Secrets of the City

Max, did you post this because Rex had nice things to say about you?

Yes I did.

Is the measure of the success of MnSpeak simply page-views, or is there a different metric?

You won’t find that brand of honest, soul searching brand of journalism in a Kate Perry column, folks…

It was a good interview until the interviewer used the term “Web 2.0″. Even though he prefaced it with “so-called”, I’m still going to have to say DO NOT WANT.

Look deep within your heart for the only true metrics. These may only be found inside.

I like “Web 2.0″ better than “social media”.

Rex is pretty smart, it turns out.

Wow, that’s long. I talk a lot.

You smell funny, too.

Oh wait, that’s just .com money.

“Look deep within your heart for the only true metrics. These may only be found inside.“

I really do hope you’re right, and that things within my heart will continue to be found only on the inside. The alternative is sort of . . . icky.

I’m curious. How many unique visitors does MNspeak get now? Tom? Matt?

I agree with Rex’s gentle chiding of MnSpeak’s current leadership about their ongoing complacency and inertia.

But personally, I’m feeling a lot less gentle about it. Last week’s feedback in the Feedback thread was met mostly with deafening silence, until Max got goaded into responding to acknowledge some of it and to thank MnSpeakers for it.

One of the things that came up in the Feedback thread was MnSpeak’s continuing lack of clarity about what its focus, what its “voice” (as Rex puts it), ought to be. That’s about the leadership here being neglectful.

Currently, MnSpeak is just coasting, drifting, when it should be really sailing, confidently, on a chosen course (through waters that will necessarily be a mix of charted and uncharted).

Pear,
Google analytics tells me that we get closer to 2,000 unique visitors a dayand about 40-50,000 per month. I’ve seen the stats program that Rex used, too (through HostMySite, where we’re hosted) and I think it over-reports. We get about 50,000 pageviews a week.

I haven’t had time to write a detailed response to the feedback thread from the other day, but I have been reading it. Rex, and most of you, mostly point out the same things: There haven’t been any new features since Rex left and the features that were here aren’t as good any more.

MNSpeak was better in a lot of ways when Rex was here. I just haven’t been able to devote as much time to this site as it deserves.

Briefly (because I’m sitting in a meeting right now and I should pay attention), here’s what I’m doing to bring MNSpeak back to its former glory:

1) Fixing the aggregator. From what I can see, this is the feature that people miss the most. By the end of the week, I hope to have a MNSpeak-run (not outsourced) aggregator working again. It will run on a WordPress framework and it might even be cooler than the old one.

2) Bringing back the calendar. The calendar was a cool way to foster community among mnspeak users. I’m thinking of ways to bring that back. I don’t know anything about local music, so I was never very good at it. I’m thinking of using Cristina Cordova’s Secrets of the Day blog at the Rake. Also letting users upload their own events in comments.

3) New: original content. I’m working on bringing in some people that will produce good original local content for mnspeak. Right now, the real original content is in the comments. I don’t always want to have to rely on other media sites to seed conversation. The conversation here doesn’t always have to be derivative of another site.

“I agree with Rex’s gentle chiding of MnSpeak’s current leadership about their ongoing complacency and inertia.“

Cool. You own – what? – about the same percentage as Rex now, right?

“How many unique visitors does MNspeak get now?“

Lots are normal, but, yeah, some could be termed “unique” if you need to be careful with your word choices.

I don’t know what to think about a poster who chides MNSpeak, and yet doesn’t register…

One of the things that came up in the Feedback thread was MnSpeak’s continuing lack of clarity about what its focus, what its “voice” (as Rex puts it), ought to be. That’s about the leadership here being neglectful.

Max, drafting a mission statement is really not necessary. Those things make most people kind of ill.

Oops, the first paragraph was to pear, the rest of it was for everyone.

