Thursday, November 29, 2007

"A Pirate's Life For Me": Narrative Theory and Online Fan Community

[Note 12/20/07: The final version of this paper will not be published here for various reasons--mainly because it sucked and I don't feel I'm saying anything we don't already know, either as fans or as scholars, that isn't expressed by the outline here. If you'd like to read the full version, email me for an electronic copy.]

Intro--the day fandom exploded. The event known as "Strikethrough07" can show us how narrative theories might be adapted to examine communal, asynchronous narratives online.



  1. Narrative theory as appropriate for studying fan culture and fan text production. Bormann's Symbolic Convergence as a place to start. Fisher (and his respondants), particularly talking about the communal nature of all narrative. Ricoeur on temporality and (re)iteration. In literature: Peter Brooks (Formalism/Structuralism)--justify use of literature by pointing to a lack of other ways to analyze written communication that is neither literature nor tech writing.


  2. Fandom--definitions (including overview of LiveJournal as platform), narrative nature of, and counter-hegemonic practices of. Citing Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills, and Camille Bacon-Smith's ethnographic studies of fandom.

  3. : Strikethrough07 as told "objectively" by news organizations and technology news blogs.

  4. The narratives of Strikethrough 07. Examples throughout.

    1. Creating leaders, heroes and villans--this was the first task: "Whose fault is this?" was the first thing most fans asked and began researching.

    2. Time passage/speed of mythos construction. A single narrative emerged as the dominant version more quickly due to hyperlinking and copy/paste abilities.

    3. Genre of narratives of Strikethrough is quite clearly that of a detective story. Peter Brooks says this is the most engaging and most basic plot of all--an unveilling, a revelation. Fans constructed their narratives around this most familiar emplottment--because fanfiction is often written like this? Because it is the easiest to write? Because it poses the writer as Revealer?

    4. Pirates as metaphor. Fans see fandom as a whole by unifying under the pirate metaphor. They also see themselves as counter cultural (and thus heroic). They also identify with one of the major fandoms at that time: Pirates of the Carribbean, drawing on the newly released movie for inspiration, working issues of capitalism, economic dominance and hegemony into their fanfictions (which are usually just about romance).

    5. Errors and Rumors. As fans retell stories of their Strikethrough experience and attempt to hash out exactly what happened, accusations are made, unfounded rumors told, mistakes get made. The concessions to these errors are minimal, with most fans saying that the details actually *don't* matter--just the sentiment behind the actions. Which is strange, given the point above.

  5. Contributions to narrative theory
    1. Concession: The particularities of fandom must be considered: Already a strong community, already based in narrative.

    2. Burke's symbolic action actually worked: By symbolically "flaming" the organization causing grievances (LiveJournal) fans managed to change policy in their favor.

    3. Strikethrough as example of conflict resolution through narrative actually creating a communal identity from disparate sects (Harry Potter fans met with Sailor Moon fans, Smallville fans met with Pirates of the Carribean fans).

    4. Strikethrough as catharsis.

    5. Introduction of desire to catalogue and historicize events through posting narratives online.

    6. Fans are used to open-ended narratives, to filling in the gaps, so it's no surprise many of the narratives simply stop around the first week of September. References still abound, but the fanaticism has faded. What can this tell us about other community narratives and their longevity?

    7. The genre choice is interesting, as fans are continuously engaged in "revealing" the subtext of their favorite texts. This could be one of the differences between spoken narratives traded among face-to-face community members informally, and the more formal task of writing a narrative that others will voluntarily *find* then *read*--there must be some suspense built, the craftedness of the story is more important without other social cues.

    8. Visual narrative-- narratives online are permanent (unless LiveJournal deletes them). Not only are these permanent, but online interaction involves a visual component that may have been traditionally filled with gestural language. Unlike f2f communication, however, narratives online are hierarchically arranged by time: threads of a conversation appear as replies *below* the original comment, and subsequent comments on the same "level" of reply are indented the same amount.

