Disqus - Latest Comments for Grant Barrett

Re: The Angry Grammarian - philadelphia weekly online

Grant Barrett — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:31:26 -0000

The difference between the NYT piece, which I wrote, and the Daily Candy factitiousness, is that I don't make up the words I include on my annual NYT list. Somebody else coins them, a bunch of people use them, I find them, research them, try to determine that they have some kind of decent level of currency, and then I define them. As I indicated in the piece, the ones on my list were were substantiated as being used by more than one person, as being the product something other than a marketing effort, and as already having a fair bit of lifespan. If that's not enough, then nearly every dictionary is a failure, since that's more or less the core of the inclusion criteria that they all use.

Re: Today’s Deep Thought

Grant Barrett — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:14:09 -0000

I agree: daily I see comments on the sites of dozens of newspapers around the English-speaking world and few have adopted any of the fairly successful models for raising the bar enough to keep comments down to manageable quantity, to weed out the trolls and the willfully ignorant, and to encourage commenters to develop (or extend) good online reputations. I think most newspapers would find appropriate a combination of the Slashdot karma model plus a good chunk of the Metafilter community model. So that means something like a $5 membership fee--a barrier to entry just high enough to stop the drive-by firebrands who aren't vested in the community--, a few heartless moderators to keep commenters on topic and civil, a way to rate the comments of others so that Cory Doctorow-style "whuffie" is accumulated, and personal profile pages that allow for a decent amount of modification so that commenters can include bio info, links to other web sites, location information, etc., and that include recent comments and their ratings by others.

Re: TSOYA: Thorn and Hossfeld make the Times

Grant Barrett — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:42:59 -0000

As I understand it, weddings are considered for inclusion in the Times because the newlyweds or their families ask for it and then the announcement is chosen out of all the others. That's not to say that they're not deserving! Maybe, too, it will draw some attention to the show and Jesse can get TSA picked up by a few more stations.

You're right: "You Look Nice Today" is great. Cracks my shit up. 45 minutes of hilarious lies and preposterous proposals. Who's faster on the quip than Merlin? Nobody. There's no way it'd make it on the air without a lot of bleeping or self-censoring, which might very well ruin it.

Thanks for the Jordan, Jesse Go! recco. I'll give it a whirl.

Re: Google Pagerank Pepper for Mint: Prank

Grant Barrett — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:55:32 -0000

I have the same problem: nothing but "NA" graphics next to the most-popular URLs. My www.domain.com has a pagerank of 7, all my urls point to www, and I do not use the "trim urls" feature in the Default pepper. All the URLs listed in the Prank pane include "www."

Re: Google Pagerank Pepper for Mint: Prank

Grant Barrett — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:28:43 -0000

Here's a screen shot of the malfunctioning Prank. Note that looking up the URLs individually shows that they do have pageranks higher than zero. The second one, for example, has a pagerank of 5.

Re: Google Pagerank Pepper for Mint: Prank

Grant Barrett — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:40:47 -0000

You're missing the point, Ernesto: I already have redirects in place in htaccess of exactly that nature and have had for THREE YEARS. MInt DOES NOT HAVE doubletongued.org assumed as the URL. It's using WWW.DOUBLETONGUED.ORG on EVERY URL. That's how they're showing up in Prank, too.

Re: Community, Community, Community

Grant Barrett — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:42:49 -0000

I've tended to use the word "cohort," in the sense "a group of people with common characteristics," though at least one other sense would also apply, "a group of people banded together." (Another sense, "an ancient Roman military unit," would not apply. :)

"Cohort" is a bit marred by use on cop shows, but not irretrievably. I do like the connotations lent by the usage meaning "accomplice" and "conspirator" for what it adds in terms of suggesting a scrappy effort to reach a common goal. Conspirators and accomplices for good, so to speak.

Where the word works best is describing those relationships in which all the parties involved do not necessarily know that they are in a relationship.

For example, I cohost a syndicated public radio show and I've been following this blog for a while, so I would consider myself part of your cohort whether you know it or not. I think a lot of listeners fall into this category. There's a type of near-cliché—"long-time listener, first-time caller/emailer"—that indicates this perfectly. We may know through ratings that they are there, but the listeners have allied themselves to us without our knowing exactly who they are.

My own disgruntlement with the word "community" is that it is used as shorthand for too many ideas. It is invoked as a talisman or totem, a single word that is supposed to cure and heal our relationships with our listeners. Someone says "community" and we are all free to give it the meaning that suits our own purposes, much in the same way someone can say "God" or "birthday" and these two words can very different outlooks on life or on aging.

Does "community" mean allowing visitors to post comments? Reading listener email on the air? Going to face-to-face events? Making yourself accessible to your listeners instead of buffering yourself behind assistants and auto-reply bots? All of those? Not sure.

But "cohort" says something simple: these are the people who I have allied myself with, and those are the people who have allied themselves with me. Developing a definition of "community" that starts with identifying the company you're keeping in more specific ways than ratings allow is not a bad way to begin, I think. (Though God knows that this is where the marketing start talking about CRM and ruin the basic joy of having a human relationship.)