It would be neat if news articles had a mark-up mode where interested readers could add unobtrusive, sticky-note type annotations, as in Acrobat. Or, maybe people could create their own Humuments out of the day's news.
That would be neat, if you wanted to immediately make 90% of blogs obsolete.
But that tool creates private notes. The notes would have to be visible to other people reading the page.
But I see the point has already been made.
You mean like some modification of a Wiki?
I don't think different users' edits should stomp on each other, necessarily. The page should support open and closed newsmashes.
I look forward to the Yossarian Times, with summary redactions of entire parts of speech.
Ben, from the article,
This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors.
"We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to do that with selected editorials initially. We don't know how this is going to turn out. It's all about finding new ways to allow readers to interact with us in the age of the Web."
Catch-22, the film: Some film, that Catch-22 or the worst thing Nichols and May ever did?
Responses invoking the so-called "fallacy of false alternative" will be disregarded.
Redact "and May" from previous comment. Possibly append, "and Buck Henry."
Catch-22, the film: Some film, that Catch-22 or the worst thing Nichols ever did?
Responses invoking the so-called "fallacy of false alternative" will be disregarded.and Buck Henry.
To be entirely off topic -- does anyone have a link to the text of the second Downing Street Memo? Not the meeting minutes, but the memo that was circulated before the meeting and that bits were quoted from in the NY Times today. I've been googling, but can't find it anywhere except behind a subscription wall at the Sunday (London) Times.
Yes, that's exactly how I intended my comment to read.
I dunno, ogged. I think the problem with blogs as a tool for communicating with institutions is really a problem with institutions, not blogs. I think the mash-up idea suggested is a good one, but what you would really need is a place for readers to store their identities, so that, at any given site that contained ephemeral trivia, I could read not just the content but also the B-Wo gloss on the content. (Pale Fire?) You'd probably also need a clearinghouse with predictive information about the usefulness of various glossarians. This seems like a project for Google, more than anyone else.
That's just what I had in mind, SCMTim. Thanks for articulating it.
So you want to be able to go the NY Times, read the article, click a button and see someone's notes and edits? Am I understanding that correctly?
Something like that. Maybe it would be stupid. I'm just brainstorming.
I'm just brainstorming
Yeah, I get that, I'm just trying to understand what you guys are saying. That could be very cool; like a technorati/trackback/newsmash mix: these are sites that have edited this article, click and each edit is overlayed on your page.
I can't help but notice that the plight of Benjamin, the exiled king of Troutma, is one of the major themes of this blog. I really must tell you more about my beloved Troutma.
Drat, that wasn't what I was looking for -- it's a July memo from Blair's office, referenced in this NYT story.
Who's playing Shade in this re-imagining? Gradus?
You know, I read that book entirely naively -- I thoughtit was an annotated edition of a poem. It took me longer than you'd think to figure out that something very wrong was going on in the notes.
Ogged: yeah. If you're looking for or close textual commentary, you might prefer to have it all there in front of you along with the context, instead of encountering it semi-randomly and in varying degrees of faithfulness.
You know, I read that book entirely naively -- I thoughtit was an annotated edition of a poem. It took me longer than you'd think to figure out that something very wrong was going on in the notes.
Ok.
It is Monday of a sunny week. I am feeling secure enough in my own persona to admit to the entire world that I do not understand that reference at all. Hell, I even feel confident enough to ask and risk much-tutting.
What are you talking about, please?
She's talking about Nabokov's Pale Fire, a book consisting of a 999-line poem (right?) and notes to that poem.
Thank you.
See, I knew the answer would be embarrassing, but now I know and can read.
I highly recommend it, whatever that counts for.
[Possible spoilers!]
I never seriously considered the author-reader relationship very deeply before reading Pale Fire. At the end of the Foreward, though, where Kinbote instructs the reader to read his notes before the poem, I was struck by the choice I had to make, as a first-time reader; and by the fact that how I chose to proceed would indelibly affect my experience(s) with the book.
