5k CONTEST: The contest is now closed. Phew. The contest pages will be updated frequently.
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THAT'S A RELIEF
00-4-2
The contest is finally over. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad it took off so huge, but it ended up consuming my first few weeks off and I sorely need a vacation (soon, soon). There were about 1150 entries, 10% of which arrived in the last hour before the contest closed. For now, there is a page here letting people know things are going to take a little longer than expected. Ahhhh.
ADDENDA
00-4-1
My favorite April Fool's site for 2000: beWretsaR, er, RasterWeb.
And while we are linking, very nice redesign, Sam.
I NOW HAVE A PALM CONNECTED ORGANIZER AND THEREFORE NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT FORGETING THINGS THAT I HAVE TO DO BECAUSE I WRITE THOSE THINGS DOWN STRAIGHT AWAY
[Not that that has anything to do with anything]
00-3-31
Scoop!!!
1,000 chickens found dead!
They don't mention that 1,500 additional chickens were found alive. Of course, that probably happens all the time. Finding lots of chickens alive, I mean.
My favorite quote from this story:
"The good thing about this is this is a poultry farmer saying this is not acceptable animal-husbandry practices," said Susan Michaels, co-founder of the animal welfare group.
[Note: I thought this was funny at 3:00 in the morning. It doesn't seem as funny in the hard light of afternoon. -Ed.]
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I came across an interesting discussion in FEED on the topic of designing online communities where the Veen writes, quoting Heather McDonald of gURL:
Heather McDonald wrote:
I think as designers of online communities we need to be concerned with creating environments where users are really the designers.
Ah ha! Now we're getting at it. Part of the problem with "designing communities" is that we fail to distinguish between rules and tools.
Rules and tools: constraints and affordances? I racked my brain for a while trying to apply the lessons I learned in the design of actual (physical) communities (read: towns and neighbourhoods). I can find no analogies which really provide much illumination. I have tried this before, with similarly disappointing results. Affordances yes, but constraints? Real communities create their own constraints -- these don't need to be designed.
I have known a few online communities in my time: on usenet, on listservs, across many different websites (but never really just on one website). The essential truth: communities are autopoetic -- they make themselves. As interaction designers (or architects/planners) we can at most provide the seeds, the impetus and the place.
(Google search on "communities" and "autopoesis".)
(Tangentially, all of this brings to mind the manifold distinctions between theoria, poesis and praxis, drilled into me by Dr. John Michelsen. Roughly, lets translate them as "intellectual activity", "craft & creation" and "practical activity". I find myself sliding from one end of the spectrum to the other, faster and faster, as my life proceeds. I hope you are well Dr. Michelsen.)
A community is (among other things) a medium for ongoing conversations (think of religious communities, towns, professional associations, neighbourhoods, workplaces), where "conversations" means something a little more than alternating lines of dialog: something more like the context in which we define ourselves and give meaning to our actions (viz., live our lives). Communities tend to "naturally" constrain our behaviour and provide frameworks for extending our actions into recognized and accepted practices, as well as "raw meanings" with which to assemble contexts for our desires, preferences, goals, beliefs, etc.
This is something which never lives behind a tab on a navigation bar which is labelled "community" (greyed-out at that).
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Is this really happening? Is it a joke? Salon seems to think it's legit. So
Brendan will become the new webmaster for McSweeney's? This seems ... odd.
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