Conclusion: Proposals for further study
Strikethrough was just one example, focusing on fandom. But online communities exist outside of fandom, and create narratives as a way of creating identity (Cite Howard Rheingold and Nancy Baym). Anecdotes are the main genre of online communication, but how many of these are narratives that actually help build community? Is there any way to predict which narratives will hold in a community, and which will be just another post?
Structuralism can tell us a lot about the types that survive: Those with strong senses of heroes and villans, those that feature a quest for information (which makes sense, given the medium of the Internet is traditionally used for information-seeking). Further studies might look at how often comments on narratives are themselves narratives, how many times a given narrative is linked to by multiple users.
Continued work on three-d avatars has revealed software engineer's attempts to duplicate f2f communication--how are narratives currently created in 3-d avatar environments, and to what extent do these look like "real" narratives, and to what extent do they seem more like bulletin board posts?

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

COM632: White Paper

Creating and Maintaining Online Communities Through Rhetorical Thinking

AmyLea Clemons

Submitted on 27 November 2007 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University,
Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog

Creating successful and vibrant online communities has been the subject of much debate: How much control should the founder have? Who should moderate and mediate for the community, if anyone? What design plans best encourage development of and participation in communities? How do we ensure the community will operate as planned? Although the ideal answer to any of these questions is “It depends,” this paper examines the best practices any community founder should follow and the processes he or she should consider at each step of community creation. The essay concludes with a discussion of Lloyd Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” as a quick and easy schema that online developers can use to simply the process.




Although the dotcom burst has leveled the enthusiasm for the internet somewhat, online communities—that is, a group of users who post to and create a central web space—still present as viable and vibrant spaces for growth. Creating successful and vibrant online communities, however, has been the subject of much debate: How much control should the founder have? Who should moderate and mediate for the community, if anyone? What design plans best encourage development of and participation in communities? How do we ensure the community will operate as planned? Although the ideal answer to any of these questions is “It depends,” this paper examines the best practices any community founder should follow and the processes he or she should consider at each step of community development.

Definitions and exclusions

“Online community” can mean several different things. Although we are now long beyond the debate over whether or not communities can exist online, what exactly these communities do or how they relate to their real world counterparts is still in discussion. Online communities differ from face-to-face communities in several ways, but also share significant overlap. Jenny Preece (2000) divides online communities into four components: People interacting “socially;” a “shared purpose;” policies; and computer systems (p. 7). These four components help identify an online group as a “community” and can serve as areas of analysis for developers.

Although all online communities may share these four components, the “shared purposes” can vary greatly. In a 2004 study of twenty seven bulletin boards (BBS) communities Ridings and Gefen found that use of online communities is not just limited to information-seeking, but that “virtual communities, like real ones, are joined not only because of utilitarian information exchange, but also because they serve the social need of having a friend and getting social support.” It is clear that some online communities are skewed toward information exchange or social support, and that the design, development and implementation of any online community will depend heavily upon the goals and activities the developer expects to occur.

This essay will be limited to discussing online communities that mainly foster social interaction instead of information gathering; of course, information distribution can be expected within these communities as well, as per Ridings and Gefen’s study, but the communities and processes described in this discussion will focus on groups that emphasize interaction over information, eliminating communities involved in e-commerce, journalistic blogging, and social bookmarking. In the following discussion, then, “online community” will refer to community blogging platforms, support networks, and social networking communities such as Facebook.

Further, it should be noted that, as with “real” or face-to-face communities, no community is prototypical. Preece (2000) reminds us that “Each community is unique, and there is no guaranteed recipe for a successful community” (p. 7). She also provides a helpful metaphor for developers to consider:

“Communities develop and continuously evolve. Only the software that supports them is designed. Thus, the role of a community developer is analogous to that of the mayor of a new town, who works with town planners to set up suitable housing, roads, public buildings, and parks, and with governors and lawyers to determine local policies” (p. 26).


It is with this metaphor in mind that best practices for online communities are proposed for each of the following areas: Planning, Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating.