I ended up reading the Foreward and the first chapter or so of commentary. Deeply disturbed and wondering what the hell was going on, I chickened out and returned to the poem. This left me even more deeply disturbed. And it was glorious.
Oh, LB, these might be the briefing papers you're looking for.
Austro, don't skip the Index. It is a marvelous Index.
Probably not commuter reading then.
Sounds like a text for a rainy weekend when the family are away and one has only an unchallenging merlot for company.
Ah yes.. *nods* Many are the days I've passed at my chateau in just such circumstances, Austro.
I find that even the least challenging merlot will occasionally give you backtalk, though. A nice, submissive riesling is better.
seriously considered … very deeply
Editing is my friend.
It is, in fact, a marvelous book. And I wouldn't rule it out as commuter reading -- by the very nature of its weird structure, it lends itself to being read episodically. It's lighter and more entertaining than this discussion would suggest.
Tell me more about institutional blogs, Ogged. I'm going to be launching a blog for the Smithsonian soon, so this stuff's on my mind, especially the signal:noise aspect.
It is, in fact, a marvelous book.
What LB said. It makes me giddy just to think about it. Ignore my grandiose epiphanoodle and just read it.
Ogged, First by refreshing the comments popup after posting, then the whole site. Some 15 minutes worth of repeated url entry timed out. Ok again now, it seems.
Shit. Anyone else? It's been zippy for me.
There may be some difficulty in connecting to track.mybloglog.com.
A nice, submissive riesling is better.
I find that even the most lieblich of whites become rebellious after a while causing much excitement of spirit. I actually never drink white wine in the evening. Worse than coffee for destroying sleep.
Of course it could be our companies infrastructure. I only need to have a junior consultant here downloading things not really fit for work and the degradation could be impressive.
Interpret that as you will.
Tell me more about institutional blogs, Ogged.
Hmm. The first question I'd ask about an institutional blog is, Why a blog? What's it supposed to do? Is it a way to post information about the institution? A way to build a community among the members? A way to get feedback? Is it the official voice of the institution, or is it understood to be the affiliated, but not official voice of the blog's author? That's for starters, but it's hard to say without knowing what you plan to use it for. Tell me more about the Smithsonian's blog, Kriston.
I have more questions than answers, but it's a blog about American art and for all the reasons you cited. The idea is for the blogger to have access to SI resources (curators, collections) in order to promote that community. I'm guessing affiliated-but-not-official for the voice.
That's my understanding of it. The thing is, it's been sanctioned by a new media-type department within SI, and to become permanent it's more or less going to have to prove its worth. One problem as I see it is that I'm not sure how many of the art professionals the site is trying to court actively read blogs—whereas it's hard to avoid trolls. I'm not convinced that an august institution will tolerate having its name associated with a site that attracts even just a few trolls so I'm trying to think through this problem before the launch.
whereas it's hard to avoid trolls
I've a notion it will be now!
K, what does it mean to have access to SI resources?
It's lighter and more entertaining than this discussion would suggest.
Probably this is implicit in the previous comments, but Pale Fire is in fact (and most obviously) fucking hilarious. I would add that the humor isn't necessarily to anyone's taste, but I think anyone who comments here regularly probably is a big enough fan of the in-joke and the supernerdy to dig it.
So far it means lunch next week with imporant curators.
Kriston:
My 2 unrequested cents. The troll issue seems like something that might have a software solution. At a minimum, most of the software seems to allow for an initial quarantine of comments. Scoop seems to allow for commenter reputation, which in turn makes me suspect that you can excise all commenters with a reputation below a certain level. Wouldn't that solve the most egregious troll problems?
Sorry, that "important" sounded snottier than I meant it.
SCMT: That's a good idea. I wonder whether you can implement that feature without cluttering the page with diaries and whatnot.
Pale Fire is my favorite Nabokov book. It isn't meant to be difficult. It is pretty funny and LB is right that it would be good commuter reading. Even if you miss a few things at least you are doing better than Kinbote.
