I am currently working on a collaborative information and documentation system for the site along with quite a few other upgrades and enhancements to the site which have taken longer than expected.
So, in the meantime, I have created this forum for people to post detailed articles about specific unicycling topics. The threads in this forum will then later be merged into the new system.
If the topic you want to write information for is already in here, please add to the already existing thread.
If you want to see a topic covered, then post the request in the New Topic Request forum.
So wait…this isn’t really articles about specific unicycling events/people etc, but is about like specific topics? Like could someone write a tutorial on idling and would that go here?
I think a resource like this is an excellent idea.
I do think though that submissions should be reviewed before they are added, i.e. this should not simply be another forum where anyone can throw anything up with follow up sympathy hurls by the rest of us. This should be a place for authoritative content.
I also think, if it is supported technically, that the articles once installed should stand alone and that the discussion should be a separate thread as with online newspaper articles that have a link to a discussion thread.
Yeah, I agree. What my plansare is to separate this off onto another part of the site but still have it integrated with the forums for comments and such.
I also want to have it where a person is in charge of a certain category and will approve each new topic/section and have a hand in accepting any edits and additions to a section.
If I can get everything to be implemented as I envision it, it’s going to be a pretty sweet setup.
For now, until I get the new system in place, this section is a free for all and I’ll moderate it and set someone else to help moderate it.
Will this forum (or whatever form it takes in the end) further undermine the position of the paper unicycling magazine On One Wheel?
Compared to OOW, the forums are much quicker, more dynamic, more interactive, draw a wider author base, reach more readers, are better searcheable. John Foss sometime ago stated as one of the main raisons d’être of OOW that the articles were better thought out as opposed to the fleeting nature of the writings on these fora. Now with the (as yet somewhat implicit) TOR for the Unicycling Articles forum, this last argument seems to vanish.
Not that I care too much about it. Not being an American citizen, I am no member of the USA and hence no subscriber to OOW. I’ve seen a few copies and they were a nice read but to me personally it would not be a big loss if OOW became history. Move with the times.
Yet, it’s something to consider. How do forum users think about it? How would the editors and the readers of OOW think about it?
I did not realize OOW was still extant; a not-entirely-casual sifting of online unicycling resources might lead one to conclude that OOW’s last publication occured roughly 5 years ago
By extension, the USA’s front page shows National Unicycle Convention dates stamped as 2002 (although 2005 NUACC dates show up on the update frame.
I want to be clear that i’m not simply bitching as a non-member nobody, i have some idea how challenging it can be to keep up an organizational image and message.
It’s hard enough when we’re paid to do it, and even more difficult when we have to shoehorn such nuts and bolts into our free time.
I will point out, however, that i was faked out to believing the USA and OOW were dead, and that their webpages were simply internet zombies.
…
More topically: an online presence certainly dilutes the uniqueness of a printed publication, but for narrowly focused issues like unicycling, i think there is still a significant need for printed material. The main needs a magazine would fill is threefold: interesting, feature lentht articles, easily accessed advertisements and – and this can’t be overlooked – as totems or tokens of our love for our hobby(!) as well as display objects and recruiting tools.
By the latter two i mean that a magazine gives us something interesting to show people. Pictures of Unicyclists having fun. Etc.
I will be sending the USA a check in tomorrow’s mail and look forward to receiving my first isssue of On One Wheel I also look forward to learning more about the living organization. Perhaps i can find a way to help.
Thanks, Klaas Bill, for your provacative question.
It’s not the intention, but looking at the current status of the OOW, pretty much anything that’s moving forward and getting unicycling content out there is going to undermine the OOW more. The USA really needs an overhaul right now and needs to figure out how to adjust to the new unicycling scene and internet scene. Right now it’s still a little old school on it all (hasn’t grasped the muni/trials scene).
The intention of this new forum and what I plan to do with it on the site is more about getting content out there, most of which is non dated content. A magazine, such as OOW, is more about dated content, a snapshot of unicycling at that specific time.
I changed the name of this forum to include Tutorials in the name as I don’t think I got the message across on what this forum is about. Right now, I want to get in depth articles of information about frequently asked topics, so if there is something asked in RSU that comes up often, someone should write a detailed article about it and put it here.
I think in RSU because a question is not an article nor is it a tutorial. Posting it here would ‘contaminate’ this forum. I commend you, though, for asking the question in this thread rather than posting straightaway. The question is certainly appropriate for this thread.
The Unicycle Product Reviews forum has lost its appeal to me because too often people post questions (and other stuff) rather than reviews.
So if I get the intent of this forum correctly, it would also be a good place to gather already useful pieces of content…the write-up of the “Yoopers Fix” comes to mind, as does the thread on how to disasseble a Profile hub and fix the keyway slop.
There is a specific person whose help you need in the “archivist” role, although we already ask so much of Him.
Yeah, however, most his content is already there… so if he’s not interested in doing the work of putting the content in the new structure, then others can do it with his permission.
