Posted by Rex Crockett
We have several new things going on now.
The first thing is we have a new theme. It is based on basic2col. This is a very solid theme with all the modern stuff. In particular, it provides optimization for Internet Explorer. It was designed from the the beginning to be a base theme for for further customization.
All the new code is fully protected by the Gnu General Public License. The right to redistribute will not be denied. However, no support is provided for this code. Use of this theme by anyone obligates no one to assist in any way. Nor is any access to the source beyond what is ordinarily available to users accessing the internet provided or promised. Anyone who wishes to provide support may do so and may charge whatever fees they deem appropriate. No one may contribute code without agreeing, in writing, to at least two witnesses to the above stipulations.
I do not consider the theme done by any means. I would have just as soon kept the old version, fixing whatever problems it had, but it became necessary to make the change because certain parts of it were claimed as proprietary code. This had the potential to become a legal issue and thus threatened the very existence of Art & Perception. Not knowing which parts of the code were considered proprietary, the site had to be rebuilt from scratch using “blackbox” techniques; that is, looking at the result, and writing new code to achieve similar effects.
The results are less than spectacular in appearance but are pretty solid internally. There are far fewer Wordpress generated errors. The pages should display more consistently on Internet Explorer. Font resizes will not break the layout.
You will note the sidebar has been re-ordered somewhat based on what is my best guess of frequency of use by visitors. When you go to the comment page on any post, you will see the sidebar changes, and there is more inviting text at the top.
You will also note that above each post it says, “Filed in …”
It so happens that search engines really pay attention to that information. I put it right up top front as a means of encouraging posters to select an appropriate category. Just pick one, no more, and uncheck “Uncategorized.” This is an important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) thing. It will also help our visitors find similar posts.
Classic, tried and true usability guidelines have been applied; for example, the links are all underlined and blue.
There will probably be things you don’t like and things you do like about the new look. I tried to make it all work in a similar way to the old theme, since so many design decisions were achieved through discussion, but I’m sure I’ve missed things, and at this writing, I’m not sure what is broken since I’ve only tested it all off the web on my own webserver.
But I will be online regularly for the next 24 hours, so now is your chance to have a look and test things out as well as give and receive if not immediate feedback, then feedback relatively soon. But please take the time to test a bit. You may find that with just a little familiarity the new design is actually really fast and functional.
In summary, I’ve concentrated on function, not form. I did up the site as an administrator, not an artist. I’ve left my own taste for dark, edgy stuff completely out and went for clean, clear, and simple.
The second thing is the blogroll. Right now we have none, and so we violate the “social contract” of blogs and blogging.
My first stab at doing the blogroll in a fair way was to base the list on some statistical criteria, like:
How popular is the linking blog
How much traffic do we get from them
Well, it’s very difficult to determine how much traffic we get because once someone finds us, they may just come directly rather than from a link on someone else’s site, so there are difficulties with that approach.
Arthur suggested that a fair way to do the blogroll would be to have you all simply suggest two or three links you would like to see. Links that received more than one vote would get bumped in priority.
He insightfully pointed out that the current linking blogs are the present, and if we are interested in the future, we would do better to link to blogs we liked.
I think that’s a great idea, so go ahead and suggest some links.
Third, I may have already given you too much too think about, so further site development ideas can wait.
I haven’t tried creating a post or uploading anything yet, but so far it all looks good to me. Great work, Rex. Thanks.
PS - Rex, how do you do the “more” thing (where you start things off on the main page, but the viewer has to click “more” to read the rest)?
Thanks David,
You should have no problem on the uploads or post management. Nothing changed there.
Any blogroll links you’d like to see?
There’s a button in the “write post” page that says “more.” You just put the cursor where you want it and click that button. You can also just type: <!––more––> in the spot where you want the break.
Gracias amigo. I’ll do that next time. I never felt comfortable hogging all that frontpage real estate w/ my wordy posts, but I didn’t know how not to.
Great job, Rex.
I think the reordering of the side bar is appropriate. The contributors are the most frequent users. They know who they are, and they are most interested in what are the latest comments coming in. Thus, putting recent comments at the top makes sense.
I notice that the contributors list is not displayed on pages other than the front page. Is this intentional?
I like the “Post info” at the top of the post pages. I notice that the categories are not displayed under the title in the post pages, but they are on the front page. For consistency, would it be better to not display this information on the front page, and let the “Post info” section of the side-bar carry the weight of the category information?
Earlier we discussed renaming “Contributors” as “Authors” or “Posting Contributors”. The issue had to do with the site seeming “closed” to people not on the list. Several people mentioned that they thought comments were only allowed from “contributors” — a surprise to me, but that is why feedback is important. What do you think about changing the terminology here? After all, there are many non-author comment writers who make great contributions but are not listed as “Contributors”.
