Putting together a carnival can take anywhere from about five minutes to many, many hours.

The five minute version takes advantage of the “InstaCarnival” feature on BlogCarnival.com. The InstaCarnival is a post that has a number of lines with the format:

Blogger presents blog post, posted at blog, saying “comment”

for each post submitted through the BlogCarnival.com interface.  This is a perfectly valid way to put a carnival together.  It’s straightforward.  It’s clear.  It’s also pretty cookie-cutter.  (This isn’t a slam on BlogCarnival — if computers start writing as well as, or better than, humans, we’re in trouble as bloggers!)

I’ve started with the InstaCarnival template with a few carnivals I’ve hosted.  I massage the text a little bit, but it sure is helpful if you’re away from your high-speed internet connection and you have a carnival to put together.

The many, many hours version involves not only reading the submitted posts (!) but also putting together a kind of show.  These are labors of love for the hosts.  Sometimes you get the carnival in verse, with an old video game flair, with a podcast, with celebrities, or even with a Renaissance faire!

(These are just a few examples!  If you have a great one to add to the list, post a comment!)

Now the big question:  Which kind is better?

The InstaCarnival type (a list of posts and not much else) is clear but unimaginative on the part of the host.  It saves the host time.  For a big carnival, the return on investment for the host is pretty good: lots of traffic and lots of trackbacks without much work.

The SuperCarnival type (like the ones linked to above) are really cool to look at and will probably get more link love (links in posts) and more buzz than the InstaCarnival.

If it were just backlinks and buzz, the well-put-together carnival would be a hands-down winner.  But I don’t think it’s that simple.  For all of the flash of these carnivals, how much time did you spend clicking through to the posts?  Was dressing up the carnival a service or a disservice to the people who submitted to the carnival?  Sure, the good-looking carnival gets more traffic, but does it get more click-throughs?  And if hosts did this week after week, calling more attention to the carnival than to the posts, would the submitters keep submitting?

I don’t really know.  But I do think that the “dull” carnivals put the spotlight on the posts more than the “exciting” ones.  It’s easier to find what posts you want to read in the simple carnival than in the ornate one.

So I wouldn’t feel slighted with a drab carnival if the little chunk with my post was easy to understand and encouraged readers to click through to my article.  On the other hand, I also wouldn’t feel slighted if a really crazy cool carnival drew a bunch of traffic and gained a wider audience, a few of which clicked through to my blog for the first time.

What’s your opinion?