The Editor

‘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!