Comments on: Passages

By: ben wolfson

ben wolfson — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 21:23:20 +0000

Metafilter has a pretty good system for avoiding duplicates: if you post something that’s already been posted, it’s practically inevitable that someone will point that out (often within, say, ten minutes).

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 09:45:59 +0000

Actually, I don’t think it’s a problem, or a criticism. I just think it’s the nature of the beast. Lots of the web is like that. Almost all blogs I know are like that: they don’t have a structure that encourages memory among their readers. A Boing Boing editor isn’t being forgetful in any ordinary way when he links to something already linked: think of how much content they plow through. I don’t know that anyone could remember it all.

By: P Nielsen Hayden

P Nielsen Hayden — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 01:52:03 +0000

“You can tell just how amnesiac Boing Boing is by the fact that the contributors sometimes link to something that one of them linked to a year or more ago.”

You know, I would have said this shows that BB’s four editors are sometimes “absent-minded” or even “forgetful.” But “amnesiac” sounds much more serious.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 12:40:05 +0000

AG: don’t know about Gaurav’s situation right now–I’ve got an email out to a friend asking about a number of folks.

Nancy:

I think a tags system or some kind of metadata system is one part of archiving a depository of this kind successfully. The second thing that’s important is the top-level page: something that gives a person who is just browsing around a sense of what’s in the depository as a whole so they know what they’re likely to find and not find there. The third thing is the easiest: a flexible search tool.

Also some kind of administrative oversight that stays on top of platform migration when and if that becomes necessary: a depository that isn’t maintained tends to become a dumping ground full of weeds.

By: Soft Skull

Soft Skull — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 23:11:16 +0000

Yeah, sorry about that delays with TRANSITION. The magazine’s funding has been cut, so the editorial staff is far far smaller than before. So they’re having a tough time keeping up. Soon as editorial has us the material, we’ll get it out ASAP, and eventually get back on schedule…

By: A. G.

A. G. — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:27:08 +0000

Tim,

I googled Gaurav Desai, and noted he is at Tulane. Is he okay? I have written the editors and asked more about a submission. This is very interesting to me. As an Africa outsider, I see Africa as a seriously understudied area, and hope to learn more about this vast and complex topic.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 18:23:39 +0000

I’m not an academic. What would an achival system look like?

Would a tags system like the one at LiveJournal be a good start? LJ just applies the tags across each journal, I think–I’m imagining tags for a whole archive. Even if there’s no overarching structure, it would help.