What would January 1st be without grand proclamations and resolutions? I find that as New Year's Day presents itself every year, I tend to renew the pledges of the previous year that fell somewhat short, or maybe petered out about mid-February. Not so, this year! This year, I add a few new resolutions related to editing and perhaps you will join me.

1. Lead Horses to Water - Evangelize the glory of editing Topix pages to my buddies. You know you have that friend that talks endlessly about some obscure topic. I bet you also know that chances are, we have a news page for that topic. We also add pages all the time. For instance, I'm queuing up a page for Bigfoot and I have just the friend to bamboozle into editing it. Who do *you* know?

2. Drink Up! - Promote at least one new story on every page I edit EVERY DAY. I edit a few random pages, so this is tricky, but entirely doable. We do have the vast knowledge bank of the internet at our fingertips, right? There are also some fun rumblings afoot for cool bling for editor profiles for those really active editors - more on that later.

3. Raise the Bar - When I peruse our edited news pages, the standouts are obvious, and always more compelling. Editors that make use of the less standard tools, like promoting forum topics to the news pages or seeking out and adding photos to all of their stories create the most impressive pages. They've thrown down the gauntlet and I accept the challenge. Let's show them we have the stuff.

4. Original Content - Let's pledge to write original stories. ( You see how I'm roping you all into my resolutions? ) There are some great editors that do this routinely. If you can't find the news, make the news! If you are out and living in your community, you are seeing news happen all the time. Put cursor to page and let 'er rip.

5. Editor Love - You guys are awesome. We're working on ways to increase your access to us and boost interactivity between editors themselves and between editors and Topix staff. This one is front burner. Expect an announcement soon on implementation of the first of many changes in that direction.

With that, let's hear from those of you coming on board for these resolutions or making some of your own.

On to '08!