So, there’s been more than a little drama about posts and authorship over the last six months while I’ve been mostly absented from the blog helm. For selfish and other reasons related to giving things enough wait time that they solve themselves (masterful inactivity one might call it), I tried to stay uninvolved for the most part. Alas, I am no longer uninvolved and opinions over the last six months have strengthened with opinion holders becoming much more vocal that “something must be done.” But what? And how? And why? Well, here’s my version of things: (more…)
Meta
A Programming Note and New Policy for the Lounge
As of Monday morning, authorship and editorial status on the Lounge will require that authors be:
- Full-time Faculty members;
- Clearly identifiable by name, either by writing under their own name or writing under a pen-name that is easily traced to the person using it.
The second criterion is new and means either the disclosure of all authors’ identities or the end (or spin-off onto another blog) of the Realist and 12Keystrokes projects. I do not know what they will do, but I guess we’ll find out by Monday morning.
I will have more to say about how this decision evolved (probably tomorrow) and why, but the short version is that two editorial sidebars, conducted by email–one back in March, and one this week–revealed support for, first, taking some kind of action, and second, taking this particular one.
This policy ONLY applies to posts. Readers will still be able to comment by name or pseudonym or anonymously.
Going Meta
A while ago, I read this article, called “What is a Blog Post?” which includes a taxonomy of types and their associated criticisms.
Since then, I’ve heard or been part of at least five conversations about the Lounge which included the following statements by various people about a number of topics. One person (who shall remain nameless because I have not asked his permission to name him) asked if there’d ever been discussion about splitting the Lounge up into a kind of business version and an alternate site for experimentation and more personal kinds of posts. A few people in different conversations have said that they don’t read it as often anymore for various reasons (though none, have mentioned the previously proposed “fear of authorities”). The most common complaint in the last few months, made with vigor in a few cases, is the reader dislike/disdain for anonymous/pseudonymous posts and comments.
Accordingly, and since I think the “policy” of the Lounge should reflect the ethos of people in it, I’d like to open up the question of anonymity and pseudonymity.
For the record, personally, I am and have been 100% in favor of people signing their comments and their posts. I set the site up to allow for anonymous comments, though, because I didn’t feel that my own preference was reason to preclude others from theirs (and because I expected that having the option to comment anonymously would make people more likely to comment). The same reasoning applied to the pseudonyms, and frankly, I thought that everyone would know everyone before long anyway.
I would say that, even after the discussions I’ve had this week, that’s how I would (still) vote. I am open to being persuaded and/or outvoted on the matter, though.
I would prefer discussion, but I’ve added a poll, too.
I await your thoughts (and promise not to mock anyone who comments anonymously).
UPDATE: I’d been saving these for something, but I figure no time like the present, since they address the topic:
A) This discussion on the same topic on the APPS blog was interesting; and
B) This article by a Chronicle writer on why he chose a pseudonym and why he gave it up is also interesting.
Meta Post: About the Lounge for Any New Visitors
I know I have said this before, but since we’ve set new hit records for each of the last three days, I thought it would be worth saying again, just for clarification.
Hi, everybody. Sorry to those of you who have seen this information before. Carry on. To everyone else, a little info about the Lounge, in case you were wondering.
So, I’m guessing that we have a lot of new visitors this week (probably some from around CCC and maybe some new regulars from HWC). Regardless (or irregardless as some might put it), welcome, y’all, to this ongoing experiment.
The primary aim is to make sure that you all know that:
- This site, The Harold Lounge, is hosted by WordPress and is not on CCC servers or equipment. (Pretty sure the same is true for the Truman Lounge, too.)
- If you’d like to make a comment, the settings give you the opportunity to include a web site and an email address but it is not required that you include either. If you’d like to remain anonymous, even to me and the other editors of the site, you can just leave those blank and submit yourcomment. If you adopt a pen name, but include your email address, we (the editors) will know who you are, but only if we recognize the email address. In other words, you can choose the level of self-revelation ranging from zero to total and not have to fear that anyone from your college or your district will be able to use your comment to find out who you are. The “editors” are all faculty members at HWC with contributory rights, in case you were wondering.
- Anyone faculty member from HWC, adjunct or full time, who asks to be put on as an editor can and will be. Upon being activated, you will have immediate ability to post, to post and edit pages, upload documents, video, pictures, whatever. If anyone is interested in starting a monthly or weekly feature or taking over an existing one, all you need to do is send me (PhiloDave) an email (drichardson2@ccc.edu) and I’ll put you on. I’d love to have a 2nd Career Corner for Retiree postings, some Non-tenured voices, more book and movie and restaurant reviews, and anything else you can think of.