For “Recent Comments”, what do you think of extending the number of comments shown? There is plenty of sidebar space, and “Recent Comments” is one of the most valuable ways to follow the action on the site, in my eyes at least.
I think I can see very faint lines between the comment listings on “Recent Comments.” These are at visual threshold for me on my monitor — hey, I just noticed there are these lines between posts as well. A slightly higher contrast might be okay.
The search box contains the text “searchstring”, but because of the size of the box, I see only “searchstri”. To make a search, I need to delete this text first before typing in my own search string. Would it be better to have the box empty by default?
Rex, I like the clean, simple look. Thanks for the work you’ve done on this! Here are a few comments:
1- I agree with Karl that having to clear the search text is annoying. Also, the “Search” button looks like a text box itself, so one is tempted to enter search text there.
2- I Think the page title for the front page should be reversed if feasible, i.e. to “Art and Perception | a multidisciplinary dialog”. Does anyone else prefer “conversation” to “dialog?” Sounds less formal to me.
3- Especially if the contributors/authors (is “Contributing Authors” too long?) are listed on every page, I don’t think their blogs need to be linked, leaving more room for others. Easy for me to say, I don’t have a blog at present, but others may feel quite differently.
4- Being new to this, I don’t know all the blogroll conventions. But I’d be in favor of listing ones we like to read on topics related to A&P and ones whose readership we would like to attract.
5- This comment box is small and the font larger than the posts, making it hard to read much of my comment as I compose. I think ideally it would be the same width and font as the posts above it.
6- On posting schedule: are multiple posts per day expected or encouraged, or do people feel a potential for overload and loss of focus? Colin, myself, and now Doug have been rotating, but that could change.
Steve, either one of your suggestions are fine or perhaps just
Art & Perception - multidisciplinary.
On second thoughts, to encourage participation, we probably want to include something like ‘dialog’?
David, using Firefox as a web browser, there is a strip of icons to be used for editing posts, including the ‘more’ icon to the right of the tree icon.
Rex,
to be able to generate and support my own web site more effectively, I am reading wordpress.2 and ‘html, xhtml and css’.
You said, There are far fewer Wordpress generated errors . I assume as a greenhorn, I should first continue to play with wordpress before I venture out doing something without support?
Steve,
The words that have good standing (in the “let it evolve sense”) for the tagline are:
conversation
dialogue
open
multidisciplinary
across
arts
Putting together the and selecting from the words above, we could have:
an open multidisciplinary dialogue
an open conversation
a dialogue across the arts
etc…
All of them are okay, and all of them are a bit dull — which is why we don’t have the tagline displayed, I assume. We could use something more sexy. I like “Did the Beatles Cheat?” myself, since that got lots of attention. In thinking of the tagline, put yourself in the position of someone coming here for the first time.
As to writing comments, I never compose in the comment box itself. I use an editor with a spell checker, and I always save my comments as well, because once I wrote some comments that got lost during the blog development phase. Once I’ve written the comment, I copy and paste into the box. Not to say that your suggestions about the comment box are not right on the money, of course.
As for linking to the contributors, I would not try to change that. People want those links, and the links are very handy really. I use them all the time to go to people’s sites. I also duplicate the list on my own blog for that reason.
I think your idea of how to build the blogroll is excellent. One thing I tried on my blog way back was to add a section to the blogroll: sites I’m getting to know. I put lots of links in there, moved some of them into proper categories in the blogroll, and deleted others. This gave me flexibility. What I think we want to avoid here is a static blogroll crammed with stuff that is not top notch. That will simply render the blogroll useless as a resource. But as Arthur and Lisa have said, a good blogroll is a valuable thing for many reasons.
As for multiple posts, I have the feeling that the people who contribute on a given day can sort out what their day should be like. For my part, I favor multiple posts per day, each with a small front-page footprint. This has three advantages. First, it doesn’t take up too much front page space. Second, one can see how many comments the post has attracted without scrolling. Third, it allows me to write posts that are as long as I like. If we continue to add authors, there will come a time when it becomes difficult to read ever post and comment. A concise front page allows people to follow their interests. Do you think things will become too diffuse? My feeling is that as long as people are writing good posts, let the readers choose which ones they want to read, rather than self-censoring.
It seems good if authors follow the schedule and post on their assigned day, unless they ask permission of the other authors on the day in question. That way each day can develop its own flavor.
Of course, the site administrator should post announcements (like today’s) whenever necessary.
I’d suggest looking at the blog with an rss reader such as bloglines. In addition to different browsers blogs need to be designed with the newsreaders in mind.
Specifically removing author information from the post content and putting it in the sidebar - very annoying (especially for a multi author blog) as sidebar info is not included in most newsreaders.