Yepnope: Tell me about it. At one of my previous workplaces, the corporate mission statement was posted on the wall of the building and said something like:

D—-’s Corporate Statement of Intent:

“To increase regional sales of D—–”
“To increase advertising revenue from D—–”
“To build more brand awareness of D—–”

Some anonymous prankster scrawled an addendum which read:

“To crush our enemies, to drive them before us like leaves in the wind, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

No one has yet come up with a better mission statement than Conan.

That’s awesome.

Yepnope,

True, “mission statements” within organizations very often become obnoxious. But that usually comes from them being too long, and having verbose wording.

But it still makes a ton of sense to have clarity of purpose, and a clear strategy for how to reach the goals that have been set.

Otherwise, how will you know if you’ve succeeded, if you haven’t identified what success would look like?

BTW, no one has even said a thing about that t-shirt I’m wearing.

What about nonprofit blogs? Oh, wait, I’m not posting there anymore.

Never mind…

I noticed it and agreed wholeheartedly, although I think Cafepress’s standards have dropped a bit.

Corporate attempts to build grass roots support through blogging are typically disastrous. There are some exceptions that I can think of in the software industry where you get to read some good specialist thoughts (Adobe or Microsoft are fair examples).

I love it when large companies use blogs to talk down to their reader base, astroturf, mismanage comments, or best of all, attempt getting hip with the kidz. That gets all kinds of awesome, and the fireballs from those train wrecks can be seen for miles.

I have often thought of Conan’s words of wisdom when I go to vote.

Oh, I forgot another thing coming down the road for MNSpeak: an “Ask MNSpeak” section. It’ll be a separate blog similar to Ask Metafilter. That’ll be where moving to minnesota threads will live and stuff like today’s beer thread.

Why doesn’t Bartel just give up and admit that he messed up, that starting some petty feud with The Voice of The Streets just to maintain the Rake’s ersatz “dignity” was at best shortsighted and at worst an unintended auto-expose of Tom as shameless nepotist. Just admit you miss me, Tom. Admit that you want me on that wall. That you need me on that wall. That Max will never be as sexy as me in a white sailor suit.

Another way to look at the “mission statement” point:

At just about any website, a visitor expects to find an “About Us” link for that, prominently positioned on the home page.

But that’s been intentionally missing here at MnSpeak. My guess is that’s because so far no one in charge here has had the confidence to specify what MnSpeak is or isn’t, or what MnSpeak should or shouldn’t try to be.

Nothing wrong with remaining open-minded about what new directions this site maybe out to try pursuing, but to say absolutely nothing, for new arrivals, about about this site’s focus seems clumsily uprofessional; not at all user-friendly.

* I meant to type “ought”, not “out”.

I love the Ask Metafilter idea (and used to talk about doing it too). Hurry up, before one of the players gets to it.

Matt,

Once you finally weighed in here (at the tail end of a week’s worth of MnSpeak self-analysis) with considerable detail about improvements in the works, Rex immediately cheered, but the main registered regulars here remained silent.

Judging from many of the comments in last week’s Feedback thread, the reason is probably that your pattern has been to endlessly promise things (especially: fixing the Aggregator) but then you fail to deliver on the promises in a timely way.

I think all of what you’ve said here sounds good, and I’m glad you’ve poked your head out of your gopher hole to say them. But I don’t think you should expect most MnSpeakers to get excited about what’s coming until those things are actually implemented, rather than them just being perennially on the drawing board.

Matt, please keep aiming high, and now please also deliver.

I’d like to respond to that…I’m all for changes…doesn’t matter to me as long as you could possibly do something about the blue background…not in love with it…

Apparently, some people don’t understand that my t-shirt is a reference to this infamous Rolling Stone cover. Jeesh!

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Aliecat’s a girl, so maybe she’d want pink instead.

Though, I think what’s done, for balancing between blue for boys and pink for girls, like with baby clothes for an unborn child whose sex is not yet known, is to compromise, choosing yellow instead. So I guess we need a yellow background here.

