Just a request, but can we stop polluting the main blog page with political messages? As this is supposed to be primarily a research blog for the department, it would be preferable to keep one's political agendas to their own blog page. Thank you.

I know I'm on the other end of the political spectrum for Michael, but I will support his sentiments. I post many of my political interests on my own blog, but I do question if it is appropriate to post them on the department's main page.

I don't really care. This is a community, as well as a research page, and I think it's dangerous to limit what people can/should post on the site, or it's just going to turn into reblog (which it's already in danger of becoming). So, while I understand the potential problem of posting political material, I'd rather not make people self-conscious about things they post here. I'm trying to separate myself as far as I can from my political views here, which is difficult.

But in general, I don't really want to start imposing a structure for things that are OK and things that are NOT OK on the main page. Because, frankly, the main page is the most boring part of our site, and doesn't get enough posts anyway.

I almost attribute the 'boring' quality of the main blog to the lack of guidelines. While I'm not advocating strict rules laying out what should and shouldn't be posted to the main page, I know for at least myself, I have never posted anything on the main blog because I'm not really sure what types of things should be on the main blog.

that's a good point.

here's an idea for the redesign, whenever it happens:

maybe the main page should also randomly cull posts from the same day made from other blogs to give it a more active feel, as well as be a place where you could still post stuff like events, etc. that way, we can just concentrate on posting to our own blogs, yet still have more compelling content (hypothetically...) on the main site.

that way, less research related posts, but good community type posts, such as politcal or USC football things, could still be made on personal pages, but may filter up to the main page or something.

Or you could do it by page views -- like, depending on how many people visited a personal blog, you may set a flag that any post getting above X page views would be posted to the main page.

Good points and close to things we are trying to acheive in the redesign in progress. The original intention of the group-authored top page was to compile as many references and viewpoints as possible about what's currently happening in the field of interactive media and also provide references to other formative work that has led up to where we are now. In effect, this should give us all some kind of common vocabulary to discuss and make further developments in this area augmented with comments from others working in this area. Of course, there also needs to be some capability for community related posts and that is planned in the new design. Similarly, the personal pages are intended to be a'research journal/notebook' that document and develop your works, interests, ideas, and questions with increasing focus on your final third year projects and developing area of expertise. These pages should help the rest of us learn about these areas of specific interest to you.

I think these latest posts aren't typical political posts, but rather appeals to the community, and on top of this, matters that were intended to be considered in a timely fashion (in this case, the inauguration). I would disagree that appeals such as this should necessarily be restricted to personal pages, or for that matter even engcouraged to be so.
I don't agree that the main page has been polluted, and resent the use of such a loaded term. If you don't agree with something, it's not necessarily pollution, and I welcome opposing community appeals that don't become so prevalant as to distract from the purposes outlined by Scott.

OK OK.

I posted this in an impulsive moment of pre-inaugural disgust. Maybe it was terribly, terribly wrong, but I think it would be a big mistake to lay down hard and fast rules about what we can & can't post on the front page - I for one would rather see more rather than less activity.

Anyway, whatever you think of the original post (and I actually think the whole protest was ill-conceived and an utter failure) at least it's sparked some discussion here.

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