I like “Did the Beatles Cheat?” myself, since that got lots of attention.
Karl, this is a funny idea as a joke, but it seems awfully cryptic and doesn’t really tell anyone anything. I mean it made sense for my one post, but as a tagline for the site it’s just confusing.
Excellent points Lisa. I checked this and the tagline “a multidisciplinary dialog” shows on my news reader. Everything seems okay with the feed. Yes, the sidebar is not in the news readers. That is a key thing to remember. I forgot that entirely.
David,
The point is, perhaps we need an interesting tagline rather than an informative one. The blog itself provides information. The tagline is a tease, by definition. Why not accept that? Okay, perhaps the Beatles one is not perfect. But I’m open minded. Ed Winkleman has the best tagline I have seen: “art | politics | gossip | tough love”. Can’t we top that?
Ed’s tagline is actually a pretty good indication of what his blog is about. I’m certainly open to using the tagline as a tease, but not if it misrepresents what we do. It could have the opposite effect of what we want, which is to invite participation.
Great to see the comments. I’m a little sleepy since I just woke up, so I just scanned the comments really fast looking for repeating elements as a priority modulus.
Conclusion the first: The “searchstring” in the search box had to go.
Done.
I also made the box two characters wider, the buttons a touch smaller and the text itself a touch darker.
Second: Steve, the size of the text box is sort of a problem. That part of the code uses some a really old html syntax that requires me to specify a column width. When I make it larger, it breaks the layout for people using IE on small laptops, according to my tests. This was a problem with the old design, and it was a problem on my blog too. So I had to compromise. Sometimes the definition of compromise is the “mediocrity between the best and the worst.” For example, I could force a smaller font to get more columns, but then it would be hard to read. Karl gives a good suggestion. Using the textbox is fine for short comments, but copying and pasting is the way to go for anything larger.
BTW, Colin is using a nifty comment previewer, I’d like to use it here, too.
Re “Contributors”
First, now that it’s moved down the sidebar, it may not appear so imposing. Second, When we have some blogroll links up, it’ll appear in a list within list form, so that will have an effect on how it appears. Let’s just leave that for now, OK? Let’s see how things look with a blogroll and re-visit that topic.
I notice no one has suggested any links. Warning! Without your input, this will get decided for you. And you’re giving me ammunition to later, when I have cavelierly and arbitrarily done it on my own to say, “Well, you should have suggested something during all those times when I asked.”
Now, I’m going to read through the comments again more slowly.
If you link to Thomas Kinkade, I’m gone :)
Why don’t we start w/ Ed Winkleman’s blog? A number of us seem to be citing it.
http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/
Also:
abLA, which is a good Los Angeles art blog.
http://art.blogging.la/
David Byrne’s blog (Talking Heads).
http://journal.davidbyrne.com/
The Long Tail. Blog by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, where he explores the effect of unlimited shelfspace (or wallspace) on niche markets.
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/
Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools section. I’ve found great information here about books, cameras, and an umbrella that’s windtested to 55mph.
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
Nobody says “multidisciplinary dialog”. It is about as off-putting as we could get. Not to mention the issue with the spelling.
“yakking about art” would seem a closer fit…..
And might even hit Karl’s objectives!
As for the blogroll: no thanks. Not interested. Who is going to maintain it. A chore and a bore. And what if a link requested by someone (or chosen by some algorithm) is objectionable to somebody else?
You can assume I like the theme - it is the one I use after all. Although you seem to like several of the features that I’ve thrown out.
Oh, author details do, and tagline doesn’t, show up in NetNewsWire - my RSS reader.
Karl,
I had a very definite idea about the sidebar changing appearance. The idea was once they’d come to he comment page, they were “inside,” so I kept to keeping visitors on-site. The contributor links are a door to the outside.
Besides, for search engines just count those links once. Inside, they count links in posts and comments.
Regarding the “Post Info” stuff, I’m of the opinion that it should be prominently displayed once, then moved to the side, just as it is. Doing otherwise is a little ponderous and redundant. Note: I didn’t write that code. Basic2col just did that, and I liked it. Try it out for a little while.
Certainly we can have more “Recent Comments” Do others want more? It already seemed like more than I use, but YMMV.
Re “faint lines” sounds like a browser glitch. There are no borders in the source.
Steve,
The posting schedule is next on my list. Separate topic, but important.
Changing the order of the words in the title is a snap. Done. I got rid of the “pipe” symbol on the home page and changed it to a colon too.
(Figuring out the tagline is not so easy, as I’m sure you’re seeing now.)
I’ll answer more people and handle more stuff shortly.