Max has canvassed opinions and received lots of them. Many of them are mutually exclusive because they’re contradictory. Max should be developing his grand vision for what he thinks the site should become, and will either tailor his big plan and/or filter the input he’s received from us based on that.

Trying to please everyone isn’t possible. Editing by committee doesn’t work well either. Having a bold plan, deciding who to listen to without shutting out dissent, deciding how to set the pace for change, and coming up with intelligent ways to make it happen is the secret sauce (bearing in mind that, unlike most editors, Max can’t really edit by fiat on a discussion site). It’s a talent.

You have to keep the blue background. It’s like the wallpaper at Matt’s. Can’t imagine MNSpeak without it.

Rex, nothing like a 15-year-old T-shirt reference. Almost as good as a 15-year-old T-Shirt.

The nome du blog “MnSpeak Should Aim High” reminds me of a bitter joke an old film professor of mine (a suvivor of the London Blitz) used to tell about “I Aim At The Stars,” Wernher von Braun’s autobiography, later made into a (bad) Hollywood film.

Before he came to work for the new U.S. space program, von Braun oversaw Hitler’s V2 rocket program, which killed many civilians in the UK and had no practical ability to (intentionally) hit a military target.

He said the book should have been called “I Aim At The Stars…But Sometimes I Hit London.”

But neither are as good as a 15 year old in nothing but a T-shirt.

Alas, I don’t really read Rolling Stone, nor was I a huge Nirvana fan, so I missed the reference. I liked http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1135135790768027098” target=”_blank”>this, though.

“Trying to please everyone isn’t possible. Editing by committee doesn’t work well…”

You nailed it, man.

BTW, not that I’m actively looking for extra work to pile onto myself, but Matt, if you ever need someone to take a peek under the hood, I occasionally do contract ColdFusion development (CF is my bread and butter). I have references.

“{Once Matt spoke}, Rex immediately cheered, but the main registered regulars here remained silent . . . the reason is probably that your pattern has been to endlessly promise things . . . but then you fail to deliver on the promises in a timely way.“

Or, possibly, those “main registered regulars” are “regulars” precisely because they think the site does fine as is, and are apathetic about what changes Matt might be promising some anon complainer in a thread labeled Rex on MnSpeak they’ve not cared to read. For myself, a newbie, “Rex” may be a great guy and eventually develop a new strain of wheat or cure boils – don’t know him, can’t say – but why his, or your, vision for MnSpeak should command attention eludes me.

Max is kind of a Jewish Cobain. Definitely more Cobain than Rexy.

Oh yeah, I’m thinking Max is still in the information-gathering, formative phase of his redesign. Hopefully, any site makeover will be done with a bigger coherent picture in mind, rather than just for the sake of being seen to be doing something.

Wow. Looks like my old professor at IU is still kicking! Max, you would loving talking to this guy. Among other things, he’s a co-author of a book on King Kong called “The Girl in the Harry Paw”

I don’t remember that Cobain corporate media shirt pic, but I do remember him wearing a handmade “The Grateful Dead Suck” shirt with a duck on it…can’t find a pic, though.

Currently, MnSpeak is just coasting, drifting, when it should be really sailing, confidently, on a chosen course…

Wait… You said MnSpeak not MnStories, right? WHEW!

I’d just like to say, in case I haven’t already, Max is doing an absolutely stellar job in his editorial direction and gentle steering of discussions toward civility. That editorial voice and the community comprise the core of MNspeak, which is humming along nicely.

The aggregator is an important feature though, and I do hope we see a WordPress-powered version sometime soon. The calendar was important in Rex’s initial vision but became somewhat irrelevant when Matt took over. I honestly don’t miss it much – though a well-curated calendar with user-submitted events would be cool. (A ‘nice-to-have’ but not a ‘must-have’ as the software people say.)

Bobby_b: Well to be fair, Rex is the closest thing the board has to a subject matter expert, at least when it comes to setting up a discussion forum in Minnesota. So his opinions are founded on experience, which counts for something.

maybe because MNSpeak was better when Rex was here?

