…to those of you who’ve expressed interest in contributing to the site, especially to those who’ve either impressed me with your work, or bent over backwards in an attempt to please. It’s been a pleasure reading so many fine articles from my fellow Hunters. 
That said, I am officially putting an indefinite lock on any future submissions. In other words, I am no longer pursuing contributors at this time, and I am currently up to my elbows in dealing with the after effect of this overwhelming response. You guys answered the call, that’s for sure.
Of course, I’ll still accept e-mail inquiries concerning possible contribution to the site, but I’m not actively looking as of now. If you are interested and feel you have some great ideas and would bring an immeasurable amount of value to the site, then you’d better have a bang-up application. 
The influx of articles was more than expected, and thus caused me to actually get further behind. The whole idea behind bringing in additional assistance was to lessen my burden as sole proprietor here at Huntsmans’s Lodge. I’ve quickly realized that waving a banner and sending out an open invitation to contribute was a mistake.
What I’ve learned from this:
Should I choose to expand the site in future, I need to be very specific about the particular area of discussion. No more “show me what you got” recruiting.
I am very protective of this site. To me, it’s like a big beautiful Macaw that I raised from an egg. The site has been all me up until now, so the realization of letting outside contributors in on a regular basis has filled me with a trepidation. This is the primary reason I’d put off this endeavor for so long. I didn’t want any other cooks in the kitchen, well save for my pal Drackmire, he’s always welcome. Anyway, I felt I’d be alright with routinely sharing the blog this time around, but I’m still not completely settled with the idea.
I need to be more critical. This is tough for me, because I am such a nice guy. No, really, I am. I was liking just about everything being tossed my way, which eventually made the selection process quite difficult, as I wanted nearly everyone. This appraoch will not work.
Editing and formatting other people’s entries takes almost as much time, and in some cases more time, than writing an original one myself. This doesn’t take into account all of the rejected submissions that required an in depth explanation on my part.
HuntsmansLodge is a community driven site, but it needs me to steer it. Sharing the wheel with other writers while I dick around with templates, layout, SEO and other administrative duties, is not necessarily the best course. This blog is Garwulf’s blog. Whether you like what I have to say or not, agree or disagree, this site is unique because of one thing… me.
I had felt that the site needed to grow beyond what I was capable of putting into it. I know now this isn’t true. In the time it’s taken me to review, respond to, edit, format, and publish user articles, I could have:
- written my raiding primer for Survival
- gotten out a few other posts I have swirling around in the noggin’.
- kept up better with user comments
- been done with this site makeover
- actually logged on to play some f**king WoW!
Over the past five days, I’ve seen maybe an hour of play time. That really sucks considering all of the juicy goodness contained within Patch 3.3. Now granted a lot of my time away is work and family related, however, I could have manged to squeeze a few heroics in and possibly some late night ICC fun.
I’d felt guilty about not being able to keep up with the posting as much as I’d liked to. I now truly see this as an assumed pressure that is really unwarranted. In other words, I’m going back to my old attitude of, “If I don’t have the time to post, then there won’t be any. Deal with it”. Of course, when I say “deal with it”, I mean it in a most endearing way.
So what now..?
Well, I’ll tell ya… I have every intention of publishing the remaining select few posts. Those of you who’d sent me something and are still awaiting its presence here on the front page, hang tight. It may appear here within the next day or so.
Those of you who’ve had your articles posted… grats. You not only impressed me in some way with your work, but you also got top priority by submitting sound article(s) requiring little to no finish work on my part. It’s not to say that others weren’t of the same quality, it’s just that for the initial user submitted posts, I ran through what was in front of me and grabbed the first couple that were practically post-ready.
In addition to Anariell, Solaryn, Mousie and Tamarlane, I still have a few left that I’ll proudly post. I’m still waiting for revisions and/or additional materials from some of you, but I hope to get the remaining ones all up by the first part of next week.
Some of the new names I’m introducing you to may appear fairly regularly in the coming weeks and months. Others may get a hearty thank you, and an “I appreciate your time and effort”.
It’s doubtful that I’ll add any other “columnists” to the site, as I believe “guest poster” is a more appropriate title. “Guest poster” implies a casual treat, where as “columnist” signifies a routine responsibility. Being that I can’t afford nor justify paying anyone to contribute, I’d rather approach the idea of contributing as, “if you have the time and are willing, then send me something”.
I think some of you who’ve submitted articles for consideration have quickly realized just how much work this WoW blogging stuff entails. Also, don’t forget I still have to format, add tooltips, hyperlinks and SEO the posts before they go live. Even though it may seem the hard part’s over once it’s written, there is still a great deal of work to put forth when preparing it for publishing. It’s not something to be taken lightly, and should only be pursued if you truly enjoy it, as I do.
Having said that, there are some of you that I’d really like to work with in future, if you’re interested of course. One reason I did the mass recruiting was because I assumed some of the contributors would probably drop off the radar sooner than later, due to either RL or learning how much “work” blogging can be. However, I feel that the ones who made the cut are doing it because they enjoy WoW and writing about WoW, which translated into their articles.
In closing…
This was not only a fun experience for me, getting to work with all of you aspiring hunter bloggers, but also a very educational one. While I had no intention of bringing everyone on board, I did want to at least give most of you the opportunity to get an article or two published on the site. In retrospect, I probably should have been more of a hardass, but damn… I guess I’m just too easy to please.
Anyway, stick around, because I have a few more hunters to introduce you to. As for who’s going to be popping in on occasion, only time will tell.
Regardless, I see good things in store here for HuntsmansLodge. Now if I can just get some damn playing time in..! 
Night all.
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