Re: [Harp-L] The SPAH website

[Joseph Leone <3n037@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brainiac prima classa. 

On Dec 18, 2011, at 8:31 AM, Elizabeth Hess wrote:

> I read a book a couple of centuries ago about designing successful web sites.  I didn't go on to become a web designer, but one of the points that stuck with me is that the content has to change regularly to keep people coming back.  So, I'd like to suggest that the SPAH web site look for a way to incorporate Danny Wilson's International Gig List, which he sends here every week.  Ideally it would have three formats on the SPAH web site:  One, sorted by artist, as it is now:  "Where's Toots?"  Two, in a calendar format:  "What's coming up?"  And three, sorted by location:  "I'm going to Belgium.  Anything happening there?"  An important adjunct to this would be for out-of-date information to disappear in a timely fashion.
> 
> I visited the SPAH web site this morning, partly to see if it already includes the gig list.  (It doesn't, or else has it in an obscure place.)
> 
> There is a forum there that is not the same as this list.  Interesting.  It seemed to have many fewer entries than this list has posts.  Interesting.  Forum format vs. mailing list format is a tough choice.  With a mailing list, one subscribes once, and then passively waits for the content to arrive.  With a forum, readers have to come to you, which MIGHT be a good thing if it brings more people to the web site, but MIGHT be a bad thing, because it requires less passivity (i.e. more effort!) on the part of the folks you want to serve.  I don't know the answer to this, but it seems that having both would cause them to compete with one another.  Unless there can be some sort of hybrid: Maybe *show*  the last <n> days of mailing list posts (with email addresses obscured from public broadcast as they are in the harp-l archive, thank you VERY much) with a quick/easy link on the web site to sign up for the mailing list.
> 
> Static content on a web site has its place, especially if it is reference material:  Stuff that different people will be ready to read at different times.  I wrote a tutorial some while back on getting started with Band In A Box, and posted it here (with harp-l-list-owner's blessing) in three installments.  I would be willing to polish it up and submit it for inclusion if you like.  Anything of an instructional nature might have a place, there, and content that deserves to be cumulative and more-or-less immortal might be more appealing to some people to write than "transient" content that is published and then relegated to archives that relies on people knowing what search terms to use.
> 
> You're right, I'm not ready to volunteer to input 50 years of SPAH data into an archive.  But I would be willing to input SOME SPAH data into an archive, and if I could volunteer to do it in manageable-sized chunks, I might volunteer for more than one chunk.  Especially if I thought I wasn't the only one doing it.  Shared work strengthens ties; this might be a worthy project for the SPAH community to take on.  I MIGHT be up to the task of coordinating such a project if I thought there were others willing to pitch in and assist (in manageable chunks, of course).
> 
> Thank you, Manfred, for taking this on.
> 
> Elizabeth
> 
The only thing I would suggest is that all submissions go through a (competent) panel to decide content. So much of the stuff on the web is just plain slag. Maybe 95.594808%. And some is downright vomituous. In other words, if there were a submission about tuning, I would think that someone like a Mike Will or a Pat Missin would be acceptable whereas something from Joe Schmutalatz would not . Mainly due to it being from a non established credential source.
I mean, when I check the net and see comments alongside items titled: "Best harmonica player in the world" and then someone has a veritable bowel movement through the harmonica or explains something in a ridiculous manner, it makes me want to run for the porcelain bus. 

sirjoe Leone (fighting immigration since 1492)