I gotta a question!

How well do you think MNspeak would work in other cities? Before you answer, try to think of it without someone “leading” it (a Max, Rex or Matt). Would it work as a completely open platform?

Great, but you need a Rex/Max/Cristina editor so people have something to grab on to. I guess Metafilter hums along without that, though the community still had/has to be managed to some extent. People need someone to yell at, right?

Possibly. There’d obviously need to be some sort of user-driven moderation though. And unless created with very open “catch-all” categories, the content feed would be very chaotic and unstructured.

Much would depend on who got attracted to the site in its early stages, while consensus is being formed.

You know the answer to that Rex… When Matt was irregularly posting, because of schedule etc., this place was very slow. Someone needs to step up and take this lead to keep the conversation going. Thus, even if the site didn’t have a designed lead, someone would take it or the site would die on the vine.

on that tip…try putting http://www.seattlespeak.com in your address bar…a very very interesting thing happens.

I’ve thought about this for Minnesota Stories. I’ve registered PlanetStories.org and think that would be a cool project. If I was going to pursue that, I’d look for communities that already have an active local vlogger and try to partner with them – someone that knows their community and can act as a shepard to help give their _Stories some shape and a face.

It would be interestingto turn the platform loose on a city, though. Maybe let the local bloggers, etc. know it’s there and see what happens.

Also, how would you avoid the “rants and raves” syndrome, assuming that isn’t desirable? I mean, everyone who posts there complains about it.

Rex,

I’d say one starting point towards answering your question is to look at the Metroblogger example, in terms of what seems to be working and not working, so far, with that model/format.

Erica, a registered MnSpeaker, is active as a contributor and commentator at the Twin Cities’ Metroblogger site.

So far, that site hasn’t gained that much traction; hasn’t achieved critical mass. But maybe longer-established Metroblogger affiliates in other metro areas have.

In terms of “voice”, Metroblogger is clear about that; the Twin Cities’ affiliate’s main contributors are clearly identified, in personal profiles. But on a different level, the underlying ownership/control of the Metroblogger network seems much less clear, much more murky.

If I can offer a few things here, not that they’ll be seen as anything but defending Matt…

He did a new aggregator, or something similar, a few weeks ago. Unfortunately he’d done it on the server and didn’t keep a copy, and when we had that strange crash and re-crash, it was lost. And, of course, the hosting company screwed the backup. (Rex, you might want to chime in here and own up to your small part in that chaos.)

As for the calendar, why not just use Cristina’s recommendations? They’re a lot better than you’ll get anywhere else I’ve found, certainly a lot better than Matt’s. Of course, they presume a certain catholicism (small c) of taste. If you don’t venture out of northeast hipster bars, it won’t be of much use to you.

Well, I know the guy who started Metroblogging, and I also know the Gothamist people (the two big networks in this area). In both cases, I just feel like they could be doing so much more. BUT what they’ve got going for them is a decent set of writers across the country.

Oh yeah, hiring Max was a great idea.

Thanks Tom.

And let me just clarify my responsibilities, as I understand them. I don’t have much, if anything, to do with the technical side of MnSpeak — that’s still Matt’s domain, and I know he is busily working on improving the site, but it’s not something that can be done piecemeal, so it’s a pretty large undertaking.

I provide content and try to encourage discussion. I also delete spam, and occasionally — and gently — try to get conversations to be civil, although I don’t want to discourage honest disagreements or good-natured bickering, which I enjoy and think others do too. I’m also trying to compartmentalize some of the discussions, so that political discussions are more likely to go into threads that are intended as political discussions, and arts discussions will go into arts threads, etc., although I don’t completely want to discourage conversations that arise naturally in a thread, even if it seems unrelated.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been assembling as many local sources as I can fit into a my Google Reader and attempting to organize them in a way that seems to make sense. I will keep playing with this, but some of the results are already on the site, such as roundups of posts from political blogs and separate posts from nonpolitcal blogs. Tomorrow I will be posting arts stories, because I figure for most people their weekends start on Thursday. I would also like to encourage people to continue adding their own front page posts (fpp). The one on the Church yesterday was one of the most interesting we have had recently, and evidence of the value of having a plurality of voices on the site. But do read the suggestions for what makes a good post — I’ve had a few lately that have sounded like press releases, and I am hesitant to publish those, as I don’t think they encourage discussion.