Planning

When planning an online community, developers should be prepared to conduct research in at least two areas. First and foremost, the community should have a clear, central focus. Because online communities do not have a physical locale to ground them, they must be grounded in other ways, particularly in a common goal. Users report participating in online communities for several reasons, especially for discussing a shared interest. (Ridings & Gefen, 2004). Thus, developers should engage in initial studies to determine possible user interest and the specific direction of that interest. A community for sufferers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, for example, would not only be interested in sharing their experiences, but might be specifically interested in sharing coping tips, trading doctor names, and linking to unique treatment options. More importantly, developers should recognize whether the “interest” is strong enough to translate into “participation.” The purpose must be strong enough to incite action among regular users and lurkers alike.

A secondary research area is related to the first: audience analysis is essential to determining the direction of an online community. No online community is created in a vacuum; a profile of potential users can tell developers much about the probable direction of the community. While there are many approaches to audience analysis, Baym provides a simple and effective schema. Baym (1998) lists four categories for consideration: external contexts, temporal structure, system infrastructure, and participant characteristics. Of these, the external context of the participants and the participant characteristics should be the main focus for developers at the planning stage. In determining the context and characteristics of potential users, researchers should ask several questions: What demographic would this community serve? What do we know about their access to and familiarity with computer mediated communication? What constraints might there be on the users’ abilities to participate? What environmental conditions might actually encourage participation by our target audience? These questions are essential to address before the community is made “live,” so that designers can use the tools available to them to encourage participation in specific ways. For example, while Chronic Fatigue patients may be interested in such a community, the conditions of the illness itself will prevent many from participation; developers should note such constraints and determine if they will effect the initial building process.

As they prepare such research, developers should note that “participation” comes in many forms. “Lurkers,” or users who read the exchanges of other members of an online community without contributing to the community themselves, must be considered as part of the community, despite their invisibility. Ridings and Gefen assert that “arguably lurkers are members, albeit silent ones, in virtual communities” and that they

“should be of interest to companies and to researchers. Moreover, lurkers must actively navigate to the URL and occasionally even login to this type of a virtual community to obtain access to it. In doing so, even a lurker becomes an active, albeit silent, participant” (Ridings and Gefen, 2004).


Developers must keep lurkers in mind when planning a community: because research suggests a large percentage of “users” of online communities are actually lurking, a community should be built to accommodate lurkers without pressuring these users to give up their anonymity or to invest more time or emotion that they are willing to. When considering potential uses, developers must assume lurking will occur, and should design accordingly.

In summary, community developers must begin with a strong purpose and sense of audience before beginning design of software and web spaces. Once interest and audience have been established, developers can move on to the more difficult task of creating a style, a signature, a theme, and a “presence” for their community.

Designing

Online communities have sprung up across the web in such vast numbers that the introduction of a new community will not necessarily register to most users. Therefore a new community must not only be easy to use in order to encourage participants in the early stages of the community’s development, but it must also stand out visually and conceptually.

The best designs are “intuitive,” as Krug says in his 2005 book Don’t Make Me Think! “Intuitive” in this case, refers to ease of navigation; users must be able to sort through the layers of the site in order to find specific areas of interest. For this reason, the front or “home” page requires the most consideration. One option that many businesses and nonprofit online communities alike now use is a “splash” page, which provides easy entry to the subsequent pages for both regular and first time users. Splash pages include simplified instructions, large graphics for site navigation, and prominent login boxes. Splash pages limit the number of options a user may take to enter and move through the site, which thus limits the overwhelmed feeling many first time users get and prevents regular users from wading through unnecessary material. Splash pages must be visually interesting without looking “busy” however; Krug (2005) finds that many sites, in an attempt to catch the user’s eye, are instead distracting and confusing, causing readers to abandon their search.

From an introductory page, such as a splash page or a more traditional “home” page, each major activity developers expect to occur on the site must be accessible and easy to locate. For example, a community for single fathers might focus mainly on forum or bulletin board postings, and these forums should be accessible from the home page. Other activities on the same “level” as participating in the forums (such as uploading photos, linking to news articles, making important site-wide announcements) should also be accessible from this page, and each page on the same level should carry the same basic design. Maintaining a “theme”—a page template that keeps color, pattern, navigation and language uniform across several pages—not only makes the site easier to navigate, but creates a sense of location in “real” space; recurring design motifs help to stabilize an otherwise ephemeral “cyberspace,” and these motifs give the site a visual identity users can connect with on a sensory level.