The word I want to advocate for is "Kinbotian". Only 55 google hits. It has got to be way more useful than that.
I tried using it in a negative review of this book on Amazon to refer to the unhinged footnotes, but Amazon deleted my review. Popov and McHugh are worse than Kinbote, because as translators they get to rearrange the actual poems to fit their pet theories.
At least Amazon didn't remove the excellent slam from the "Publisher's weekly" review.
>Unlike Felstiner and Joris, Popov (The Russian People Speak: Democracy at the Crossroads) and poet McHugh (Father of the Predicaments, etc.) don't present the German texts en face, a practice they regard, in their preface, as a potential distraction from the reader's experience of their renderings. It would indeed be a distraction, making painfully clear just how far they depart from the originals to arrive at their idiosyncratic versions, which alter Celan's precise line and stanza lengths significantly, and forsake Celan's vertiginous difficulties for a more simplistic, sometimes macabre or witty, style that's littered with heavy-handed gestures. One poem, for example, contains an ex nihilo insertion gleefully riffing on a German pun, others tip the scales of Celan's carefully weighted pronouns into one viewpoint or another. Even when hewing closer to the source text, Popov and McHugh incessantly heighten the poems' language, degrading their thorniness with more traditional sentiments.
You may have 4 Amazon stars and be winners of the 2001 Griffin Poetry Prize, but you aren't safe yet Popov and McHugh.
Wordpress too; Tim Burke's new setup has comments only by registration.
OK Sold.
It will be the 6th book I ve bought on the strength of this frathaus (So soon i get a volume discount on my further random education, no?)
I ll even try it on the train.
OT bleg-
I suspect that the person (or persons) whose wireless network I have been borrowing without consent for my internet access 'lo these past tweleve days has come up with some technique which prevents me from accessing any internet resources via their network while while still allowing me to access their network. Assuming that you don't have any particular ethical objections to me doing this:
1) Could the person in fact have done this?
2) Is there some way to confirm that they have done this?
3) (the part which I really shouldn't do so no one should help me with) Is there anyway I can thrwart their will?
Ok, so you have something of a journalist's stance with regard to the institution. Hmm. Are you allowed to write about art that isn't housed at the Smithsonian? Or about anything else, for that matter? How often are you planning to post? Sorry, this isn't exactly advice, is it? But if you want to make some kind of community, you're going to have to post fairly often (people love new posts!), and I'm trying to think of how you can do that. I wouldn't worry much about trolls unless they become a problem. Odds are, you'll get a genteel lot commenting over there, and if you require registration for a new blog that doesn't have a lot of buzz or celebrity posters or whatnot, no one is going to comment.
I demur from Ogged's statement about trolls. In my limited experience of the artblogging community (this person was supposed to link to my review of the entire Carnegie International but never did--hmph), you can get some pretty nasty flaming. I would moderate comments to prevent that from happening.
while still allowing me to access their network
Are you sure you're actually accessing their network? Sometimes Windows (if that's what you're using) will seem to have connected to a wireless network without having done so.
Yeah, I've seen some of the artblogging nastiness too, but it will really depend on what he's posting, and it's easy enough to get rid of comments that I would start with it open, and only close it in case of a problem.
without having done so.
Sorry, unclear: will connect without having authenticated, so you'll be technically connected, but unable to access anything--it could be that they've just added a password.
I don't know if the registration thing is such a big deal, either. In some ways, the (sorta) model might be Leiter's blog. When he allows comments, he disallows anonymous comments, but still gets interesting stuff. He doesn't post that often, but remains (I suspect - I'm scared of philo types, remember) a valuable resource. If Kriston could convince a few relatively well-known academics to take a hammer to whomever was blogging on a particular bit (a la Posner/Becker), I think you would develop a respectful community that (at least initially) spent its time trying to sound smart to impress the professors. It might take a little while to grow, but (assuming sufficient leeway from Officialdom) I could see it working.
