Hi, and welcome to Fulltime Casual, the internets finest example of Web 1.5.
Why Web 1.5? Well, for one I’m not a coder. I don’t know the first thing about Web Design. Its fucking amazing I even got this site up. So don’t expect any ajax goodness or slick interfaces around here.
And although this site is intended to run on user submitted stories and ideas, the news page is still centrally edited at the Fulltime Casual offices. We made this decision after carefully reviewing some of our favourite sites around the net and stealing ideas from all of them. Probably the most obviously example of the “user generated Web 2.0″ model is Digg, which we all love, but quite often proves the old saying, “Democracy simply doesn’t work”.
The Needle In A Haystack Effect.
I love the idea of digg, and its RSS feed sits in my browser, but almost all of the content i see via rss i don’t bother clicking on. I mean how many times can you read about how cool the Wii is and how bad the PS3 is before you get bored. but once or twice a day i spot something brilliant.
For the same reason I love Diggnation far more than digg. Because Kevin and Alex use editorial control to avoid the crap that usually appears on their site, to highlight the interesting stories instead.
A mate of mine hates digg, but loves the editorially controlled Boing Boing, yet we both see most of the same stuff because anything on boing boing is usually dugg, and its usually something i’m interested in. Still, i get to show him all the stuff that boing boing didnt cover when i meet up with him.
But thats what digg is. it would be like saying all television is shit because of all the reality tv shows, bad dramas, awful sitcoms etc. But that would be ignoring the Sopranos, Six Feet Under’s and Dexters.
I think its a problem of web 2.0 in general. All the supposed Web 2.0 sites rely on user generated material and user generated rankings, but honestly, when was the last time you went to youtube and saw something worth watching? Ok, compare that number to the amount of times someone you know pointed you in the direction of a cool youtube clip. Sometimes, its better to be guided by editors.
There is a lot to be said for editorial control. How many forums have you seen that are filled with twelve year olds telling you to “fuck of n00b”, i could name a few. But I’d rather celebrate the one public forum I’ve been a member of for 2 years now, Mactalk. The key group at Mactalk have shaped the forum into a welcoming place. The moderators, although never directly editing anyone, have made the forum great by making clear what is and is not acceptable. If our forums can be as half as good as theirs, i’ll be a very happy boy.
Cheers,
Pete.
