Loading Profile...
Recent activity
Subscribe to this feed
Vaguery shared an idea in Workantile Exchange on August 28, 2009 17:15:
Umbrella standsWhether they're branded marketing umbrellas or people's actual personal tried-and-true variety, we should set up a drained place for them to be set down. On top of the lower conference room is cute but not satisfactory.-
Vaguery shared an idea in Workantile Exchange on August 24, 2009 18:39:
Center for Entrepreneurship contest?We should create a bunch of competitions for young "entrepreneurial" independent students. http://cfe.engin.umich.edu/competitions -
Vaguery started following the question "Who wrote these stories? Why can't you tell right up front?" in AnnArbor.com.
-
Vaguery asked a question in AnnArbor.com on August 14, 2009 00:34:
Why is there now a surcharge for delivery?Why does my subscription cost $9/month, when the newsstand price appears to be $8/month?
The News (a different company and newspaper, admittedly) was discounted for paid subscription. -
Vaguery replied on August 12, 2009 18:09 to the idea "Microwave for kitchenette? Kettle?" in Workantile Exchange:
That's a great idea, and I'm pretty sure it's on the list of things that will be improved when we reach certain membership levels. The electric kettle is a better chance than the microwave, I suspect, since tea doesn't smell as bad as some folks' lunches. Have you talked with Trek about it? He's also talked about a kettle. -
Vaguery replied on August 11, 2009 12:04 to the problem "Phone room acoustics: Trapped in the bottom of a well" in Workantile Exchange:
Mike has talked about building anechoic chamber rooms in recording studios; not exactly low-cost solutions. But we should look into decorating in there; even a few textile artworks on the wall might help the acoustics a bit. -
Vaguery replied on August 06, 2009 00:47 to the question "Tagging" in AnnArbor.com:
Jim: see, you're not a week old. You (and your managers) can't in good faith simultaneously claim to be 175 years old and at the same time absolutely ignorant of the social norms and technical details of this way-cool novel online internet environment you've launched into.
What we're trying to communicate to you is how to comport yourselves like adults who have been paying attention.
So, please: "tagging" is something that your readers should be allowed to do. If you want the authors or "editors" or whatever to manage it without allowing the community to do it properly, then the words should be called either "keywords" or "categories".
That's actually a matter of common usage. -
Vaguery gave praise in AnnArbor.com on August 05, 2009 23:43:
I think everybody who works at your company is doing their best. And honestly, I want it to be enough.We don't want the individuals working there to fail. It's just that we're concerned that the company, collectively, is less than the sum of its parts.
I, personally, think you're doing your best. But the new company AnnArbor.com started under the unseemly circumstances of firing all employees of the actual newspaper, eliminating the associated costs of pensions and seniority, while retaining all paying contracts with advertisers and subscribers.
Ed and whoever else is actually listening here: you're doing a great job. Whoever is actually reading this feed at AnnArbor.com, you're doing the right thing. But your editorial policy is a shambles, your employers' infrastructure is in disarray, you have apparently got no technical support, and policy is scarce on the ground.
My major concern, and the reason I keep "bothering" all of you here and elsewhere, is that AnnArbor.com has tried to position itself as a "startup" blog, without understanding it's entering an essentially mature space. Bloggers exist, they are professional and experienced authors who understand to the social norms of online communication, and the good ones? they're all getting jobs at nationally known newspapers. This is not some sort of experiment; it threatens to become an also-ran shadow of a culture your managers have ignored for far too long.
You need a clue. Claiming to "invent it" yourselves is foolish and sad.
So I need to ask you (not Ed, but the rest of you) to think and learn, please, about how life works online, and has worked for more than a decade, and about why we are trying to help you.
It's about your path to survival as a going concern. Because, honestly, I think most of us want you to survive.
Doing so will take some substantial changes, though.
Like listening. -
Vaguery started following the problem "There should be a space between paragraphs in the comments" in AnnArbor.com.
-
Vaguery started following the idea "List of HTML tags acceptable in comments." in AnnArbor.com.
-
Vaguery started following the problem "External image rendered in comments." in AnnArbor.com.
-
Vaguery replied on August 05, 2009 21:47 to the question "Tagging" in AnnArbor.com:
What "us guys" think is that we should be tagging your articles. That's how social media work. -
Vaguery reported a problem in AnnArbor.com on August 05, 2009 21:44:
Stop saying you've removed comments"A comment was removed because it misrepresented another person's comment." is annoying. Really. Either pay an actual editor a fair editor's wage to monitor comments before they're posted, or leave every comment as it stands and let the community become a community... or disable comments. This is ham-handed and amateurish.
The only appropriate meta-comment we should see is "A comment was moved to another more appropriate thread because it was off-topic." Tell us you're removing them and you're seeming foolish. -
Vaguery replied on July 31, 2009 00:52 to the idea "Don't open comments on articles from external sites" in AnnArbor.com:
Oh my. That is a baaaaaad idea, folks. -
Vaguery replied on July 30, 2009 17:04 to the problem "You should NEVER have a "down for maintenance" page showing" in AnnArbor.com:
Ruth, I think what you're going to see is the inherent slowness of the "news process" in these things. -
Vaguery replied on July 30, 2009 17:03 to the idea "Don't open comments on articles from external sites" in AnnArbor.com:
Not sure where my notes are on this, but in fact it's actionable, and the defendant lost. Something like "dilution of reputation due to misrepresentation of authorship" -
Vaguery started following the idea "Don't open comments on articles from external sites" in AnnArbor.com.
-
Vaguery replied on July 30, 2009 14:43 to the problem "You should NEVER have a "down for maintenance" page showing" in AnnArbor.com:
"100% uptime guaranteed" we are told.... -
Vaguery reported a problem in AnnArbor.com on July 30, 2009 12:07:
You should NEVER have a "down for maintenance" page showingAs I look now, the entire site is "down for maintenance". Of course this will happen from time to time; any amateur web administrator knows it. But any commercial venture with a clue would have an admin on staff who would point out the need for a static backup or failover mirror.
Scrimping on administrative staff expertise is, as I've said elsewhere, like an old-fashioned actual newspaper scrimping on printing expertise. Foolish. -
Vaguery replied on July 30, 2009 12:00 to the idea "Make type size smaller" in AnnArbor.com:
I was going to guess that you folks were reading on a PC. So perhaps the proper complaint is "Learn to use CSS correctly"
| next » « previous |
