It's ironic, but this latest disaster is both self inflicted, and eminently repairable. However it also demonstrates the limitation of Slugger's happy amatuer status. For all our awards and multiple expressions of goodwill, we cannot continue our high levels of service without backing from a serious software player.
Money is not the issue (though donations always welcome): service is. There is an opportunity for an ambitous, future curious company to team up with Slugger and not simply get us back to where we were, but to help us push the boundaries of Web 2.0 in Northern Ireland.
If you are in the business and willing to chat, drop me a line at mick@mickfealty.com and let's talk.
4 comments:
Mick chan
What exactly is your problem and why can you not revert to a previous status? How much bandwidth do you actually have andn eed?
Slugger: I hear your problem. But one of your strengths is your large number of moderators. Is web 2.0 - and 3.0 - not about harnessing that strength rather than running to a software company who, let's admit it, are in the business of pay for play. Also, if content is king, does that mean to go easy on unnecessary frills and problems attenant to them?
The site seems to be pretty intact on this standard free blogspot platform.
Is the separate domain name, hosting, streaming etc and associated calls for funding/ads/sponsorship/tech support maybe a bit of a vanity when the essentials work pretty well on the costless plebs platform?
Annonymous,
You are being a tad disengenious. The site is working. But form has a profound effect on content. Some of the draw backs:
- commenting is not as smooth as with the bespoke Catchpa system we had.
- the comment pages are separate from the original blog pieces, so there is no easy back reference to the original.
- Latest comment are not the same as most commented. For some reason I cannot find a blogger hack that is fit for that purpose.
- The width of the site cannot be tampered with without some cost to the look of the thing.
- there is no wrap up system that allows people to scroll down quickly on the index page. As a result some of the longer analysis pieces are difficult to press into the space.
- the design is crap compared to the original site.
- the platform is basic and functional, but it doesn't allow us to move on from where we are.
- the outbreak of annonymity is not a good thing. The EE and MT systems do not encourage it. We had enough trouble with Trolls on the main site without encouraging more.
Finally, I am not a software guy. I have had to learn some basics through necessity certainly, but... Some big bloggers are software literate, but that's not why I started the blog.
Partnership with a good software guy/company strikes me as a decent proposition. I hate breaking the conversation/narrative like this, just when we were getting into full flight.
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