Above all, design should aim for ease of use, because when a site is easy to navigate and post to, users will be more likely to participate. For the best interaction, posts to the online community should be made using the simplest software available—no user should have to learn special coding (unless they want to) in order to participate. Wiki softwares that allow users to simply add content without “uploading” are best, although any software (such as WordPress) that uses a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that works like a word processing program should suffice.

Using software that allows users to post without learning extra codes should ease some of the posting anxiety that might prevent lurkers from participation. Another way to encourage lurkers to become more visible is to create levels of participation. Many sites now track the number of readers each post receives, which can serve to highlight the presence of lurkers, even if they choose not to “speak.” Yet another option is to require users to log in to read and comment on some posts; LiveJournal requires users to create an account to read material that posting members select as “private.” By requiring log in, developers can better track who logs in when, and how often.

The best designs are not only easy to use, but attempt to make the community feel “real” to users; this can be accomplished both visually and via the software’s functionality. Visually, the site’s various sub-pages should be unified by a common theme, as described above. By maintaining consitency among pages, developers create a sense of static, permanent space, as “real” communities tend to occur in a single physical place. Structurally, the software platform should support this sense of community by creating other visual cues for the users. Because computer mediated communication tends to filter out the social cues we are used to experiencing in a “real” community, an online community may be made to feel more “real” by adding back in cues that allow users to identify themselves in whole or in part, as with a picture of themselves, or simply adding their real names (Walther & Parks 2002).A prominent “Who’s Online” function in the navigation or side bars can show visitors and registered users alike the names of users currently occupying the site; this function emphasizes a shared space and shared time, and encourages users to connect to each other—they know they are not alone in the cyberspace of the community. Other functions that should be considered include
  • Large, easily visible “Comment” buttons on each user posting so that threaded conversations can begin in the space they are begun.

  • Time stamps on each comment that allow users to more easily imagine the person on the other end of the conversation.

  • “Tags” for each conversation. Tags are key words that users categorize their posts with. Lists of tags on the main page allow people to see what’s being discussed most frequently, and links them to users discussing similar topics.

These simple functions should be incorporated into the site design when available. The prominence of each feature depends upon the purpose and function developers want to foster in a given community, and these decisions should be made early in the design process.

One final feature that communities working with a younger demographic should consider is the use of avatars. Avatars are graphical representations of the user—small images attached to each user’s post and profile that can be changed easily depending on the user’s mood, the post topic, or the community’s focus. Older users may not feel comfortable with these images, or may not have the technical ability to create them as easily as younger generations do.

Once the design has been set, the community _site_ is ready to “go live”—to be made public to the internet in general. As the community begins building, developers should begin considering key questions of implementation and evaluation.

Implementing
How to manage and implement online communities continues to be a hotly debated subject. Some argue for a central moderating figure (usually connected to the supporting organization), while others find that moderation is best done “organically,” by users themselves. Nearly all, however, agree that some type of moderation is necessary, and moderation begins with setting initial guidelines and rules for all users to follow.

Guidelines or rules should be set early on, but should always be open for reconsideration. In particular, developers should consider the following issues before beginning:

Politeness to other users. “Flaming,” or harrassing or abusive comments between users on a given thread or topic, should be kept to a minimum. Politeness online also includes restrictions against profanity or overly graphic descriptions. The level of “adult” language allowed is contingent upon the goals and audience of the community.

  • Length of posts. Overly lengthly posts can clutter a site, and often makes other users feel croweded or silenced. Krug (2005) states that “We don’t read pages, we scan them,” and that “if the document is longer than a few paragraphs, we’re likely to print it out because it’s easier and faster to read on paper than on a screen” (p. 22). Most software platforms provide a “cut” or “more” function that trims posts to a more readable length for the front page, but a maximum post length should be set to keep the design looking even.

  • Off-topic posts. While the occasional non-related post can lighten the mood or break the monotony of a group, too many off-topic posts can detract from the original goals and purpose of the community. Limiting off topic posts can also limit spamming and advertising.