For the tagline, how do you say “pull up a chair” in Dutch? Or anything in Dutch? If we keep the tagline in something other than English it will be mysterious to most of our readers :)
Also, I agree w/ Colin about the blogroll. I’d rather skip it. It’s one thing if there’s one person recommending their favorites on their own blog. But for all of us to feel comfortable w/ what’s being endorsed here might be a stretch. I listed some of my favorites above, but I could understand why others might not like them. And there are potential links that I’d feel very uncomfortable (and even embarrassed) about being associated with, like the one I only half-jokingly mentioned above.
Colin speaks my mind.
“multidisciplinary dialog” = a bunch of pretentious academic gits.
‘Artists yakking about art’ = people I might want to associate with.
I don’t see the point behind linking to popular blogs in a ‘blogroll’, unless such things are some form of quid pro quo and we’d get links back.
If we’re going to have a blogroll, it should promote the people who are frequent commenters, but are not contributors.
Why do clickable images have a big blue line under them like the text links? Looks ugly to me.
Why is the date archive listing only available on the archive pages themselves? It’s difficult to get to as first one has to click on a category.
Same question for the author archive listing.
The author archive lists the authors userid and not the author’s selected display name - the inconsistency is confusing.
The author’s name is not clickable in the sidebar (in the post meta section) but it is when the post in on the main page - why inconsistent?
Why are the contributors only listed in the sidebar on the front page but not for pages or posts? They are there on the archive page also - seems inconsistent.
The template breaks in IE (sidebar ends up at the bottom) for any post where the image is too wide for the current template. So my old posts with images all break the template. If anyone uploads a new image that is too wide it will break the template in IE. What is the max width allowed so we don’t break things?
Sugggested links:
ArtBizBlog - marketing and business advice for artists: http://www.artbizblog.com/
Anonymous Female Artist (a.k.a. Militant Art Bitch) http://anonymousfemaleartist.blogspot.com/
The Intrepid Art Collector - Adventures in the art market — plus occasional museum and art book reviews. By Lisa Hunter - http://howtobuyart.blogspot.com/
Regarding the “Post Info” stuff, I’m of the opinion that it should be prominently displayed once, then moved to the side, just as it is.
This assumes a specific pattern of use that I don’t think is valid. Many links to blogs are to specific posts themselves and not to the main page. So anything on the main page that you think people need to see when they first enter the blog - this is valid information to put on every page because every page is potentially the first page anyone will see.
RSS readers again - there is no concept of going to the main page. I rarely if ever look at the main page of a blog as I use an RSS Reader.
The way to keep people on the blog is content - no amount of limiting where and why links appears will keep people reading crap. It is about content. Links to the outside are not bad - repeating information in a clear, consistent and easy to locate way (no matter how you get to the blog) is not bad. Crappy content is what is bad.
Birgit,
The “Wordpress generated errors” are things that show up in my syntax checkers. Doing web development, as I do, I have a lot of little programs that check to see that tags are properly written, end tags there, lists properly nested, and stuff like that. The old theme, Rale, was a nightmare for that even before we started playing with it. It used all these lists within lists within lists. Warnings would number in the hundreds while occasional display breaking errors would surface; now, there are like three to eight warnings on a page and nor errors. The new theme was really crash tested design, not as elegant in appearance, IMO, but more robust, code wise. Think of it as highly tuned V8 with a primer gray body rather than a beat up old four banger with a pretty paintjob.
We can easily change the paint. Changing the engine is serious work.
David,
I see you’ve put up some link suggestions. Hurrah!
Colin,
As I told you, I liked “Conversations Across the Arts”
As far as the blogroll, I’ll maintain it. It’s not that much work. I figured from the beginning that those interested in this would want to be involved, so I’m keeping them in the loop.
But I take it you won’t mind if those of us who want this work on it? I mean, you’re not saying, “Nope, not interested,” and then planning on later saying, “Ycch. I hate it. Get rid of it?”
Lisa,
Wow. Thanks for your trouble.
The one answer I have so far is the image width — 450px, same as before. Larger images and extreme font resizes in relation to the images do weird things in all browsers.
Also, as you no doubt know, the image link styles are just inherited from the main link style. Just haven’t gotten around to fixing that yet, but thanks for the reminder.
Thanks for your list of links.
I shall look into your other observations at a more quiet time, later today.
Paul,
I thought the “multidisciplinary” was too academic sounding too, but your use of “gits” made me laugh. I didn’t hear that word in American vernacular until after the “Harry Potter’ movies.
Also, your thoughts on the blogroll harmonize with the thoughts of those of us who are interested in that.
Rex,
The problem with a blogroll is that it is a recommendation.
Who is recommending?
A&P does not have a corporate personality. It is the sum of its parts. Its parts are could reasonably be considered its contributors.
