In addition to contributors, SEA-EAT has people who function as editors. They're called "janitors" and "monitors." "The janitors are cleaning up the trash, and the monitors are watching," said Gupta. Janitors watch for redundant posts and duplicate information, monitors make sure people don't deface the blog. The system is self-organizing, people who want to contribute decide what role they want to play, and organize themselves to work in round-the-clock shifts; I spoke to at 2 am his time in Bombay; he was working the night shift.
Three people are overseeing the blog: founder Griffin and co-founders Gupta and blogger and marketing consultant Dina Mehta. They coordinate via cell phones, Instant Messenger conference room, e-mail and YahooGroups.
The organizers selected BlogSpot to host the blog because it was what they knew, said Gupta. Both he and Griffin re experienced BlogSpot users. Gupta runs five blogs, and Griffin runs three. Choosing BlogSpot made it easy to recruit contributors, because many people are already familiar with the Blogger software used on BlogSpot, and already have BlogSpot accounts that they can use to get started right away.
"What we did not expect is the kind of traffic we're getting," Gupta said. Their site meter stopped at 100,000 visitors, and the SEA-EAT organizers are concerned about going over their bandwidth allocation. Other bloggers have volunteered to host the blog, should it outgrow BlogSpot. The SEA-EAT organizers have been attempting to contact Google to coordinate their blogging efforts, but have been unable to contact anyone, although the Blogger homepage has a link to SEA-EAT, indicating that Google is aware of their existence, Gupta said.
In retrospect, blogging presented advantages and disadvantages, Gupta said. A blog presents information in reverse-chronological order, with the newest information at the top. A wiki can be better organized, more like a conventional web site, making information easier to read and find.
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