- The poll voting is completely anonymous. I cannot track the votes to any specific voter, even with some poking around.
I hope this clarifies, and mollifies, any concerns for anyone out there who might have been wondering if the CCC tech people (those who are left, anyway) can sift through any of this to identify posters or commentators. They can’t, unless you provide them with information about who you are in your name or comment. At least not without using nefarious ways (or working somehow through your own computer), which, frankly, I think they’ll be too busy to do. Second, as long as you aren’t spending inordinate amounts of time on the Lounge and/or acting goofy, given the content of the site, any activities should fall within the scope of the technology use policy. With that said, of course, it is a public site, so you should use common sense (and avoid libelous slander, etc.), but so far we’ve never had any sort of problem with that kind of thing and I don’t expect to in the future. Even with the new investigators on duty.
The upshot is, if you’ve been thinking about saying something, but weren’t sure how it worked, hopefully now you have the information you need to fire away. So, welcome and fire away!
One More Meta Post for the New Visitors
Hi, everybody. Sorry to those of you who have seen this information before. Carry on. To everyone else, a little info about the Lounge, in case you were wondering.
Sometime yesterday we had our 15,000th visitor! Whoever it was, congratulations! As if that weren’t cool enough, as of last night, we hit “biggest week ever” in terms of visitors on the Lounge (with just under 1,100 visits already this week, where we had been averaging about 800 per week for the rest of the semester).
As you can estimate that’s close to 200 visits per day (in fact we had and exceeded 200 visits per day on three of the last four days). We are also on pace for our biggest month ever (which would make two in a row, since August was the biggest month yet).
So, I’m guessing that we have a lot of new visitors this week (probably some from Truman and maybe some new regulars from HWC). Regardless (or irregardless as some might put it), welcome, y’all, to this ongoing experiment.
The main goal of this post is not to brag, though, about how many people are here looking at it. The primary aim is to make sure that you all know that:
- This site, The Harold Lounge, is hosted by WordPress and is not on CCC servers or equipment. (Pretty sure the same is true for the Truman Lounge, too.)
- If you’d like to make a comment, the settings give you the opportunity to include a web site and an email address but it is not required that you include either. If you’d like to remain anonymous, even to me and the other editors of the site, you can just leave those blank and submit your comment. If you adopt a pen name, but include your email address, we (the editors) will know who you are, but only if we recognize the email address. In other words, you can choose the level of self-revelation ranging from zero to total and not have to fear that anyone from your college or your district will be able to use your comment to find out who you are. The “editors” are all faculty members at HWC with contributory rights, in case you were wondering.
- Anyone who asks to be put on as an editor can and will be. Upon being activated, you will have immediate ability to post, to post and edit pages, upload documents, video, pictures, whatever. If anyone is interested in starting a monthly or weekly feature or taking over an existing one, all you need to do is send me (PhiloDave) an email (drichardson2@ccc.edu) and I’ll put you on. I’d love to have a 2nd Career Corner for Retiree postings, some Non-tenured voices, more book and movie and restaurant reviews, and anything else you can think of.
- The poll voting is completely anonymous. I cannot track the votes to any specific voter, even with some poking around.
I hope this clarifies, and mollifies, any concerns for anyone out there who might have been wondering if the CCC tech people can sift through any of this to identify posters or commentators. They can’t. At least not without using nefarious ways (or working somehow through your own computer). With that said, of course, it is a public site, so you should use common sense (and avoid libelous slander, etc.), but so far we’ve never had any sort of problem with that kind of thing and I don’t expect to in the future.
The upshot is, if you’ve been thinking about saying something, but weren’t sure how it worked, hopefully now you have the information you need to fire away. So, welcome and fire away!
Think, Know, Prove–Key Post Options
Think, Know, Prove is a regular Saturday feature, where a topic with both mystery and importance is posted for community discussion. The title is a shortened version of the Investigative Mantra: What do we think, what do we know, what can we prove? and everything from wild speculation to resource referencing fact is welcome here.
Apologies in advance for the Meta nature of this post. TKP is usually reserved for consideration of mysterious or difficult processes and the brainstorming of solutions with an exception now and then. Today’s post is an exception.