So I suggest a link to a site that somebody doesn’t like. Who decides? Does any contributor have a veto? Or is it a majority?
One way leads to divisiveness and the other way leads to work.
It seems an odd way to want to spend our energy.
If a contributor wants to recommend a site, then let them do it in a post. That is a much stronger recommendation anyway.
No, I won’t keep going on about it, but let me summarise, just the once:
a) I don’t want it
b) It creates work
c) It will lead to arguments.
Everybody can ignore (a). You can ignore (b). We ignore (c) at our peril.
End.
your use of “gits” made me laugh. I didn’t hear that word in American vernacular until after the “Harry Potter’ movies.
If we’re going to use British slang then I recommend “discussions and whinging about the arts” for our tagline.
Colin,
Klar. Let me make (re-make) the case for a blogroll. When I first started blogging, I didn’t understand blogrolls. Whenever I would do a search for “art blogs” the hits I got were based basically on the number of links those blogs had pointing to them. I found out right away that the web’s idea of popularity did not accord with my own. Almost all those popular blogs had witty writing, but little dialog.
Then I found A&P. Yee hah! Dialog! Cool cats. Smart people. Dedicated artists, not “Oh look at this weird stuff over there” journalists like so many of the “top” blogs. Karl’s blogroll led me to a lot of others, and their blogrolls led me to more.
But it’s a tit for tat thing. If you see someone linking to you, don’t you feel validated? Isn’t it a cool acknowledgment? Don’t you at least have a look?
So I started to see that blogging is a communal activity, and one of the “rules” was the link exchange. You indicate that we can appear as a closed group. A blogroll is one part of opening the doors. It’s the social thing to do.
I hope Arthur finds this post and jumps in because he really has cogent things to say. Arthur? Where are you?
Yes. You are very right that a blogroll is a recommendation.
Who’s recommending? Well, I am, for one. Above I make a case. I think they are good reasons, but I’ll let others speak for themselves.
But you will see that I haven’t just put one up, and I won’t, not without seeing to it that everyone has a chance to say what they want to say, not until some kind of consensus occurs.
I was quite concerned about arguments too, but I think we can work this out well if we just keep expressing ourselves politely and honestly just as you have done, and thank you.
PS I’m going skiing right now. The day is glorious, and the snow is divine. I’ll be back later. You can all be rest assured that I’m paying close attention.
Lisa,
I was not clear before, but you make a strong case for an identical sidebar across the site.
Blogroll links would be a collective recommendation by the group. The idea would be to link to sites of broad, rather than idiosyncratic or strictly personal interest. My original suggestion to Rex was for everybody to nominate two or perhaps three links. Anything that came up more than once would go in. My belief (perhaps naive) was that if people did this thoughtfully and in good faith, vetoes would not be needed. We can do this or something else, but really, potential disagreement is not a good reason for not acting (in particular since we seem to disagree about nearly everything). Also, I trust Rex when he says that it would not require much work.
My recommendations (not formal nominations) are:
Modern Art Notes: Very much journalistic, which is often bores me. But also a popular, well-establised site and it does provide useful information.
Modern Kicks: Just a really thoughtful, intelligent site.
Edward Winkleman: Ditto, and with a lot of conversation. From a gallerist.
Artblog.net: Same idea, from an artist’s perspective.
David,
If we’re going to use British slang then I recommend “discussions and whinging about the arts” for our tagline.
It is only Australians who think that Brits whinge. What we do really is moan. And we thoroughly enjoy doing it. Also, “Discussions” is far too posh.
So, my suggestions are:
Going on about the arts since 2006
and:
Art & Perception: somewhere to moan about the arts
Both “multidisciplinary” and “dialog” need to go. The former is vague and pretentious–and probably inaccurate, since we’re mainly talking about just the visual arts. The latter suggests a discourse between two people.
There is always simplicity
Art & Perception - join in
I have had a blogroll on my blog for different reasons depending on my current thoughts and goals. The content of that blogroll has changed as my reasons for having it have changed.
If A&P wants a blogroll for the social reasons, as Rex talks about, then why censor it at all? Why not just dump as much in there as possible - very open, inviting and social.
The content of the blogroll should follow the purpose. Is A&P looking to point readers to great content? Is A&P looking to boost it’s visibility? Is A&P fishing for reciprical links? Is A&P just playing along with the link game and being nice?
I would put different links up depending on the goal. The ones I listed above were in the “pointing readers to great content” category - but if we are after being social (or maybe fishing for links back) then I would say if someone comments at least twice then how about just slap up their link - why worry if everyone agrees it is wonderful? Wordpress can be modified to give all “authors” permission to add links - let us all add whatever we want!
So - why does A&P want links again?
There is a difference between being social and whoring for links. We should be seeking out links from sites that we admire. The social/content dichotomy is besides the point.
