The Editor

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!

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!

Welcome to the future blog of the DIYsearch editor.