Hey, and while I'm here, would it kill you to link back to my post that you're quoting up there in the 'allo box? I'm honored to see it up there, of course, but gives the peeps some credits.
I'll link it if you can tell me how to keep the linked text from turning blue. (that's also why I don't link the individual products in the "Latest Addition to the Store" box).
Some bits ("Other Stuffies to Read") seem to do well in blue, but in other places I might as well have skull and torch animated gifs, that's how tacky it'd seem.
It is May. I rather enjoyed reading all the A-Z blogs and participating in it. Not only was it a good exercise, it helped expose me to other blogs and bloggers. Many of the new followers I picked up this month were writers and outside of our little echo chamber. Plus my overall hits went up here at the end, so April was more popular for me than March. It is entirely possible that the A to Z did more to introduce the Muggles to our collective works than "Hot Elf chicks".
@Tim B: I also had fun, yet I totally get why some regular OSR bloggers would find the A-Z series to be artificial and perhaps less engaging than the usual more spontaneous fare. But thanks for putting in a positive word for the series, a sentiment I would echo.
@everybody: What was it you specifically disliked about the A-Z Challenge? As a participant, I have my own (mixed but generally positive) feelings about it, which I will post about in the near future. But I would be genuinely interested to hear what bothered certain bloggers about the challenge. Anyone care to elucidate?
It just seemed artificial. "I have a plan for posting, and I shall present it in alphabetical order!" vs "hmmm, what can I blog about today that begins with I?"
It also made people post a bit more than they otherwise would, pushing posts down my blogroll faster than usual. I probably missed something good in the middle of all this.
Also, the staggered time zones made the blogroll look goofy as people weren't presented the same letters at any one time.
No offense Jim, but that is a rather weak complaint.
The idea behind a challenge was to make us post more. My personal commitment meant that I was not making 26 throw-away posts. I actually posted less this month than the month before.
For me it was the difference between listening to someone who had something meaningful to say and listening to someone who was just making small-talk. The meaningful stuff is more interesting. The A-Z thing seemed like a bunch of small-talk, a writing exercise to fill space. After a few days of reading thru them and finding nothing interesting to me, I skipped anything that had the header A-Z in it's title this whole month. Did I miss out on some potentially good stuff? Yeah, probably. But it wasn't worth sifting thru the wheat to get to the chaff.
Never mind, I looked in the raw template and it may be way too difficult to find a good way to mix that code into Blogger.
You can, however, select Design > Template Designer from the Blogger control panel, go to Advanced in Column 1, Links in Column 2, and change the first color to black. This will make all links the same color as ordinary text, however; if you leave the Hover color alone, they will still change color when a mouse moves over them.
Ah, I got it to work on a link-by-link basis! When you edit a widget, switch to the Edit HTML (instead of Compose) tab and insert: <style type="text/css">a.black:link {color:#000000;}</style> ... Then add the class="black" to your links that you want to appear as normal, black text. The problem is that Compose and Preview won't show this change, but when you publish it, it works; I just did it to the first couple links in today's post on my blog.
I started out doing A-Z, but between having an actual job and having blogging begin to feel like a job, I quit early on.
The stuff that was the worst to me were the posts about peoples' home campaigns, that were like "P is for Pirates and in my campaign the pirates always wear the patches over their left eyes." A lot of it seemed like boring minutia to me.
That being said, I have certainly posted boring minutia about my own campaigns (in fact I just did so today!), so the criticism is aimed at myself as well.
I know I certainly spent most of the month reading the first paragraph of a lot of crappy A to Z posts in Google Reader and then skipping to the next post. I'm fairly certain that this was because the noise-to-content ratio created by the "I gotta think up something to blog that matches an arbitrary letter today!" was high.
OTOH, it might be observational bias. It's like tie-in fiction. It has a fairly comparable ratio of crap-to-quality as any other segment of the fiction market, but because the tie-in groups it together you tend to just conclude "tie-in fiction sucks".
I do know that the reason I didn't participate is because I knew it would result in a lot of unnecessary, low quality posts. It's the same reason I don't participate in the RPG Blog Carnivals.
Although, of course, I did participate in this month's Blog Carnival... because I coincidentally happened to be writing a series of posts that matched the carnival's theme, so there wasn't any particularly good reason not to link in.
Similarly, there were some good A to Z posts out there. But I suspect many of them would have existed even without the challenge. A few might not have gotten done (or not done in quite the same way), but, at the end of the day, I feel pretty confident in saying that the challenge was responsible for creating a lot more crap than quality.
Reading about some group going through Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom (for one example) is as enjoyable as reading about a group running through Grinding Gear.
Reading about a group running through an adventure I haven't read or experienced, and can't read or experience, really doesn't interest me much.
It's the common reference point that makes it interesting, really.
Yep, the A to Z Challenge is over. May marks the beginning of the Z to A Challenge, followed by the Prime Numbers Challenge in June.
ReplyDeleteI so fuckin' agree.
ReplyDeleteAmen brutha. I been bitchin since A.
ReplyDeleteI also agree. Wasn't a huge fan of it. It leaked in from the writing blogs.
ReplyDeleteA secular version of Lent perhaps?
ReplyDeleteHey, and while I'm here, would it kill you to link back to my post that you're quoting up there in the 'allo box? I'm honored to see it up there, of course, but gives the peeps some credits.
Rock out.
I'll link it if you can tell me how to keep the linked text from turning blue. (that's also why I don't link the individual products in the "Latest Addition to the Store" box).