Art & Perception: somewhere to moan about the arts
If we put “moan” in the tagline, some people are going to show up and be very disappointed :)
Art & Perception - join in
This sounds good to me. But so did “an open conversation”.
As far as the blogroll, I agree w/ Arthur that it should be ones we can agree on as having good content, And I think if we have too many it just looks like we’re listing everything we can find. Maybe we open it up for a few suggestions from each of us, vote on them, and anything that gets 2 or more votes gets added.
Arthur, I take an exception to the word ‘whoring’ as I do to derogatory expressions that refer to ethnic groups.
Birgit, did Arthur say something that referred to any ethnic groups? I looked back through the comments and I can’t find anything.
David,
No Arthur used only a gender-specific derogatory expression. What I should have said is that I do not like derogatory expressions referring to particular groups of people.
Birgit, maybe it’s different here in California than in other places. In L.A. you can belong to either of the two major genders, or be at any point in between, and have no problem entering the profession. It’s truly an equal opportunity field.
Both men and women can prostitute themselves and do.
I’m with David, I prefer
Art and Perception - an open conversation
or simply “a conversation.” The subject of the conversation is clear enough from the main title.
For the blogroll, I’m easy with any administration or voting scheme suggested so far. I do love Cool Tools, but I don’t think it fits our focus.
I do love Cool Tools, but I don’t think it fits our focus.
I don’t think it quite fits either, but I thought you’d all enjoy checking it out anyway :)
OK, time to get serious…..
“A conversation”
Nothing else comes close.
Arthur, I agree: female or male prostitutes.
David, I did not know that in California, one talks about male whores.
Personally, I prefer ‘prostitute’ to ‘whore’, it sounds more polite.
I’d say cool tools and boing boing are much more interesting than yet another blogroll of art sites with quality content (yawn). How stuffy and multidisciplinary and so ‘been there done that’.
I suggest a blogroll of the month . Rotate the job of building a blogroll. Each author gets 1 month to build a dream blogroll - preferably not limited to visual art but pointers to other great blog content out on the web - fun stuff, serious stuff, anything different just to expand our world for a tiny bit - I’m sick of reading about Art Basel.
Save these off as pages as time goes on if the admin is willing to do the work or just nuke them and start over. Now that would add value to the site and be fun.
“A conversation”
Nothing else comes close.
Agreed.
Personally, I prefer ‘prostitute’ to ‘whore’, it sounds more polite.
I was trying to be evocative and not polite.
I’d say cool tools and boing boing are much more interesting than yet another blogroll of art sites with quality content (yawn)
Well, we can have both. In this vein, I would recommend 3 Quarks Daily, a digest of articles on a variety of topics: cultural, scientific, and political.
Lisa’s point about fun and interesting is a good one. Could we have divide the blogroll into two sets? I also like the idea of a blogroll czar.
Arthur,
I almost put 3quarks daily into my last comment before seeing yours. Seconded!
A “fun” blogroll and a “boring” one?
A conversation
Nothing else comes close.
Well just to speed up the process a bit and get us to where we left off - objections to this (not from me so this is a possibly incorrect paraphrase) were that 1) this is more than a conversation and 2) this feels limiting.
There - now we are back to where it was left off.
So how about
Art & Perception
Stuff
as it isn’t limiting at all and you can tell by reading and observing just what that stuff is.
Lisa,
Great points you have been making. Granted, “A multidiciplinary dialogue” sucks, and I think I can take the blame for talking Rex into that in the first place, although I’m not 100% certain about that. We started with “A conversation” a long time ago. If it were love at first site, we would not still be debating the tagline at this point. So I agree, “A conversation” just ain’t good enough.
How about this: “drawing | fiber | painting | photography” to borrow from Ed, and to give us something that can grow with the site? (e.g., sculpture, music, poetry, etc)
Interesting discussion about the blogroll. Here is my take. We already have a great blogroll to art sites — our own sites. If an artist has a good blog and wants to be linked to, why aren’t they an Art & Perception contributor (as in, author or guest author or comment writer)? I would favor linking to all good contributors, authors and commenter writers as well. That is enough art stuff. Who says the non A&P contributor blogroll should have anything to do with art? Where did that assumption creep in anyway? We could just as well assert that the non A&P contributor blogroll should only be to sites mostly not about art. That would be much more interesting to me. If I want to see Lisa or Arthur or my favorite art sites, I can always go to personal blogs and click away. But cooltools, hey, that is neat and I never heard of it before.
[Suggested] conclusion: if you want to get a sidebar link on A&P, participate on A&P. If you want to find a cool non-art site, look at part II of the A&P blogroll. We might end up being more popular for this than anything else. By the way, it is trivial to list the titles of the latest posts in other blogs using the RSS feed. So we don’t just have to link to our favorite sites, we can also list the headlines. That way we can use A&P to easily keep track of the stuff that we consider collectively cool.