Once the rules have been tentatively set, developers should post them high in the hierarchy. To ensure users at least know about the rules, the guidelines should be presented as part of the registration process. Many sites now require users to agree to a “Terms of Use” contract before joining communities as registered users; these contracts list the rules and any other legal information, such as copyright laws. In general, rules are not only a good legal reference (for extreme cases of abuse), but gives users a shared responsibility that, again, builds a sense of “real” community.

Legislation of the rules should be carefully considered. Again, the use of a moderator is necessary for almost any site, but the type of moderator and the process of moderating varies. :Developers must first decide between a moderator chosen by the administrators and a moderator that arises “naturally” from the users themselves. Once a moderator (or moderators) is selected, the particular role this moderator would play must be outlined. Questions to consider include

  • What “punishments” are appropriate for rule breakers? Will moderators have the power to remove users or deny them access?

  • How will users be alerted of offenders and offenses? Some sites issue mass emails, others send separate notes to each offender for each offense.

  • How will rules be enforced? Some communities periodically post site-wide reminders, others assume users will conform without reminders.

One of the touted benefits of online communities is the tendency of such communities to be more friendly to those who are less socially adept or who are marginalized by the dominant society. These utopian notions are likely naïve, but the presence of rules and guidelines should not detract from the sense of “communitas”–an almost magical sense of communion that moves “toward universalism and openness” (“Rites”). Finding balance between regulation and chaos may emerge “organically” from the users themselves, but developers should be prepared to step in when necessary.

Evaluating
The key questions a developer should ask once a community has been active for several weeks are “Is it working?” and “What can we do better?” Evaluating an online community’s success can be difficult, as markers of success can sometimes be less thank obvious. Although success can be measured in many ways, the easiest aspect to measure is volume; although there is much more to a successful community than the number of users and posts alone, these can be good places to begin evaluation. In particular, developers should address:

  • Number of users, both registered and lurkers, if possible.

  • Number of hits.

  • Timeline of hits: When are people logging on? What are peak hours? Is there a particular time of month? Is the timeline related to any site changes or administration changes?

For those that find a community failing to meet expected volumes, new strategies of finding and motivating users should be implemented. To advertise the community, developers should locate sites focusing on similar issues in order to promote their own sites. For communities related to a profession or trade, developers might consider advertise in the journals or magazines that serve those trades. To ensure users can find the site easily, web managers should ensure that search engines such as Google can find the community.

Other enticements can increase participation. An empty community is rarely inviting; developers should make the space look occupied; founders can begin threads in forums or post questions to invite conversation. Some sites benefit from “guest bloggers” well known among the potential community members. Any post from a new community member should be promptly and encouragingly commented upon by founders and developers.

Ultimately, even well-populated communities may require evaulation and revision if users find the site design and software structure difficult to use. Periodic informal usability testing can help designers improve the functionality of the site with little cost to the developers; brief surveys every few months can keep designers and developers abreast of any emergent problems as the community changes and grows.

The Rhetorical Situation: A shorthand guide to community development

The above suggestions and points for consideration detail possibilities for online community development. However, many of these decisions are contingent and based in the specific situational context. When considering each of the above possibilities, developers should keep in mind what is commonly called the “rhetorical situation,” a “complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence” (p. 6). Bitzer offers three points to consider when attempting to define the rhetorical situation: Audience, exigency, and Constraints (p. 6). Others have added to the list, adding a “Context” category to further define historico-political elements; extrapolating the “Audience” seciton to include gender, race, and class issues; and adding to “Constraints” to discuss means of production. Taken as just Bitzer’s original schema, however, “the rhetorical situation” offers a framework for analyzing any situation in which texts are produced.

Online communities, as text-based constructions, are rhetorical situations as defined by Bitzer. Each of the previous sections–planning, design, implementation, and evaluatoin–can benefit from an analysis of the rhetorical situation at each stage. Because each community is different, each rhetorical stuation is different, and by detailing the situation, developers can better tailor the above suggestions to their own community. Additionally, a rhetorical analysis prevents developers from developing hard and fast rules that can stagnate a community. Thinking rhetorically can also highlight room for potential change and growth; in analyzing constraints, developers can find ways to remove barriers or exploit an absense of limitations. Thinking rhetorically also helps developers to determine the best way to moderate communities; remembering the users are also humans who interact textually can prevent clashes and promote good relations between moderators and users.

