Dr Mehmet’s attention to detail I knew there was more to this than mere oversight — My engineering brain went into overdrive — Again!
In fact, this is something that’s been on my mind for a few months. So I conducted an experiment. As always. That’s what we engineers are inclined to do. We try to fix or test things, to understand, to gain deeper insights.
This article is an observation of my findings that I’d like to share with all Illuminators with continuous improvement in mind.
An Engineered Mob of Writers
I’m a writing pimp. By that, I mean that I pimp my articles out to multiple publications. Yes, I’ve no shame.
That said, there’s logic to my seedy under-word-solicitations:
- My interests are vast, covering multiple topics
- I get exposure to relevant audiences
- As Lori put it: I “walk the halls”
- I connect with others, and
- Gain unique insights
By no means am I an Under-Word Godfather, rather a word-soldier, an aspiring “Word-Capo”, writing up the ranks in a “Family-Publication” with consigliere potential.
I hope!
Credentials
I believe that Dr Yildiz invites writers into our family due to the potential exhibited from word-shooting-precision.
Having fired out a lot of articles in quick succession I’m proud to be part of the club, I mean family.
Leaders are my favorite prey.
Encouraged by the Godfather, I whacked a number of targets, I mean topics. In fact, when I met the Godfather I hit 8 on the bounce in a week:
During another job, I knocked out 4 within 24 hours:
Plus a hat-trick on Illumination alone.
As you can see I was surprised that not all of my articles were included in Dr Mehmet’s curation circulation.
With other writers in mind, I knew something was amiss.
The ‘Art’-ful Data-Dodger
Arthur, an Illumination advocate, published a number of great pieces to capture and illustrate the metrics about our pub-performance thus far.
His work is top class.
His latest piece lists our top writers by the number of articles or stories, and associated topics, as shown below:
With Arthur’s work at hand, I collated some metrics to analyze. Data that I could validate, my own articles.
Below is a list of all my articles that were published on Illumination and distributed across topics.
As you can see above in the early days the publication to distribution timeline was unpredictable. Multiple days for most.
In contrast, below are some recent examples of my experience across other publications during the same timeframe:
- Publication A — Instant distribution
- Publication B — 2 hours
- Publication C— 2 hours
- Publication D— 2 to 3 hours
Oh, I did have one article that was distributed 2 months post-curation.
Yep, this article was published on February 20th, 2020, and distributed on April 17th, 2020.
That’s 57 days — by far my highest time lapse. In contrast, the highest time-lapse I experienced in Illumination was 14 days.
Illumination results
In summary, my Illumination curation/distribution results are as follows:
- Stories = 13
- Topics = 12
- Total topic count = 23
While on the topic of topics, I’m not convinced about the benefit of a single versus multiple topic distribution. Although I believe being a top writer is advantageous.
For example, one of my articles was distributed across 6 topics.
Here’s the 6 topic article:
Also, another article was distributed across 5 topics.
This is the 5 topic article:
Anyway, I’m going off point.
Wait … what is my point? Oh yes, time delay.
Lately, my data indicates that the time-lapse between publishing/curation to distribution on Illumination is contracting, consistently. For example, two articles from yesterday were distributed within a matter of hours:
The ‘Women in Business’ piece was distributed across 4 topics, notified by email within 4 hours, whereas the ‘Business Across Cultures’ article was distributed in 1 topic and notified by email within 12 hours.
In total, my curation/distribution results across all publications are as follows:
- Stories = 184
- Distributed = 73
- Distribution percentage = 73/184 = 40%
In the early days of Illumination, few of my articles were distributed. This has changed dramatically of late — 6 of my last 10 Illumination articles were distributed — a 60% ratio.
“Writing Without Rules” — Joe Luca
Final Thoughts
Based on my own data, Illumination is gaining traction, that’s clear to see. Gathering attention is one thing but there’s always room for improvement.
The motivation for this article was initially the time delay between publication and curation or distribution. As I wrote, another element came to the fore:
Fair, accurate and consistent recognition for all writers.
As a writer, I appreciate the effort that my fellow writers invest in their work. Due to the volume of writers and articles on Illumination today I appreciate that some pieces are accidentally missed.
Time-dealy is the main reason, but together we’ll overcome this anomaly.
My thoughts, challenge rather, is as follows:
- Please feel free to comment below if you would like me to send or share my spreadsheet above so you too can record and share your curated articles.
- If by consensus we conclude that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not capturing all Wins then I propose that we create and self-populate a Google Document to ensure that all writers’ articles are recognized, despite the time delay.
Dr Mehmet, Arthur, and Timothy, I invite you all to share your thoughts to ensure that the Illumination star shines brighter than ever.
For new writers out there, please check out the relevant articles below.