A bit distracting? Maybe, but remember, it’s in the side bar down low anyway. And it’s not as if Art & Perception is the only thing to see on the web. If we are going to have people leaving, we might as well send them to something good (to borrow a phrase from Mr. Useit.)
Well, maybe this is nuts. But if we get into non-art links, this is where it could lead us.
Rex,
I am certain about those faint blue lines, but they are FAINT. They could be good to have if there were a bit more visible, they separate the comment list nicely.
If an artist has a good blog and wants to be linked to, why aren’t they an Art & Perception contributor (as in, author or guest author or comment writer)?
Because they don’t have the time, perhaps? I don’t have the time or inclination to post comments regularly on all the blogs I link to (not even the majority). Of course, it would be great if they did. But I don’t see why would we should make it a criterion for blogroll inclusion. Good comments (or even posts) don’t guarantee a good blog and vice versa.
Who says the non A&P contributor blogroll should have anything to do with art?
I do. This is an art site; we (should) want to link to other art sites. We can link to other kinds of sites as well.
If you want to find a cool non-art site, look at part II of the A&P blogroll. We might end up being more popular for this than anything else
Right there, that convinces me we don’t need a blogroll. If the most important part of the A&P blog is the blogroll, we’re so seriously screwed that I lack the words to describe it.
No one can agree on what should go in the blogroll. Leave it out.
Marshall McLuhan’s views to the contrary notwithstanding, the medium is not the message. The medium is the medium. The message is the message.
If you want readers, work on content. If you want to drive readers away, having endless discussions about the sidebar is an excellent way to go about it.
I am certain about those faint blue lines, but they are FAINT. They could be good to have if there were a bit more visible, they separate the comment list nicely.
Karl - I’m going to agree with you here. I looked at this site on 3 monitors today (5 year old home computer, huge monitor at work and brand spanking new lap top) - basically could not see the lines in any meaningful way on any of them. The lines are just enough there to make me think I’m losing my eye sight.
If you want readers, work on content. If you want to drive readers away, having endless discussions about the sidebar is an excellent way to go about it.
Paul, This is exactly my point (maybe I was a bit too subtle) and has been my position from day one, as was noted by me putting an end to the discussion when I was admin. Personally I still believe that these discussions (which are going to have to be had at some point) do not belong on this blog but in a separate email list as now all we see from those not listed in the contributors is radio silence and they are probably rolling their eyes and saying “oh geesh - they are at it again”.
Although I do believe that the popularity of the off topic posts indicate to me that this blog is a bit dry and we would all love a chance to be a bit less formal and yammer on about things a bit less serious from time to time. Just maybe we could find a topic a bit more interesting than sidebars and tag lines.
So - has anyone check out the new copyright notice yet?
Well. You guys had an interesting chat while I was out enjoying some Sierra sun and snow.
Guess what? You all win.
I’ve decided I’m just gonna put your individual recommendations in the blogroll. Everyone who wants to gets to suggest three. Those who suggest none will have your three divied up. If no one takes the opportunity to suggest additional ones, I’ll just go with blogs that link to us until I get more input.
Maybe later we’ll go with four or five, but for now, I have enough typing to do.
Except I’m pretty much too buzzed on endorphins to concentrate on the computer. I’ll have to wait until I’ve returned from a nap before I get to work. Probably around two, three, or four in the morning, when I wake up.
So thanks for the links.
(Of course, if no one likes that solution, you can fire me.)
Lisa,
“oh geesh - they are at it again”
That may indeed be readers’ silent comments. I suspect that although readers might not be interested in our working discussions in detail, they probably find it positive that we do it in public [although Rex did choose a nice off-front page location]. This is “transparency,” right? People want that, I understand.
Lisa, you are Lisa Call, right? We had some unpleasant interaction on-line in public when I was in San Francisco. It was painful to me personally, but I deserved it for using the original Art & Perception Theme without asking permission first. I apologize for that. Whatever I thought the licensing of the Theme was, it was discourteous to use it without asking you first. It was discourteous because you put a lot of work into it and I could have asked so easily. I will not make the same mistake again.
Paul,
I mostly agree with you. That’s why I was against a blogroll last time we had this discussion in November. Yesterday I got carried away by the implications of the cool stuff blogroll, but that was a useful process of fantasizing I think — I know, reading your comment.
I don’t see any problem w/ us having this discussion here. It’s taking place off the main page (so it’s easy to skip), and it’s mostly been pretty amicable.
If this were a gazillion e-mails I’d probably just tag them as spam.
