[Sigia-l] new Yahoo! search

[Benjamin Speaks]

C,

I believe in the book you recently authored you took a couple of "personal"
sites to town since they were in the view of public domain...

Just an observation.

B

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christina Wodtke" <cwodtke at eleganthack.com>
To: <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] new Yahoo! search


> Warning: probably very dull stuff.. skip as needed.
>
>
> > I thought your blog was "www.eleganthack.com" (which is, ironically, one
> of the least navigable sites I've ever visited, followed closely by the
> boxes and arrows site).
>
>
> EH is my blog. Boxes and Arrows is not my blog, but rather the zine I
> founded, and it is run by a group of dedicated folks, whom I thought might
> be amused by the screenshot-- seemed nicer than pointing to my little
> sandbox. I could have gone full ho and pointed to the book site, but B&A
is
> such a cool little effort from folks who donate their free time with very
> little recognition just because they think it's important for design to
grow
> and prosper...
>
> Re: navigation-- Eleganthack is my personal site when I play and goof
around
> and so on. No usability testing, no standard design just me talking to
> myself as is my pleasure. If others enjoy that, so be it.
> http://www.eleganthack.com/archives/000794.html
> If not, not. You can say what you want about it (many have) but honestly
it
> is my spot to be as stupid as I need to be.
>
> As for B&A, I think our articles have grown to the point it's going to be
> time for a rearchitecture soon. But I imagine it's not so very hard to
find
> out what's new, find the comments on those articles. Only topical
archiving
> is still weak, and that is mostly due to our tool-- remember that B&A is
not
> funded. We hacked a preexisting blog tool into working which is not
ideal--
> far from it. Every person has only a couple free hours a week to work on
the
> site-- we have to choose between editing new content and hand organizing
it.
> If we hand organized it, we wouldn't have content to organize. ;-) We've
> also had a number of volunteers who might have helped, flake. It's been
> painful-- but the core team just keeps on publishing.
>
> I think the real secret here is that many many people bitch and snipe from
> the sidelines, but very few sit down to the arduous task of building
> something new. As you do, suddenly you find that there are compromises if
> you really want to have your work see the light of day. Pure valid
html/css
> sounds great, but suddenly as you go through the browser list, you may
find
> you have to choose. A great faceted classification may sound wonderful,
but
> you discover it would take 100+ hours you don't have and suddenly you are
> back to old standbys like alphanumeric and chronological.
>
> In fact, most people don't even take the time to write a good complaint--
> what if the previous complaint was not "the most unnavigatable site" for
> which I can do nothing to fix, in public where it is merely posturing  to
> instead writing me with a list of problems finding certain items, and even
> advice on how it could be fixed?
>
> "Your site is unnavigaable" is not helpful.
> "I can't look up topics on articles I found before, such as personas" is
> getting more helpful-- I now have something to try to figure out.
> "I can't look up topics on articles I found before, such as personas. Did
> you know atomz has a useful free search engine" or "I notice you haven't
> implemented movable type's search feature-- I've be happy to offer a
weekend
> to get it running" are both helpful.
>
> If you genuinely like things to get better, it's good to try to couch
things
> in a way that is constructive and more importantly, actionable. If you
just
> like to complain, go for it.But don't be surprised when nothing changes.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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