Many of the points for consideration above should be read through the rhetorical situation. The particular rhetoricity of online communities seems to call for extra attention to the community’s textual practices (both verbal and visual). While it make take a little more work for developers to learn rhetorical language and theories, adding a rhetorical perspective to the above will doubtlessly promote growth and vibrancy in the community.



References
Baym, N. (1998). The emergence of on-line community. In S. Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety 2.0 (pp. 35-68). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Bitzer, Lloyd (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1 (1), 1-14.
Krug, Steve (2005). Don’t make me think! Berkeley, Calif: New Riders Press.
Preece, Jenny (2000). Online communities. Chichester, England: Wiley and Sons.
Ridings, C. & Gefen, D. (2004). Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online. JCMC 10(1), article 4.
Rites of Communitas (2004). The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Religious Rites, Rituals and Festivals. (pp. 97-101) Ed. Frank A. Salamone. New York: Routledge.
Walther, J. B., & Parks, M. R. (2002). Cues filtered out, cues filtered in: Computer-mediated communication and relationships. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd ed., pp. 529-563). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Strikethrough07: Paper Plan

1. What are you trying to work out? What is the central problem?


How are narratives constructed communally online? How are stories constructed across several communities?


2. What is the significance of your study?


Narrative theory tends to focus on synchronic face to face communitcation. This study will use one example to suggest how similar processes appear in asynchronous mediated communication.
3. What is the scope of your study?

What are you including/excluding? Justify it!


This study focuses on one event in a large community online--"fandom" as a whole, which is rarely considered as a single community. This particular event unified fandoms and allowed fans to see themselves as a group. Why fandom? Because fans are fanatic--and there's a lot to sort through and look at. I am excluding the "other side"--the narrative of the "villains" for time's sake. And the spyware thing.


4. State your research question


What can Strikethrough07 show us about narrative building in online communities?


5. What are your data?


Posts from several communities created specifically to address the event, posts from individuals about the event, LiveJournal's press releases, transcripts of interviews provided by individual bloggers, and news stories/blogs about the event.
6. What body of theory/ies are you drawing on?
Narrative theory informed by Russian Formalists and Communication scholars

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Some thoughts on icons as memes

From an IM conversation with Lou...

Icons are a way of linking the idea of "meme" with "community" online. Icons, on Live Journal and for other online communities (and occasionally IM windows) were originally meant to be images of the user to attach to a community blog-to give a visual, social cue that users could link to the person posting. Over time, icons started skewing away from being representational of the users. Fans started started using screenshots of their favorite characters, they started framing and photoshopping them to fit with their (the community's) attitudes toward the fandom.

Some people excel at making them, so they get together to form a community for posting and sharing their icons. Other people steal or borrow, reference the users, and links are made between journals, between communities, between people.
What's interesting is when you see that icons are supposed to be representation of the user but instead are representations of the attitudes of the community. Icons have let us lose all possible touches iwth the physical body and individual and venture into communal space.

Icons are enthymematic--shorthand for situations and they generate narrative as well as mimetic desire.


Again, though, people wouldn't do this without communities in which to share them: check the old school fandoms of Kirk/Spock. People made the vids and fics for the conventions, for the 'zines, to mail to each other....not for their own enjoyment. And that's not even getting into RPG--a community built around people not being themselves.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Christmas 2003

I'd nearly dreamed of heaven
when the flood began to rise
There's something there of a howling
in the deadening of the skies
It's the song that says just what I hear
That comes as a surprise
The sickened bells of Christmas
toll coldly as snow flies

Monday, November 12, 2007

Notes from Summer 07

Despite what this blog seems to indicate, I DID nearly make it all the way through the Burke corpus this summer. My notes were taken by hand (insert gasps of surprise, shock, and/or awe here)! However, the notebook is getting more and more battered by Kit (and, I suspect, Bastet), and I've had it since Gerald's Contemp Rhet class, so it's probably time to do the right thing and just recycle it. First, of course, I'll save my notes here, and on that ephemeral "server" thing at Purdue. Just in case.