I agree that somebody like Max represents a fine choice for a site like this. But there’s also the issue of continuity, amidst eventual turnover/succession, to consider.

So it makes sense to either run things such that having a terrific site “leader” is not as critical, or else to have a continous process in place for grooming each next successor.

Rex, you might want to chime in here and own up to your small part in that chaos.

I have literally no idea what that means, nor do I know anything about a new aggregator.

Re: Turnover.

It’s true. Even now I am fielding offers for starring roles in Bollywood blockbusters. The moment I master my Hindi, I’m outski.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Aliecat’s a girl, so maybe she’d want pink instead.

Yeah, what tipped you off, genius?

As for the love of the blue, keep it, chuck it, don’t really care, I was just throwing my 2 cents in. Every site could use a little aesthetic overhaul once in a while…but despite being a pouty quitter, I’ll still stick around if it still looks the same…you know, cuz you all are such nice people and all…

Comment: Tom. Your kid is doing just fine. He’s open and owns his mistakes, he’s perfectly capable of defending himself and not a caustic prick. You might learn a thing or two from him.

Feel the love yet, Tom? Sheesh…

It is possible to get topical ointment for really bad cases of caustic prick.

I’m applying some as we speak.

It rubs the lotion on the skin…

Sorry, couldn’t resist…

Say, isn’t that a song?

So I am definetly a mnspeak reader of the old school variety. Yes, I think it was better when Rex was here. To the point that I had all but stopped reaing.

However, I’ve been encouraged by recent developments: Sparber as editor, interesting topics, less vitriol in the postings.

Yet just when I am prepared to enter back into the fold, TBartel has to chime in. Sorry, but my respect is going to plummet when your best response to a plea for a better calendar results in a link to the Rake. MnSpeak was better when Rex was here because it didn’t serve as cheerleader to other publications.

Disclaimer: I have too many connections to the Bartels to probably be totally nuetral.

BUT…I have a great amount of respect for Rex and what’s been done here. (Another disclaimer: I wasn’t really here when Rex was here. Well, OK, for a few weeks.)

I don’t know why MNSpeak is different. It’s a damn topical message board! People, we’ve been doing this for 15 years. So what’s the story? Personality. Rex brought personality, and Matt and now Max are attempting to prolong that history. The topics that show up each day are not random; they’re selected by the editors which makes an argument for why a good editor in ANY MEDIA is always important. It’s why you love a media destination whether you’re too hip to admit it or not.

Technologically, and with apologies to Jeremy, ColdFusion sucks. MNSpeak needs an upgrade big time. Everyone knows it but it’s not so broken that it’s done broke-ded. Should it be built on Rails? .Net? Something else? Why?

Voice — Wow. That’s something. It is presently the voice of approximately 25 people who participate in this forum on a daily basis. Somehow — and I think Max is on it — MNSpeak needs to somehow build a community that encourages the most lurkerist of lurkerist to participate. That’s not easy. Hell, I’ve been flamed on here enough that I have a good layer of charred, but being flamed doesn’t encourage general participation. I think political flamebating is a problem, frankly. Too many left/right topics are offered and the discussion is unfortunately predictable.

Lastly, I’d love to see more media involved in MNSpeak, namely short films. I know many of you and know how incredible the talent is here. I’d love to see more than text posting.

Over and out….A

I agree with most of that…. two things:

1) Personality/voice. I talked a lot about that in the interview. It’s the quality I didn’t really think about before I left, and it’s the quality I think about now as I ponder franchising this idea.