ReplyDeleteSome bits ("Other Stuffies to Read") seem to do well in blue, but in other places I might as well have skull and torch animated gifs, that's how tacky it'd seem.
I hear what you're saying. I have no idea how to do that. How about tacking " - Spawn of Endra" at the end?
ReplyDeleteIt's alright, you can come out. We've stopped having fun now. :p
ReplyDeleteIt is May. I rather enjoyed reading all the A-Z blogs and participating in it. Not only was it a good exercise, it helped expose me to other blogs and bloggers. Many of the new followers I picked up this month were writers and outside of our little echo chamber. Plus my overall hits went up here at the end, so April was more popular for me than March. It is entirely possible that the A to Z did more to introduce the Muggles to our collective works than "Hot Elf chicks".
ReplyDeleteI had fun.
@Tim B: I also had fun, yet I totally get why some regular OSR bloggers would find the A-Z series to be artificial and perhaps less engaging than the usual more spontaneous fare. But thanks for putting in a positive word for the series, a sentiment I would echo.
ReplyDelete@everybody: What was it you specifically disliked about the A-Z Challenge? As a participant, I have my own (mixed but generally positive) feelings about it, which I will post about in the near future. But I would be genuinely interested to hear what bothered certain bloggers about the challenge. Anyone care to elucidate?
ReplyDeleteIt just seemed artificial. "I have a plan for posting, and I shall present it in alphabetical order!" vs "hmmm, what can I blog about today that begins with I?"
ReplyDeleteIt also made people post a bit more than they otherwise would, pushing posts down my blogroll faster than usual. I probably missed something good in the middle of all this.
Also, the staggered time zones made the blogroll look goofy as people weren't presented the same letters at any one time.
No offense Jim, but that is a rather weak complaint.
ReplyDeleteThe idea behind a challenge was to make us post more. My personal commitment meant that I was not making 26 throw-away posts. I actually posted less this month than the month before.
For me it was the difference between listening to someone who had something meaningful to say and listening to someone who was just making small-talk. The meaningful stuff is more interesting. The A-Z thing seemed like a bunch of small-talk, a writing exercise to fill space. After a few days of reading thru them and finding nothing interesting to me, I skipped anything that had the header A-Z in it's title this whole month. Did I miss out on some potentially good stuff? Yeah, probably. But it wasn't worth sifting thru the wheat to get to the chaff.
ReplyDeleteThere really weren't that many people doing the A to Z.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"I'll link it if you can tell me how to keep the linked text from turning blue"
ReplyDeleteYou have to put this somewhere, usually in your header:
<style type="text/css">
a.black:link {color:#000000;}
a.black:visited {color:#000000;}
a.black:hover {color:#000000;}
a.black:active {color:#000000;}
</style>
And then you mark your link this way, to make it a special class:
<a class="black" href="htpp://someurl.com/">
quote goes here
</a>
ooops. "http", not "htpp".
ReplyDeleteNever mind, I looked in the raw template and it may be way too difficult to find a good way to mix that code into Blogger.
ReplyDeleteYou can, however, select Design > Template Designer from the Blogger control panel, go to Advanced in Column 1, Links in Column 2, and change the first color to black. This will make all links the same color as ordinary text, however; if you leave the Hover color alone, they will still change color when a mouse moves over them.
Ah, I got it to work on a link-by-link basis! When you edit a widget, switch to the Edit HTML (instead of Compose) tab and insert: <style type="text/css">a.black:link {color:#000000;}</style> ... Then add the class="black" to your links that you want to appear as normal, black text. The problem is that Compose and Preview won't show this change, but when you publish it, it works; I just did it to the first couple links in today's post on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI started out doing A-Z, but between having an actual job and having blogging begin to feel like a job, I quit early on.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff that was the worst to me were the posts about peoples' home campaigns, that were like "P is for Pirates and in my campaign the pirates always wear the patches over their left eyes." A lot of it seemed like boring minutia to me.
That being said, I have certainly posted boring minutia about my own campaigns (in fact I just did so today!), so the criticism is aimed at myself as well.
Ah, James, c'mon man...
ReplyDelete; )
I know I certainly spent most of the month reading the first paragraph of a lot of crappy A to Z posts in Google Reader and then skipping to the next post. I'm fairly certain that this was because the noise-to-content ratio created by the "I gotta think up something to blog that matches an arbitrary letter today!" was high.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, it might be observational bias. It's like tie-in fiction. It has a fairly comparable ratio of crap-to-quality as any other segment of the fiction market, but because the tie-in groups it together you tend to just conclude "tie-in fiction sucks".
I do know that the reason I didn't participate is because I knew it would result in a lot of unnecessary, low quality posts. It's the same reason I don't participate in the RPG Blog Carnivals.
Although, of course, I did participate in this month's Blog Carnival... because I coincidentally happened to be writing a series of posts that matched the carnival's theme, so there wasn't any particularly good reason not to link in.
Similarly, there were some good A to Z posts out there. But I suspect many of them would have existed even without the challenge. A few might not have gotten done (or not done in quite the same way), but, at the end of the day, I feel pretty confident in saying that the challenge was responsible for creating a lot more crap than quality.
Of course it was inconvenient for you since you are only interested in reading posts referring to you or your products.
ReplyDeleteReading about some group going through Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom (for one example) is as enjoyable as reading about a group running through Grinding Gear.
ReplyDeleteReading about a group running through an adventure I haven't read or experienced, and can't read or experience, really doesn't interest me much.
It's the common reference point that makes it interesting, really.