With three fresh community posts recently added to the site, no time like the present to talk a little bit about how CHS works and some of the magic goodness that goes on behind the scenes. CHS is a community news site — that means we prominently feature community interaction like comments, ratings and statistics. We think it’s important to tell you how many times something has been read. We think it’s even more important to include the widest breadth possible of community voices in the site. That’s why, even though not everything will make the CHS homepage and not everybody has time to put in the effort to craft an in-depth report, anybody can post to CHS. Here are three recent examples:

• Seattle Yoga Arts New Studio Open!
• Freeway Park looking for new logo
• LGBT Rally for “Equality on the Job – In the Military and at Home!”, May 22

As you can see, quality and content appropriateness will vary. But the community post layer is part of the magic that makes CHS (to me anyway!) so interesting to be part of. I have no idea what will be added to the site next. Sometimes, a community post will be inspiration for a deeper CHS reporting effort. Sometimes, we politely ignore them (SPAM we nuke quickly!). And sometimes, something surprising comes in that warrants everybody’s attention on the homepage.

Look for the CHS Community box in our homepage right sidebar

We think this kind of pathway to contributing to the site has real value to our community. We’ve even added a special box on the homepage so you can see the latest community posts that haven’t been promoted into the main homepage flow. Here’s a screengrab of the CHS Community Posts box. If you ever read anything you find in the box that you think should make the homepage, leave a comment and give it a thumbs-up. If you are thinking about making a post and want to throw it out there, please do. All you need is a CHS account http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/signup

And some news, of course.

Thanks for being part of CHS.