2) ColdFusion. I’m not sure why you say that — Metafilter is built on CF, so was MySpace. I mean, there are some reasons to use Rails or .Net or whatever… but none of them have to do with any of the actual functionality of this site. This site (or any future site) could be completely duplicable .Net or PHP or…. ColdFusion. There’s no particular reason why MNspeak has to be built on one or the other. (Unless you want to argue something about cost of finding developers or something like that…)

The main difference between the rex and matt administartions is rex was always commenting and matt doesn’t.

Rex created a voice. Kinda snotty, sometimes arrogant, but always humorous.

Also, he found weird links. Things I would never have found on my own.

Max or whoever needs to get in a thread and steer it…gently

I have literally no idea what that means, nor do I know anything about a new aggregator.

Hey Rex, remember changing servers without telling Matt? Or did the hosting company do that on their own? If the latter, please accept my apologies.

And, katiec, I thought Cristina was a long time mnspeak idol. In fact, I met her because of mnspeak. Why don’t you look at what she’s doing instead of attacking me for pointing it out? She puts a lot of effort into it, and some people here have already commented that they use it. She makes 5 to 7 recommendations a day. If anyone else is doing as well, I’m sure the community would be happy to hear about it.

Sorry about the crack about northeast, if that offended you. I meant it for Matt, who seemed to rely a lot on the music calendars of a certain small coterie of NE bars.

Aeklund, who would flame you? You’re so milquetoast! Just kidding, it’t the Schell’s talking, you know!

As for Cold Fusion, some of you may have noticed that the server just reset itself, which seems to happen an awful lot.

I’m not a programmer, though, so I can’t say what causes it.

Hey Rex, remember changing servers without telling Matt?

Changing servers? You still got me. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Unless you mean the note that I got from Matt about MNspeak changing servers — which had absolutely nothing to do with me.

I suspect someone should email me in the future if they think I know something.

I have it on good authority that TBartel is actually a very sweet person and cuddles a teddy bear every night…kidding

I’m not going to argue for or against ColdFusion for MNSpeak. All I know is it pays my mortgage and buys me fancy Cheetos.

“BTW, no one has even said a thing about that t-shirt I’m wearing.”

Gawd. I’m buying you a reactee and sending it overnight.

I clicked on the interview link with the full expectation of seeing the “Prairie Ho Companion” t-shirt. WTF?

More Raindog.

MNSpeak pre Seattle = Good crowd, topics that interested me, lotsa inside jokes

MNSpeak post Seattle = Ackward meshing of newer contributors, oldies left or lurked from time-to-time, only DeRusha inside jokes

I personally got tired of the political teabagging. It was like a nightmare game of Counterstrike.

“More Raindog.“

I agree.

Making a long story short: apologies to Rex. The hosting company hosed mnspeak a few weeks ago. They changed servers and didn’t tell either Rex or us. (They did tell us that Rex had moved servers, taking mnspeak with him. Turns out, they were covering their own asses or were stupid. Can’t tell which.) Anyway, when they did so, they evidently copied over an 8 days old copy of mnspeak, which explains the loss of 8 days worth of posts and the google-based aggregator Matt had just done. When we asked them to restore from the backup, they used the same old data, which is why it was reset again to the past a second time, and the old data was destroyed. They overwrote it.

It was transparent to Rex because they host his dns and so fimoculous wasn’t affected. mnspeak’s dns is elsewhere, and so we didn’t even know they’d changed servers until we started getting a “site not found” error.

I know that’s too much info, and nobody gives a shit, but I just wanted to apologize to Rex.

I guess I didn’t make a long story short after all.

p.s. Rex, thanks for calling City Pages sexy in the early 90s. Does that mean I can say, “City Pages was better when Tom Bartel was there”?

Thanks.

