The Editor

Well, after long hiatus, Dave and I decided to dust off the DIY, maybe revamp it some more, add some shelves and a nifty coat of paint. Not that this means much to anyone yet… (pause for the sound of crickets chirping, as we watch a tumbleweed roll past)

But it certainly will keep our hands full.

That said, we’re gonna knock down some wings.YOU MAY NOT USE OUR SITE TO SELL YOUR GOODS OR SERVICES, even if you have previously been permitted to post your stuff. That’s final.You can have a how-to, which you may post. UNLESS you have a how-to, I will not approve any links to you. If you want to use us to advertise, you pay us, and we put you up as an ad. That’s a pretty standard arrangement.

The things that this does NOT include are:

Record companies we like.
There, i said it.

Welcome back, my friends, welcome back! Step right up!

Well, not a lot of news. We’ll probably be eliminating the musicians for hire section, and we’ll be changing categories around a little. But the place will otherwise stay the same.

I’d like to thank all of our contributors. I’ll probably be adding some origami links, since that’s what I’ve been up to lately, and there’s a few more good hiragana links I’d like to add.

-Sol

Well, we’ve by and large not bothered with myspace. It just hasn’t been a priority for us. But I guess it’s time to consider allowing myspace pages; the question is, under what heading? Do we let people self-categorise, or treat them as blogs? Do we create a myspace category? Do we try to examine each one and determine who is a business and who isn’t?

Comments welcomed.

Yeah… i’ve been adding links. I’ve been declining some, too, mostly from those pesky make-a-million-by-spamming-your-friends sites. Those drive me crazy; i’m not going to subject you to them here.

Start adding links! I’ve decided to add some home brewing links, because i have friends who make beer. Not dave; he’s straightedge. But not everyone is, and the homebrew ethic is… well, as homebrew as it gets, really. So yes, i’ll add those links.

For the other kinds of homebrew, i’ve been adding zine-making links.

Carry on!

‘Web resources’ is going to get modified, and most things in it will be recategorised.

It will gain the new label, “programming resources.”

We are getting to add a LOT of categories, including a woodworking category and a building&construction category.

In the meantime. here are a few things that will get your link rejected or deleted.

Excessive popups. We are focused on sites that offer, not sites that take. If your site does not have genuinely useful DIY info, doesn’t offer services that are useful to the DIY community, and/or doesn’t serve a purpose that empowers people to create something, we’re not going to surf past three pages of popups to get to it. We try not to editorialise or censor, but we do really try to offer sites that care about the user experience. This is our reason for being; we’re here to let you learn stuff and support each other, not to steer people to your ads or sell your stuff.
The real exception for content is hate speech and porn. We can deal with anarchy (we even created a section for anarchy blogs; while we may not be anarchists, we will respect your right to representation online. We do, however, get a real chuckle out of the ‘down with capitalism’ ethic blogs that are covered in capitalist ad banners) but we will not support links that are explicit in nature. (I don’t mean mild swearing. Gods, i’d be out of a fucking job.) All it takes is one banner ad with explicit graphics, so watch who you take money from on that. Know who’s sharing your web space. It’s important. Other than that, we don’t care what banner ads you run.
Sales sites. We don’t care about teaching people how to make a million dollars online. If you want to learn how, just google it; there are plenty of people trying to make their million by teaching you to post ads.

we also won’t help you sell your self-help videos, push your newsletter lists, or anything like that. (side note: I’m tempted to make a ‘newsletter’ category, to be honest. There are some interesting ones out there. I’ll have to police it pretty closely if we do. if having such a category seems useful to you, email me. If i don’t hear a convincing chorus asking for it, newsletter-only sites will continue to get weeded out.)

WE REALLY BELIEVE IN PROVIDING WORTHWHILE CONTENT.

WE REALLY BELIEVE IN THE DIY ETHIC AND COMMUNITY.

WE REALLY BELIEVE THAT PICKING UP A HAMMER, OR A GUITAR, OR A GLUE STICK, CAN HELP BUILD A BETTER WORLD.

To do this, we want to give you things that help, and let you have a great big wall to put your work on.

Keep doing it.

Well, i took a good long look at the dead links queue, goggled in astonishment, and considered hanging myself in the hall.

I eventually settled down, thought about it, and came up with a better solution. Since i was going to have to do a major categorisation cleanup ANYWAY, i might as well have it all out in one go. That’s right: I am going through the entire site, link by link, and moving everything. Deleting dead links or links which haven’t been updated in years. Adding whole categories, like one for wedding singers and so on. Moving all the record labels back to the label page, so that people looking for what’s new can go there and visit their favourites, or cruise for new music. (We love indie labels!)

There’s going to be a new ‘for sale’ section in most areas, so those of you selling your own prints, things like that, will have a place to go. We will make an exception to our ‘no mere retail,’ for a few months. After that, you should put up a how-to or get a sponsored link, because we are about doing it yourself… not doing it for you. I know that sounds terrible, but the object has always been to be a resource site and not an advertising bazaar.

So for the moment, we’re going to segregate those who are only taking- getting a free listing without offering any information or resource to our readers- into a purely merch & for hire category. Bands, you’re different, you provide entertainment we go to see, we want those. Just update your site on where you’re playing.

It’s a big project, this poring over ever single link. On the bright side, i am becoming intimately familiar with the punk side of the web. We’re also learning a lot about what content we want, so there are a whole bunch of shiny brand new links being created every day, too. We’re aiming to approve at least ten per day- that’s seventy per week.

