If you’re reading this site via the RSS feeds, you may not be aware that the “real” site features a continuously updated list of what I’m doing at Sundance. Call it microblogging. It’s powered by [Twitter](http://twitter.com/johnaugust), and doesn’t show up in the main feed.
However, you can subscribe to the just the Twitters through the previous link.
(**Update March 2011:** Yes, I called them “Twitters.” I don’t think the term “tweet” had been solidified yet.)
Your article, “[Farrah Fawcett on Parade](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/fawcett-parade)” states that the first hit in Google for the search “poitier singing porgy” gives the answer to whether or not Sidney did his own singing. But the first hit in Google is a weblog at “johnaugust.com” containing an article entitled “Farrah Fawcett on Parade” that…
Well, at that point, the web spirals into the event horizon.
— Jemal in Maryland, jealous of your Google-juice
__*Unless you have to moderate them.__
Over at Look For The Nines, the official-for-now site for The Nines, I set up a forum to handle discussion about the movie. I had deep ambivalence about doing this.
Forums pre-date blogs, instant messaging, and even email as we understand it. Stretching back to their BBS roots, forums allow truly user-generated conversations. On a blog like this one, the comments sections are limited to the topic of the post, and have a very short shelf-life (except for the endless and pointless [Prince of Persia](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/prince-of-persia-announced) thread I had to finally shut down.) Forum topics, on the other hand, can cover anything, and can run as long as there are still people interested in the conversation.
That said, I think message boards bring out the worst in people. Given the opportunity to say anything, an annoying percentage of people will say anything, which is to say, nothing of merit. While there are various systems of karma and tagging to help punish true miscreants, there’s no magic plug-in to detect illiterate, off-topic rambling.
I knew I couldn’t ponder my forum misgivings for very long: As of 11:20 p.m. Sunday night, 1,300 people will have seen The Nines. I wanted to offer a virtual meeting place where viewers could dissect and discuss what is honestly a pretty complicated movie. And that meant a forum.
So I bit the bullet and installed one. The technical stuff wasn’t that rough at all. After considering various forum structures I liked and despised, I decided to limit it to just two boards, Before and After. The former would be for all general discussion about the movie and its release (no spoilers), while the latter would be specifically about story points and things in the movie (that is, spoilers-a-go-go). Why just two boards? In my experience, sites with extensive folder structures become unworkable. It ends up being so many clicks to check on an old thread that one quickly gives up. In the end, one or two boards (often labeled “General Discussion”) carry 95% of the active threads.
Unlike blogging software, the tricky part with a forum isn’t getting it set up, but getting it rolling. Since you’re relying on random strangers to post entries, you need a certain critical mass to get it running. It’s a lot like throwing a party: no one wants to be the first to arrive, standing awkwardly near the keg, wondering if there’s a better party elsewhere. So we needed people, stat. For this, I relied on the power of celebrity.
Ryan Reynolds posted a link to the site on his MySpace page, which got the ball rolling. (It’s worth noting that of the 12 or so forum participants so far, three of them run Ryan Reynolds fansites.) With 16 topics and 43 posts, it’s not exactly Digg. But I’m hoping that it will get some post-Sundance traction. And if not, it’s only cost about two hours of time.
For a change, I’ve actually delegated something: I’m not the moderator on the site. But I will be stopping by to answer questions from time to time, assuming there are questions to answer.
(Update March 2011: The forums section for Look For The Nines is no longer running. Also, Ryan Reynolds nixed his MySpace page years ago.)
One of my self-assigned projects for the holiday break was to rebuild the site — not so much how it looked, but the coding underneath. Inspired by the [SimpleBits](http://simplebits.com) re-do, and armed with my copy of Andy Clarke’s [Transcending CSS](http://astore.amazon.com/johnaugustcom-20/detail/0321410971/002-0355819-1894408), I envisioned sparkling new CSS, built on a clear semantic framework. No longer would the site’s undercarriage be held together with duct tape and angle brackets. It would be strong, straightforward and robust.
But that didn’t happen.
Rebuilding a working website is like changing the oil in a moving vehicle. It’s possible, but it ain’t easy. More dispiriting, I realized that all of the vintage hacks and work-arounds I was trying to avoid have simply been replaced with new hacks and work-arounds, such as the [Inman clearing method](http://www.shauninman.com/post/heap/2006/05/22/clearance_position_inline_absolute). So, for the most part, I chose to leave well enough alone.
But I did tweak a few things. The headlines are bigger, and the comments sections use significantly more whitespace. I nixed the tree border — that was always supposed to be temporary, but it lasted for more than a year. The box under the brad is gone, as are many of the less-clicked items. I’ve removed the links to other blogs, but intend to restore them at a later date.
Share This
—–
One of the most significant changes is the “Share This” link under every article. It uses [Alex King’s](http://alexking.org) AJAX-y goodness to allow readers to bookmark or email a specific entry.
“Share This” takes the place of “Permalink,” and good riddance. For readers who do want to copy the URL of any article, the headline now serves as the permanent link, which is pretty much what every other blog does. The very idea of listing a “permalink” which is not meant to be clicked, but copied, dates back to a specific time in the webosphere, and, well, we’ve moved on.
There are a few other changes on my wishlist, but they may wait until I bring on someone more qualified to implement them. In the meantime, if I’ve broken something that I haven’t noticed, please let me know. That’s one of the driving-while-changing-the-oil pitfalls.