As blog carnivals get big and well-established, the traffic gets pretty substantial.  This attracts more posts, both good and bad.  The good posts, because it’s a good, long-standing carnival that bloggers want to submit to.  The bad posts, because it’s an easy, high-traffic link for not that much work.

Initially, when the Carnival of Personal Finance started up, the philosophy was to try to include everyone who submitted a post.  The idea was to encourage participation, create something that was greater than the sum of its parts, and create a collaborative, cooperative environment for personal finance bloggers.  Not that Flexo has lost his sense of community now that over 100 editions have been posted and his carnival has become the target of more and more spammy posts, but he’s begun to ask more of the posters and also of the hosters.

A similar set of guidelines were put out by the manager of the Carnival of the Capitalists when I guest-hosted.  This is also a large carnival.  The management here comes in the form of a detailed page on the CotC blog.

Having some rules when the carnivals get large adds some structure and keeps the hosts from getting too overwhelmed.  (The recent host of the Carnival of Personal Finance asked for more posts over at the MBN Forums so apparently some folks aren’t overwhelmed easily!) However, the rules are an additional burden on the hosts and can deter them from signing on.

Where’s the “sweet spot” for how much to manage a carnival?

The Carnival of Debt Reduction hasn’t quite gotten to the mega-carnival stage but I still get questions from the hosts about which posts to include.  Basically my instructions to the hosts are to use their judgment and that I’ll support them.  I’d probably hold off instituting a lot of rules as long as possible (basically until I can’t) because I’m not really big on rules in general.  But if it gets to the point that the hosts start feeling overwhelmed then I might not have much choice.  As far as having a “best of” section, how to order the posts in the carnival, what posts to reject, how to present the carnival, how to handle people who don’t link back, etc., leaving many of these decisions up to the host allows the individual nature of the host to come out more.

So here are some tests to see if you need more regulation in your carnival:

• Are there lots of off-topic posts submitted?  Then define the topic better or give authority to the hosts to nix off-topic posts.
• Are submitters being lazy linking back?  Then start keeping a list of the worst offenders.
• Are the hosts starting to cave in under the load?  Then it might be time to start restricting the size, or otherwise make things a little easier for the hosts.  Or at the very least define what hosts are to do a little more.  (Without hosts, carnivals can be a lot of work!)

• Getting your readers to think about the posts Blunt Money's take on the Carnival of Personal Finance this week featured a crossword puzzle with words that related to the posts in the carnival.  Very inventive!With a carnival as popular as the Carnival of Personal Finance it helps to have an extra something to get readers involved in reading......
• Powerful backlink tool, or spammer in a box? One of the sidebar ads within BlogCarnival.com showed a blog carnival submission tool called Xingla Pro 3. Honestly, I thought submitting articles to different blog carnivals was pretty easy, but this tool appears to make it ridiculously easy.  Maybe almost too easy. I asked a question of a guy who......
• A quick roll-your-own carnival submission form BlogCarnival.com has become an integral part of many blog carnivals.  They were down for about a week with database maintenance.  I know that this was probably quite hectic for them as well as for all of the carnival managers that depend on the features it brings to the table. A......
• Dealing with spammy submissions As a blog carnival gets more popular, the number of submissions goes up, and the traffic the carnival gets goes up as well.  This is good.  Unfortunately, this popularity also attracts posts that are of marginal quality or are highly commercial.  Or, people will submit several posts to a single......

• And here's this week's Carnival Thanks for visiting this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction!  Here are this week's posts: Couple Money posts a great debt reduction strategy guide. Free Money Finance gives a seven step process for getting out of debt. Digerati Life shares a guest post on paying off student loans while carrying a......
• Debt Reduction is more Important than Your Credit Score If you are a baby boomer with a pile of consumer debt, you are not alone.  Many economists and members of the younger generations are blaming us for the dramatic rise in the use of consumer credit.  We baby boomers are also accused of inflating then collapsing the housing bubble.......
• Carnival! Carnival! Just like Pizza! Pizza! but without the cheese, sauce, and crust. Here are this week's debt reduction posts: Out of Debt Again updates their Discover Card debt reduction progress. Studenomics debates good and bad debt. Ask Mr. Credit Card hits on a tough issue: debt negotiation, or bankruptcy? Miss Bankrupt......
• Guest Post: Do-It-Yourself Debt Reduction v. Professional Debt Reduction One of the businesses that is booming right now is that of "credit counseling." These are professionals who help you with debt reduction through such means as debt consolidation and debt negotiation. The idea is that you can have someone else take all of your debts for you, and roll......