Comments on: Why One Keeps Archives

By: ytimynona

ytimynona — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:30:19 +0000

Since I noticed this afternoon that the picture on this post is also the profile pic for @scalzi, I’ve been wondering from whence it came. Anyone know?

By: bonkers

bonkers — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:21:28 +0000

A little bird told me about this place today. Then I ate it. Yummy.

But hell yeah! Fairfield representin! I was born there a few years after you. You? me? Pat Morita? Quite the line-up. Must be sumthin in the water.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:57:55 +0000

The site didn’t have comments before March 2003, and there have been a couple times when the software updates didn’t carry over the comments, so there definitely holes there, comment-wise.

By: Robin

Robin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:55:42 +0000

I love reading blog archives… but in most cases it’s far more interesting with comments than without. I’ve been slowly working my way through some of the Whatever archives, starting from links to old posts and going forward, and got frustrated when I started getting redirected to the versions of the posts in the current format (sorry, I’m not up on blogology and don’t really notice what a blog runs on, just whether it looks different) which had the posts but not the comments. I’d read some post and think heh, that must’ve generated a lot of energetic and conversational commentary, and it was hugely disappointing that I couldn’t actually read said commentary that I *knew* had to be around somewhere. Then I managed to pick up the original links again, with comments, and was happy until I hit, what was it, June 2007? I haven’t checked yet to see if I’ve gotten to the posts which are in the current format but with comments visible.

If all that archive-reading plus comment-reading sounds weird, it shouldn’t; it’s just acquiring context. I started reading regularly because of the political threads having so many viewpoints represented more or less civilly, and originally was directed here via a post elsewhere about a specific comment thread here, so it’s always been a major part of the blog for me.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:38:26 +0000

If i were going to run ads, I would simply have them run on all the pages. Simple and generates the most CPM.

By: JS

JS — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:37:05 +0000

To me that suggests a potentially interesting approach to monetizing (as they say) a blog. No ads on the first-run material, thus keeping the experience ‘pure’ for the daily readers, but someone coming in for the feline bacon sees a tastefully understated banner. Presuming of course that the traffic to the archives is reliably large enough to interest advertisers.

Note that I know nothing about blogging or selling web advertising, so this may have been a shockingly ignorant post, but why should I have to clear a higher bar than so many other semi-anonymous internet commenters?

By: MarkHB

MarkHB — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:49:04 +0000

Out of interest, Mr. S, who do you think make shit up less these days? SF authors, or journalists?

;)

By: Catherine Shaffer

Catherine Shaffer — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:27:43 +0000

Duly noted. It gives me pause…

By: John H

John H — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:20:41 +0000

Pam @24: I still can’t believe we coerced Herr Scalzi to visit that crazy monument to IDiocy…

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:12:36 +0000

I’ll get around it eventually.