Comments for We Only Do Awesome

Comment on Before everyone starts making comic books… by maa

maa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:50:40 +0000

Half-joking, but the comic medium lends itself well to internet-scale satire…

http://revetkn.com/uploads/chrome-goatee.png

Comment on Before everyone starts making comic books… by ewatkeys

ewatkeys — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:36:32 +0000

Oh my God Toby, I think you are so wrong on the quality issue. The web will soon be rotten with pale imitations.

As for your other objections, I don’t disagree. I am not a doubter of comics. I just want to present some of the negatives. Whenever something new comes along, many people – myself included – are very quick to fall in love. I’m simply trying to slow people down long enough to get them to ask if the medium is actually suited to solving the problems they are faced with.

Comment on People go where people go by ewatkeys

ewatkeys — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:32:46 +0000

If you’re going to abandon your site’s content to your users – and that’s what customer-generated content is all about – then your job is to balance a spinning plate on a broomstick. Not easy. Slashdot seems to have managed to stay relevant and focused even if it has become so 1998 or whatever. And how have they done it? Feedback systems upon feedback systems upon feedback systems. Very organic. Sites need to decide what they want to be at some point: popular or disciplined.

Comment on People go where people go by Mike

Mike — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:33:41 +0000

That’s an interesting point - about not stopping change. But, I don’t totally buy it. Maybe. I’m optimistic that there is a way to make it work on one site - a way to keep a place interesting despite all the new people coming in. Digg and reddit just seem way too democratic to me. The masses came in, with their equal vote, and ruined everything. I don’t think everyone should have an equal vote. Maybe some type of a user-weighted-karma system could work.
Maybe eventually you need to move to stay on the crest of the wave, but I think there is a way to improve these sites so that you don’t need to move so fast.

Comment on Before everyone starts making comic books… by Toby DiPasquale

Toby DiPasquale — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:15:23 +0000

Love the blog, Ed, but I’m forced to disagree on this point. I believe the strength of a document in comic format is actually the sum of the “drawbacks” mentioned above. Sure, it won’t work for everyone, but as a medium, I think comics are underused at present. Plus, the economic constraints you mention will actually serve to ensure that only the best examples of that medium will come to the fore and only if people enjoy them will that market increase.

Comment on People go where people go by ewatkeys

ewatkeys — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:07:58 +0000

I think it’s very definitely related to too many people joining the community too quickly. The same thing happened with Digg: I used the site for about two weeks before I heard about Reddit, and I decamped for Reddit almost immediately, because I liked the mix of people there better. And when I left Reddit, I went to Paul Graham’s Startup News, but then that too got too noisy, and I decided to stop reading nearly everything except 1) Slate.com, 2) articles linked to by Arts and Letters Daily, and 3) articles directly related to specific questions or interest I had – using Google as a starting point, of course – and 4) things that people specifically recommended I read.

What is the solution to this problem? I don’t know. Maybe some version of a Gmail-style invitation/waiting list. Or perhaps a mandatory waiting period for people before they can submit stories. Or a moderation system whereby new users’ submissions and/or comments are reviewed by long-standing users.

There’s a larger issue: you don’t want to hold back change. Change is going to happen. Reddit went from being a nerd paradise to a haven for the sorts of people I described in my post. I don’t like it, but I can move on. It’s like Philly: people – myself sometimes included – complain that Old City or Northern Liberties are changing and they don’t have the same bohemian mix they used to. But that’s also a good thing, because that means people are being driven out in their quest for new bohemian spaces, which they proceed to make by moving into areas like West Philly or Fishtown or Kensington. The city is dynamic, and people looking for edginess are a force behind that dynamism.

If you want to stay on the crest of a wave, you need to move, because the wave is moving.

Comment on People go where people go by Mike

Mike — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:18:52 +0000

Yeah I stopped reading reddit a while ago too for the same reasons. You think the reason for the loss of quality in reddit is because it admitted and emitted too many people? If so, what do you think is a solution? Moderators?

Comment on Names Matter by Seth Roberts

Seth Roberts — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:22:04 +0000

“If you’re walking around thinking about how special something is, you’re probably going to want to manage and control and strategize the life out of it. And you’re not going to want to bake it into things and make it invisible.”

I agree. Because the more special that thing is the more special you — the controller of tha thing — is. And the more special you are the less special (in relative terms) your clients are. And the less attention you should pay to what they want and the more attention you should pay to what you want.