I am wildly uncultured, so it might not interest me. But it sounds really cool.
I thought I edited my spelling of "thrawrt" to the proper "thwart" on preview, but to no avail.
As a note on official blogs, SJG was just bragging about having one up and running since 1994.
The don't allow comments on the main blog, but many posts contain links to a separate discussion forum. The blog works (IMO) as a way for the company to communicate directly and informally with readers. As long as they have separate forums I don't think the main blog would be improved by having comments.
Something to consider.
SCMT:
This Clay Shirky article is pretty good about the difficulties of getting rid of trolls by modifing the software.
Hey Matt, I want to read your review of the Carnegie. It's pretty funny—I actually saw it with the person you linked. (The art blogosphere is tight.)
There's this one art blog reader in particular I have in mind. He's one of these types who writes letters to the local paper's editor every single day about something. He's an awful troll/commenter hybrid: He posts 800-word tangents in comments like a troll, except they're arguably related to the post. But they're pretty incoherent qua comment. I haven't banned him on my own blog because he hasn't done anything wrong per se and it's not worth the noise he'd make, but that's the kind of crap I'd rather avoid on SI since 1) it makes the site look bad, and 2) it makes the comment sections unattractive to non-weirdo commenters.
It seems to me easy enough to avoid the thorny issue at hand by installing some sort of do-what that will have him voted off the island, but those programs are presumptuous for a blog that isn't assumed to have a massive readership off the bat.
My connectivity issues appear to have been purely temporary. Still, I appreciate the help.
Kriston,
I thought I had posted a nice chatty post about my review, and comment issues, etc., but I think I wandered off before hitting 'post'. So:
My review: Here, in several parts.
The time of the review: Substantially after the time I saw the exhibition.
Much of the text of the review: Recycled from the gallery guide.
The world: Small.
Sarah: Moving and getting married at the time I was posting these, I think, so excused for not linking.
Comment moderation: Sometimes done by a service called TypeKey, but that may be mostly for keeping off the spambots. Maybe making users register is the best idea. But that might not solve your problem with this guy. Limiting the number of posts per week? Accidentally losing his registration until a decent community has built up? This is not a problem I've had.
Hello Kriston and fantastic Matt Weiner (yes, I was moving/marrying--sorry, sorry, sorry)!)
Kriston, though unrequested, here are my two cents:
1. I'm thinking that the Smithsonian is finally, freaking FINALLY catching on to the power of the blogosphere. Wish I could say the same about ye olde Carnegie, but that's water under the bridge (she tells herself). However, I remain skeptical, unfortunately, as I'm so reluctant to believe that any such institution (esp. one with such a conservative street cred) would allow for a blog to function without rather severe sanctions by said institution. Meaning that, I'm wondering if this blog will simply serve as a "face" for their press releases, etc., much in the same way so many corporate blogs simply serve as a posting grounds for company information.
I don't mean to frown upon your involvement there (you know I'm a comrade), but I'll be eager to hear about the extent of your involvement in terms of content, and about your actual freedom, or "voice," as such. As for audience-- based on my own observations, it seems like curators are open to the idea of gathering their information online. They seem to read artnet, afterall, and I'm sure that this trend will only increase, especially in the younger set. Maybe you'll be a pioneer of sorts, who knows? I've been ranting and raving about the power of the blogosphere for a long time, to many eye-rolls from institutional PR people. Prove 'em wrong, soldier.
Hey Sarah, no prob like I said. Now that I know at least one person I don't know will read the review, I'm happy.... (Also, I never really did address the one comment I got on those entries, from the Curatrix.)
Sarah, what the hell is up? Funny to run into you here.
I definitely appreciate your input; I hadn't yet posed the question to the art blogging public because I don't have answers to the questions I know everyone will ask. Clearly I'm hoping I'm able to avoid all the pitfalls you describe in item #1—so far so good (he says, before the site is up). I hope it will become something somewhat new, something critical and topical and informational but not exactly any of those.