Yesterday, I fielded a request/suggestion from Jen Armendarez, who had been discussing the Lounge with a few other ne’er-do-wells at The Roof on Thursday evening (actually, I’m assuming it was on The Roof–she just said at The Wit, so it could have been in their restaurant or in the lobby or something, but I’m going to go with The Roof, because it’s where I would drink were I drinking at The Wit. And I would be tempted, the entire time I was up there, to throw ice cubes at the Social Science offices. But I digress.).
Their idea, as I understood it, was to have some sort of left/right division so that posts about the Chancellor and Reinvention–which would be fewer, more substantive, and so likely to require more care and attention–would not get run off the page by the enjoyable, but less important, regular features and postings.
This is a proposal that has been made before, albeit in a slightly different form, and is not without merit (not to mention challenges). Thus far, we’ve relied on one of five means of keeping posts in the public eye. 1) There is the “Top Posts” list, which shows links to the most read posts of the previous three days; 2) We can make posts “sticky” which keeps them at the top of the page (as with the CAST post above–we also did this with the “Lemons from Lemonade” and “DWFDW Poll” posts; 3) I sometimes post a reminder to go back to another post (as here) with a link to the original; 4) I have, on occasion but not for awhile, re-posted something to bump it back up to the top if I thought it didn’t get the attention that it might otherwise deserve, as with this one; 5) More than anything, though, I’ve relied on reader ingenuity and the archives with the idea being that none of them are ever really gone until they get trashed (which hasn’t happened to anything that’s been posted yet). Maybe it’s time to rethink those options.
So, there are basically four possibilities as far as I can tell (from my perusal of how other blogs handle this issue and in consideration of my very limited technological prowess) unless someone can come up with more:
A) We could find a new “theme” that has two or three columns (along the lines of the HWC Home Web site) and post “Big Topics” in one column and the rest of the stuff in the other(s);
B) I could put a new page along the top titled “Chancellor File” or “Reinvention” and post links to the posts related to the topic up there, so if you wanted to track the Chancellor/Reinvention-related information, you’d just visit that page and you’d have links to what you want, allowing you to read or ignore the rest as you’d like;
C) I could add a menu item on the left side of the home page for particular Category tags (such as “Chancellor” or “Reinvention”) which would allow someone to go directly to all of the posts made in that category in a single click from the home page;
D) We could leave it as is, and tell those whiskey-swillers to pound sand and scroll down (at least until they buy us enough Rooftop cocktails to change our mind, assuming that happens before we all get barred for throwing ice at the Social Science offices).
What do you think? What do you know? What can you prove?
Think, Know, Prove–Brainstorming for Fall 2010
So, the Harold Lounge will still be up and available over the summer, but starting Monday, there will be no “official lifeguard on duty” so to speak.
Posts will be random and intermittent, and there will be a general open thread available for commentary and questions and suggestions. I have some ideas for the fall about new features to incorporate and old ones to tweak, but for the most part, the Lounge will be quiet over the summer.
One of the most successful features (in terms of views and comments) this semester was the Think, Know, Prove series. In the interest of making sure that the site (and the features) have broader scopes than my own peeves and interests, I’d like to use this thread as a Meta/evaluative tool. What features worked? Which didn’t? Which should be here? Which should never ever return? What have you learned? How have you used the Lounge? What would motivate you to use it more?
What do you think? What do you know? What can you prove?
Think, Know, Prove
Think, Know, Prove is a regular Saturday feature, where a topic with both mystery and importance is posted for community discussion. The title is a shortened version of the Investigative Mantra: What do we think, what do we know, what can we prove? and everything from wild speculation to resource referencing fact is welcome here.
Today’s, TKP is a sort of Meta assignment–an assignment about the Harold Lounge. So far, so good, I think. But that’s easy for me to say. I’d like to know what we need more of here, and how to get it. I’ve got my own ideas, but if this is ever to be a real, vital community for the entire faculty, then it will have to get a bit more out of my own head. I assume that if you’re still coming here regularly, then you think it has some value, so I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m looking for ideas about how to spread the word, or make it better, more relevant, more useful so that others will come here, too, share their knowledge, and benefit all of us.
Would a workshop on how to do a blog post at the Harold be a good idea? An open invite to anyone and everyone to post whatever they want, whenever they want? Should we control for the posters and postings by forming a committee (yikes!) with members? Should we just keep plugging away and continue to have faith that since we have built it, they will come?
What do you know, what do you think, what can you prove?
(PS: I am going to be reducing the number of posts–taking a weeklong hiatus of sorts–that I write this week, so as to encourage all of us to get a little space and a little fresh air for the final push. All of the regular features will return a week from Sunday, starting with “Next Up!”)
The Harold Lounge 