First, some random poetry....

No date, no title. No Idea.

It's my job to rip out the bricks and reveal the ones hidden in comfort behind. This is Virginia, untouched white walls, that I scream at to unloose. They stare when I reappear and I apologize for my absence. Which way, I ask, which way away from the dust? Which way across the too small ocean, where I died by saying, "I live!" too often in Latin?



The man with slightly toned thighs sitting in front of me has a wishbone shaped scar running up his arm, over the carpal arteries. Like someone tried to peel them out of him. He can no longer retract his vow, but he does not feel quite at home in resenting that.



(After reading Burke on "Perspective by Incongruity" and "Piety")
The gargoyles followed me from high school--that first imitation-marble statue that sat still on my vanity does not have a memorable face. It was not grotesque or strange enough, its eyes too small to be of any real transcendence. She gave it to me (In French now: Elle m'a donne) in praise of skills I did not want (Je ne les ai voules pas) to exploit, not in that oak-ridden town (La ville que m'a tuee), the stately marble and brick sinking slowly into the swamp. I left the gargoyle to watch over my mirror instead: only he could make it mean again, apart from the sea foam tiles swimming in my visions.




(After seeing Joyce Carole Oates read at Purdue)

It's the kitchen, he realizes sometime after dawn, the kitchen floor he's ended up on this time. It's a fact, he said, a quote, he said, that Betrayal is Damning. The spider plant is hardy--thank god, he thinks, palming the knife from the counter. It wasn't sharp enough anyway, so it lands in the dishwasher, rounded point up.



Why is it good to leave yourself sop much? TO go so far from your own brain, to be carved out from your own soul? Is it too deep in there, like an old mattress you've sunk your own silhouette in?


Random phrases in margins to be incorporated (embodied?) at another time
We must agree with a shiver that One did things for dead men.


The uncrowded filth of an ugly God
grounds us to the flowerless fields


The weave we use for fishing of men is perhaps too tight, too scratchy, too barbed.


The East holds in tension
the hand at the forehead
the groin,
right foot raised to toe.


One eye twitching
as he says
"Runs his eye along it"
not in variable foot
my foot squished into a
fat black shoe.


Transfigured by the broken clock
minutes as degrees of persuasion


So, it's another crit class and again
I'm staring down something Victorian,
and decidedly homosexual. Dorian Gray
is poking his sensual head at me,
cooing, "Remember!"

Usability

Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think! Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing, 2000.



"But even then, if the document is longer than a few paragraphs, we're likely to print it out because it's easier and faster to read on paper than on a screen" (22). Ah, the return of the E-Book debate. Book 2.0. What do we do with this, when online communities are only textual (for now?) and text is "noisy"? Krug says "We don't read pages. We scan them," and this is true for the "information" based websites Krug is designing. But what about those websites that don't just disseminate, but create? Is this where the "drabble" and "flashfic" came from? Is it the amount of text as a whole, or the amount of text per section (as in posts to blogs)?



"Happy talk must die" (46) wherein "happy talk" are the introductory welcoming messages that we hate to write, and hate to read. But these are also conventions which he *likes*. Welcome tags are "basically just a way to be sociable" (46)--well, isn't that what we want, for social websites?



On Bookmarking: When we want to return to something on a Web site, instead of relying on a physical sense of where it is we have to remember where it is in teh conceptual hierarchy an retrace our steps. This is one reason why bookmarks--stored personal shortcuts--are so important and why the Back button accounts for somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all Web clicks.


We should change the Welcome! to a Start Here! tag.



The myth of the Average User:
"The belief that most Web users are like us is enough to produce gridlock in the average Web design meeting. But behind that belief lies another one, even more insidious: the belief that most Web users are like anything" (136).

Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Eureka House

Oi! We're live at The Eureka House. Go visit us, and be impressed.