If there’s a category that you’d like to see, such as cooking, let me know. There needs to be a food and cooking section, i’ve just decided. (I found a ‘vegan’ diet site posted under the ‘weird’ category. It may not be common, but it ain’t weird any more.) Plus, there’s a lot of stuff out there that i use on a regular basis and i have a compulsive need to keep things organised as i add them.

So… let me know what you want to see.

I see dead links.

They don’t know they’re dead.

Those don’t worry me so much. The ones that worry me are the live links, that don’t know what they are. Is it a blog? Is it an e-zine?

The rules are not hard and fast, but there are some pretty big differences. A mailing list is not a zine, it’s a mailing list. A yahoo! group isn’t a zine. It’s a group. A zine is a periodical, something that’s available in final format after you get done with it. It’s a magazine, available online. I’m always blown away by the creativity and unique nature of the genuine zines out there. I despair quietly as i travel through the list of dead links, the ones who don’t know that they’re dead, and find living links that don’t know what they are either.

With that in mind, we already have a section for blogs, and i can’t encourage people to use it enough. We are changing the format of my side to make it easier for me to reclassify items- as well as instituting a ‘random check’ system that will automatically queue up a certain number of links for me to check the classification of. It will also come up as a category (not yet, but soon, that’s Dave’s department) when you report a link, allowing you to flag a link for reclassification. You’ll have to tell me the discrepancy and why you see it there, but it will let you flag it as something other than a dead link. I’m asking you to please hold off on reporting misclassified links for a few days so that i can catch up and we can get the proper reporting system in place.

But… man, you folks are creative. Keep adding your links!

Well, here we are, still plugging away. I’d like to thank the sumbitch who went through and posted so many perfectly good links as dead ones in the music section, because even though you wasted a lot of my time (you jerk) you also showed us how freaks like you are going to try to game the system.

*sigh*

So here’s the deal: we’re working on changing the reporting system. Right, you knew that. Well, we’re also going to be changing that ‘top ten’ and ‘editor’s picks’ corner, and in the meantime i’m still wading through pages of deadlink reports.

Even if we could automate it, we wouldn’t, because i like it when you touch me.

I’ve been working (in what little other time i have) on some writing exercises; the goal is to write seven stories in twenty-one days, and it’s a grueling task that’s doing good things for my writing skills but terrible things to my sanity. Frankly, i’m finding the bug reports relaxing, and that’s a VERY dangerous sign.

David’s been working on a whole lot of stuff lately, too, so be patient as we get things up and running. Thank you for the mention on the blogs, folks- we appreciate all the attention, and we even caught the mention over on photocopied heart. We’ll try like hell to deserve the applause as we get the momentum going again. We have the technology- we can rebuild!!!

What it is, what it does.

We’re attempting to codify (further) the terms of service- what kind of links i’m to delete.

Yes, any legitimately broken links would fall under this heading. Keep reporting.

However, we have a pretty strict view of the DIY ethic here, and don’t want to become an advertising clearinghouse. Does this mean we don’t want you coming on to tell us about your new album on your underground label? Absolutely not! We love that! If we were to find out that your album label were an Atlantic offshoot hoping to hit the underground demographic with a gritty little website just for sales, though… that results in a nice letter from us offering to sell you advert space (and we delete your link.)

If you ever, ever, feel that it was deleted unfairly, contact us. We do evaluate these things on a case by case basis, and sometimes we are wrong. (We will discuss it with you. You must be the owner or the webmaster of the website.)

We like record labels. We like zines and underground publications. It’s hard to know where to draw the line, and for us, it’s always going to be fuzzy, but for the most part, it ought to be a homebrew. That means self-published stuff is great; if you’ve already been signed to Random House, you probably should be relying on them for their marketing. We’ll delete it. No ad brochures, no commercial press.

If you’re a band label that started as a DIY and is now making a profit, yes, that still counts as DIY, but after a certain threshhold you should contact us to talk about sponsored link options; you’re who we had in mind.

Things that are NOT allowed. This is a much easier, brighter line.

Violence, self-harm (we don’t mean song lyrics) and hate are going to get your links deleted. Every time. We mean it when we say we have a zero tolerance policy for harassment, hate speech, racism, sexism, the whole bleak spectrum of pain that people can inflict on each other. We don’t require that you be cheerful, happy people all of the time- but we are going to ruthlessly delete anything that actively hurts people, and we’d appreciate it if you’d report anything that falls into this category. We’ll be instituting changes in the reporting protocol to encompass a greater breadth of detail when telling us about a link. (Watch for this in the near future!)

No business opportunities, franchises, pyramid schemes, or catalogue stuff. There is a world of difference between Harley-Davidson bikes and a guy making chopper frames in his garage; that difference comes down to whether it’s considered a retail or wholesale item, most of the time. If you make one-of-a-kind gizmos that people need to make their gear, you’re who we’re here for. If you sell hammers that you got at the Hammer Store Down The Block, we will delete you (and possibly send you a ‘keep off our lawn,’ letter.) If you happened to find that the Hammer Store Down The Block has a huge DIY instruction site and ALSO sells hammers, yes, submit the link. We’ll evaluate it, and it may be something that proves very useful to us all.

Business advice is generally going to run up against the same screening process. Telling someone how to manage petty cash in a startup label is very different from offshoring advice; we’ll do our best to weed out everything that isn’t unique, relevant, and useful.

All this aside, i’ve spent a lot of time reviewing links today. I’m consistently blown away by just how unique, relevant, and useful some of your stuff really is out there. Keep it up, and we’ll keep connecting you.

Welcome to the future blog of the DIYsearch editor.