Thursday 30 December 2010

Bullshit is the best fertiliser.

I am fed up with the blatant stupidity and manipulative "journalism" on the SA (Stupid Americans) website. So after wasting too much time on trying to repair negative and destructive initiatives from out site the Moth class I decided to put effort into trying to build something positive from within it.

I have tidied up the IMCA website a bit. I hope it looks a bit better and the forum should now work better (I hope). You should be able to "edit your profile" and upload your avatar which has not worked since moving to Nige's server because I forgot to reconfigure it.

Stepping back from the site it strikes me that it is totally content-less. There may well be lots of content, but due to the dynamic nature of the Moth class and all the blogs and RSS feeds I have concentrated on the mothbook aspects so far. This is mainly because it is interesting but there is some great projects out there that are lost. If we just consider my Ego the diamond foil project, Flashheart and my Moth Paper are all now off line. I worry about the other Moth papers that are of more value. I think we need to preserve and make available this content. I have old Moth year books and news letters going back to 1987 and also a brand new one from the German IMCA which is really great. One of the most statistically requested pages on the Moth website is for the Home Build page which is a shame because half it links do not work anymore. There is interest out there for good technical content but I feel somehow it is not getting delivered. Somehow physical information in paper yearbooks is worth so much more than the transient dynamic information and I think we should deal with this issue.

How can we do this? I say we because I mean you as well as me. A Moth Wiki seems to be the best idea and we have one but Bruce's initiative nearly got turned off recently due to lack of activity. Do I build a Wiki into the IMCA site to replace/incorporate the Moth Wiki or does that (like the IMCA forum) dilute the information more and add to the problem rather than solving it?

4 comments:

Karl said...

The basic problem is finding qualified people to write the content. Phil Stevo's homebuild stuff was great, because he had actually built enough of them to know what he was doing. Many more people will read something by or about Amac's approach to a technical issue than anyone else's. So we should task the most knowledgeable people with writing short pieces, or interview them about it.

Unknown said...

Stupid Americans. Love it.

Tis a bit of a problem when content it pulled from all over the place. I think things should be more centralised personally so if we can bear the burden of hosting it we probably should...

Unknown said...

Doug, I don't know you personally, but your behavior on the Sailing Anarchy website is embarrassing, and, as an American citizen as well as an IMCA member I am personally insulted by your comments.

If you do volunteer work for IMCA, I suggest you keep your personal opinions well separated from the work you do for the class.

Andrew Sumpton
St. Petersburg FL USA

Doug Culnane said...

Andrew I am very sorry if I have insulted someone that does not deserve it. I am not too interested in arguing what is insulted and embarrassing because that is subjective. You do not mention what you particularly find so offensive so I can not judge if it was directed at you personally but since we do not know each other I think this is very unlikely and it was not my intension.

If you are insulted about the Stupid American reference then please understand that as a cheap shot at some really destructive rabble rousers.

I totally agree with you about separation of duty and personal ego. This Blog is "Doug Culnane's EGO .com" and I so if I offend you please do not read it. If someone copy and pastes it into another context then please make the link to Blog as the source not the IMCA site.

All the best,

Doug