And I want to again say that Matt’s comment above is great news. Because, frankly, I think this site is a hell of a lot better than Buzz.mn or whatever. It might have sounded glib when I said that I’m just happy that MNspeak is still around a year later, but it’s totally true. So thanks to everyone who still comes here.

and here I was ready to blame Jeremy Allaire…

Shouldn’t we blame JJ?

I’d love to see more than text posting.

Andrew, let me tell you about a site that might serve your needs, it’s called Minnesota Stories.

If you fuckers are holding out on your films… wait, that’s not a good way to ask for submissions is it. Start over. Hi! I’d love to feature your short film – last year’s 48 hr film maybe? Fax me. Let’s fax.

I’m amazed and amused by one Tom Bartel. He snidely accuses Rex of something about servers, publicly, twice, before checking his facts. Then he sort of apologizes? Astounding. I hope there was a personal email that went out to Rex, of the sorry-I-was-an-ass variety.

About TBartel:

I’m not surprised at all. Very consistently, he’s shown himself here to be an embarassment. A full-of-himself know-it-all.

And as editor/publisher of The Rake magazine (which otherwise sometimes contains material worth reading), he writes the magazine’s opening column, “The Rakish Angle”; it’s consistently full of the same sort of obnoxiousness.

He’s quick to criticize others, including, here, MnSpeak participants/customers (which is just dumb, business-wise). But slow to acknowledge and admit his own failings, which are considerable.

His presumption that many MnSpeakers are interested in what he likes to drink, or in his show-off-ish accounts of his travels to New York or Europe or wherever, or his name-dropping about his hob-nobbing with supposedly influential people, is ridiculous. Same for the stuff about Carleton College vs. St. Olaf College in Northfield. (Yawn…..) [And I personally have plenty of personal connections with both of those schools.]

His boy Matt has blundered here a lot, but let’s be a little understanding: if you’re operating under a father like that, it’s gotta’ be tough.

On the bright side, TBartel has been hiring and providing a publishing outlet for more and more local talent. So he’s to be commeded for that. Now, if somebody, his wife, his son, ANYBODY, could get him to shut up and just concentrate on what he does best, the behind-the-scenes stuff, things would be a lot better.

Oh, and to be even more fair: To his credit, TBartel seems to want nothing to do with Steve Marsh, which, to anyone who’s followed the local alternative-media scene, is obviously very understandable. (Marsh showed up here a couple of times, and made the usual ass of himself.)

Yet just when I am prepared to enter back into the fold, TBartel has to chime in. Sorry, but my respect is going to plummet when your best response to a plea for a better calendar results in a link to the Rake. MnSpeak was better when Rex was here because it didn’t serve as cheerleader to other publications.

I totally agree. I’ve never had anything against the so-called “BartelCartel” but Tom lost major points with me on this thread. If this is Matt’s venture, he should be big enough to take his lumps (and most of the criticism has been constructive) without needing Daddy to come and defend him.

With regards to the Aggregator–it’s been going downhill for months. This is where I reveal my ignorance of web-based applications, but I suspect it’s not rocket science. There are plenty of other aggregators out there (two I visit–http://www.houseblogs.net and http://www.scienceblogs.com). With the latter, they only aggregate content on their site, but still, it can be done. I see no reason why it’s taken so long to fix. And sorry, the temporary link to a GoogleReader feed doesn’t count as a “fix” to me. If it’s beyond Matt’s skills (as it would be mine), hire someone to do it.

After all, it worked when Rex was here.

Oh, and the “if you don’t like the mnspeak calendar, just go to the Rake’s site” was way cheesy.

so, it’s ok for you to recommend other sites, but not for Bartel? Or it’s ok for you to recommend them because you don’t have the creativity and ambition to do one yourself, but not ok for him because he does?

What? I was using the other sites of examples of aggregators that actually work.

Also, I don’t own mnspeak. I don’t have the obligation to do Matt’s job.

Amen, brotherman/sisterman. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Tom.