Maybe we need to make another website for these discussions, and another to discuss the technical and formal issues that come up in creating and maintaining that one, and so on ad infinitum.
I propose we have these discussions at THe Thinking Eye. Arthur, should we bring beer?
Whoa, a lot to process. I lean toward those who care more about the content than whether we have a list of blogs or sites and who decides what we link to. Not being an avid blogger myself (still can’t figure out where you all find the time to maintain, read, and comment on all these blogs and still have families, day jobs and make art), I find links to individual artist sites the most interesting. I want to see lots and lots of art. Art I hate and art I love. When I have time, I will read the deep and not so deep thoughts about the art and everything else on the blogs, but first and foremost I want art!
When I find a site I like, whose content (art or writing) I respect, I look at the links that person has chosen and ususally find more stuff I like. Because there is such a variety of content on this blog because we are all so different, why do we all have to agree on the links? We could put a goofy disclaimer on the list like: “these links do not necessarily represent an official endorsement by A and P or its underwriters.”
I like the idea of having a blog or site of the month and then a long list as well…
David,
We most certainly would not agree on the brand of beer, but I could bring a variety pack!
Good point, Leslie
We don’t have to agree. We can each put up our favs. Three each for now. Which ones do you want?
Like Leslie, I basically just have time to read the posts and keep up with the comments.
I only sometimes click on the links within the posts (though I do click on the name of the person who wrote it), and hardly ever check out links in the sidebars of blogs. It’s not that there isn’t interesting stuff there, if anything there’s too much (basically endless). It’s just that, well, I have other things to do.
PS - I promise to drink the beer and not look at the label.
My current favs
http://www.phyllisplattner.com
http://www.orangesideout.org
http://www.artnet.com/artist/18196/xiaoze-xie.html Xie does not have a site as far as I can tell, so I don’t know if thsi will fit in with your other links
Yes Karl it is me - I’m just too lazy to login. Thank you for the apology and I’m sorry for any pain I caused you.
I do like the suggestion of moving this discussion to Arthur’s blog. He was looking for an increase in traffic the other day pondering if he would be better off posting on A&P or just his own blog. This discussion could boost his stats for a while.
Yes, that’s right, I only ever mention my blog in order to boost stats. There isn’t anything there of value–why would I think that?
I’m headed to Arthur’s blog now… See you all there!
Don’t forget the booze.
Just wanted to let you all know what I’m doing with all these suggestions.
First, I have an offline version of the site. I do all my experimentation there. I have (easy access to) a brand new Mac, a PC with the worst versions of IE and Windows, and several versions of Unix on several machines. I check everything out on all of them.
Second, I have a file with all your names and all your suggestions summarized. Repeating elements get bumped in priority. Strong feelings get bumped in priority.
Third, I have a file with all the link suggestions. That’ll happen soon.
My own feelings are that the fonts, particularly the title and header fonts, need to be tweaked quite a bit. The look is too blue. Some touches of subtle warmth, like Lisa had going before would be just the the thing. I’m working on that right now.
Also, I work on my own art now between noon and eight every day Pacific Time, so you can count on me disappearing during those hours. (I do check in for spam and comments that got wrongly moderated during my break, around four though.)
So just because you don’t see something immediately implemented, does not mean I’m not on it. I care very much what you think, and I want you to like your site.
Thinking over this discussion, the idea that stays in my mind as most important is Lisa’s comment that every page could be the front page. There is no way to control how someone enters the site. There is no purpose to control this. So every page should function as a front page. For example, the authors should be in the post itself, not only in the sidebar. Also, keep the side bar content of the sub pages containing the list of authors. I use this list all the time.
Karl, the sidebar is broken again. On IE it displays all the way at the bottom when looking at the main page.
Problem seems to be related to “Please Move On” post, as it persists when you look at it by itself (like when you click on comments). When I click on any other post, the sidebar appears as it should.
Thanks David!
I made an adjustment.
Please let me know if it’s fixed on the front page.
The text on the sidebar and in some of the front page posts now looks very large, but at least it is showing up in the right place.
David,
Thanks, I found the problem, I think. I need to reformat the guest post. For the moment I took it off the front page.
Everything should be okay again now.
Karl, the sidebar text is back at the bottom of the page. The guest post is still on the front page. Also, the second image in that post has the word “perhaps” hanging out in the column to the right of it, which may be causing the problem.
Hmm,
I don’t know. I took the post off the front page. I’ll have to study it further. Is all okay now?
Okay, I got it! There were multiple problems with the formatting, but your clue about the “perhaps” was the key. All my fault, but a good learning experience. Thanks for the help, David.
Karl, it all looks good now. From past experience, I’ve found that “perhaps” is often the culprit :)
… David, I needed a good laugh this evening!
Glad to help with both :)