I don’t know what it says about me that I like both Tom and Steve.

It’s only when you start liking wayne that you have to worry.

Just kidding, wayne. We all love you. Especially maz.

Max, obviously, what that says about you is that you know and like Tom Bartel and Steve Marsh in person. And that’s fine.

My remark was about how those two have been, as commenters, here at MnSpeak. Consistently, each of them embarrass themselves, when they, rarely, make appearances here.

TBartel’s pattern is to not respond to criticism, pretending to not notice it.

Steve Marsh’s pattern is to go nuts in defense of himself. . . to go on the attack, against anyone criticizing him . . . like he’s about 5 years old.

Sad cases, in both instances. . . . . . Interventions possibly needed.

Bob!

):

Isn’t Maz some sort of computer genius? He could probably fix this place up in a jiffy.

Isn’t Maz some sort of computer genius? He could probably fix this place up in a jiffy.

Hardly. Ask him yourself, he’ll tell you he “hires people to do that for him.”

Hardly. Ask him yourself, he’ll tell you he “hires people to do that for him.”

So does Bill Gates. If he gets the cash and the credit, isn’t that what a lot of people call success?

the bartel attacks are amusing, for awhile.

but seriously, would people be on matt’s ass so much if his dad wasn’t his financial backer on this site.

corp america sucks balls. i have dropped out. if & when I have kids, I’d love to be able to set my kids up in a field that is both exciting & fulfilling for them.

p.s. bartel prob bought this site for 150K and will sell it for 300K to a couple million in a few years. give your kid a job, make a pile of cash. i love america.

150k, are you serious? that’s funny!

Years ago, I remember dating a woman at Mac who decided we were serious enough (we really weren’t) to take me home for Thanksgiving.

It was the dinner from Hell, with all of the drunken relatives cutting each other to pieces, sometimes snidely, sometimes passive-aggressively, and sometimes open and hostile enough to be come just short of blows, and the “just short” in two cases was only because I was sitting between her hugely obese, rabid, and drunken aunt and her four-foot-tall overcompensating-through-smoldering-drunken-rage dad.

This thread brought back all of those magical memories in a vaguely dismaying rush.

Bartels, looking at all of the “we were here back when it was good” types giving you advice on how to get it back to where it was, I’d say you need to first decide at whom you’re aiming MnSpeak.

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But I will say this: truly, in recent years, I haven’t met a father who’s more proud of his kids than Tom Bartel. And I very seriously doubt that Matt is suffering under his dad’s oversight.

In addition, you can take that $150K number out of the picture. Plus, I’m sure Rex just took whatever cash was offered and reinvested it back into Microsoft stock because of that shitstorm called Vista.

Rex…

I’m sure Tom and Matt don’t need my help in defending them, especially from a non-entity such as myself, and that I’ve only met Tom once, but I will say, in the immortal words of David Spade in “Tommy Boy,” Hmm, well, he seems like a nice guy.

That, and all this Tom hate speak is starting to sound like sour grapes…

aeklund
you are sooooo right about Vista.
Vista is Microsoft’s answer to a new OS, just like Millenium was a temporary fix for a new OS.
As far as this thread is concerned, we have been reading MNspeak for over a year now and we put our 2 cent’s worth in every once in a while. We especially like the LOLcats, the open and poop threads. Catagorizing the threads was a good idea, We can pick and choose what we want to get into from the home page.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again:
I would like the local blog aggregator overhauled. It seems that it never really updates the blogs anymore.
Sure, I could be proactive and go look at those blogs, but it would be nice if the “chronological” feature worked for more than five or six blogs.
As for MNSpeak itself. People don’t always like change, but it’s bound to happen. Just adapt. That’s life.

$150k, bwahaha! Hey, if anyone wants to offer me $150k for MNstories, please CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY.

Tom and Steve are both great guys in person. I’d sure like to see them arm wrestle. That would be a good video.

Also, I will challenge anyone to arm wrestling.