Writing

The most common complaint I see about content farms is that they serve up lousy information written by under-paid (or non-paid) writers. I can join the ranks of people who will tell you of the lousy results they found on eHow (or insert your other favorite content farm to bash) here. Yes, I don’t like doing a search for “how to build a web page” and getting a result that says, essentially: step 1. build a web page, step 2. put it on the internet. step 3. there’s no step 3! But I am equally tired of the writers saying “I make a living writing and they are turning writing into a commodity!” And other such statements. Guess what, Virginia, writing has always been considered something anyone can do - and as such paid as little as possible for. Yes, every writer I know, including myself, recognizes that writing is hard. To get up in the morning, stumble to the computer and stare at that blank screen is a fate all writers share. To know that you may or may not get paid a living wage for whatever pearls make it to that screen puts even more pressure on. And to then go out and read about how some moron was paid 3 cents to write the above “article” on how to build a web page is both depressing and demeaning. Some days, I start thinking that I should just start writing tutorials that are that meaningless (and I’m sure some of my “fans” would argue that I already do…). After all, that “tutorial” took me longer to think up than it did to write. But ultimately I believe in market forces (says the woman who has been known to rant for hours, yes hours, on the evils of laissez faire capitalism). If the content that is created by these under- and non-paid writers is lousy people won’t read them. And if it gets too bad, people won’t visit the sites that generate them. Then the sites won’t make any money and they will either focus on getting more non-paid writers to flood the internet with crap or they will come around to the idea that paying good writers something slightly more than peanuts is a way to get better quality content. Personally, I am hesitant when a search result feeds up an eHow or wikipedia article. Not because the writers are underpaid but because I’ve found the content to be less than stellar. And the other thing to think about: how much are you paying for the content that you read? I have friends who are proud of the fact that they view all websites with ad blockers on. Others that refuse to pay any subscription fees for content. And others who think that buying a book that was “just their blog posts” is tantamount to complete idiocy. I had a discussion with my brother a while ago where he told me he didn’t want to work with a money manager because “they just want more money”. And I thought, “well, sure, who doesn’t?” I mean seriously, how can one complain that writers aren’t being paid enough when you aren’t willing to pay them yourself? I buy and read over 100 (probably closer to 200) books per year. I have donated to websites and blogs that I find valuable, and do so every year. In this case, I think paying it forward means literally paying. And I’m okay with that, because if I like a writer I want them to keep writing so I buy their books. And another thought: what makes Wikipedia so damn popular and “content farms” so not? I have found the content on Wikipedia to be just as questionable as eHow. And the writers there aren’t paid, in fact every year the Wikipedia founder asks them to pay him! But that’s a rant for another day.

I decided last Thursday to take some time off from my About.com site (and clearly I still am…) because I was tired of HTML editors, didn’t want to talk CSS, wasn’t interested in updating old pages, wanted to finish a project for my art class, and was upset about a change in pay and how they tried to spin it to make it sound like it was chocolate-coated bad news. (It’s not really that bad of news, it’s just annoying how staff feels the need to spin things. Just be honest with us, most of us are grown ups, we can take it without the chocolate coating.) Anyway… So I arrived at my desk this morning chipper and eager to get back to work, or at least not as burnt out, and found:

I got an email today asking if there were an easier way to take my online class because when she clicked on a link that she thought was the next step, she was taken somewhere else. I really don’t know what to tell these people. It isn’t that hard, people! Of course, it IS that hard if you need someone holding your hand the entire way. Step 1, do this, step 2, do that, step 3 go here, step 4 go there, poof, you’re a web designer! I like teaching beginners. I really do. But I don’t like teaching lazy people who can’t be bothered to read or follow instructions. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I wrote to her telling her to go to the syllabus for the week and follow the links from there, going back to that page when she’d finished an article. Her reply: “That is what I did but could not get back. I saw a lot of links to other websites. I was reading lesson 1 and it said to type in HTML and I do not know how to do that yet so I think I registered for the wrong class. I thought I was registering for the html class but I think it is the wrong one. “ OH MY GOD! You couldn’t get back? See that fancy button in the upper left of your browser window? That’s the (wait for it) BACK button. Try clicking that. I’ll wait… Or, if that doesn’t work, try going back to the email where you first got the link. Oh, you deleted that already? How the FUCK can I help you then? I just wrote her again with step-by-fucking-step instructions for how to find the lessons, how to stay on them, how to avoid clicking anything other than what’s on the syllabus. Unfortunately, I can’t fucking control her mouse to stop her from clicking on anything shiny that she sees while she’s not reading the lesson. Holy fuck woman. Okay, after calming down a bit I took a look at the articles. I think she’s getting hung up in one of the Notepad articles that says “write your HTML here” and since she hasn’t learned HTML, she’s thinking “but I don’t know HTML” and getting frustrated. I honestly don’t know, as of course, she can’t even make that much clear in her communication to me. So I added a note in that article saying “if you are in the HTML class, don’t worry about writing HTML here, just type a few words and move to the next step.” Or something like that. Honestly, I think that what is rocket science is writing a course that is easy enough for the people who need their hands held but not so easy that the more adventurous learners aren’t bored to tears and walk away.

I did it! I got my link checker to zero. Or as the tool says “empty container”. [caption id=“attachment_188” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Woo-Hoo! Linkchecker at Zero”][/caption]

Now I suppose I have to go back to writing actual articles! Of course, I also need to finish cleaning up the HTML Tag Library and I should work on updating the CSS Style Properties Library. Those are tedious jobs too. :-)

One of the reasons I struggle with writing a blog, is the idea of audience. When I write in my personal journal, I know that my audience is me. (Except in the unlikely scenario where Mark picks it up and reads it - luckily I’m very boring…) The challenge with a blog, no matter how much I know that my audience is really just me, myself and I (and, yes, we can be a narcissistic bunch), there is the idea that maybe, possibly, in some outer realm of probability someone else is reading this stuff. So I find myself censoring. “What if my dentist reads this?” I think, and erase the snarky comment about dental drills. “What if I need to get a job in the coffee industry” and out goes the aside about Starbucks. It got even scarier on the days leading up to Tuesday this week, because that was the day I was presenting my layout/design to the class. Yes, it was going to be on an overhead projector with very little visible (the projector isn’t big like my iMac…). But what if someone actually read what I wrote in the three minutes it was up on the screen? And then of course, in the days leading up to the presentation, I sent the URL out to several of my friends, relatives, and colleagues. Luckily, most of them are too busy to come back after the initial “follow Jenn’s link so she won’t be mad at me” impulse. But ultimately it comes down to this. For me, writing this blog is a personal exercise. It’s just that putting it on the Web makes me hope that someone is reading it, someone is finding it not boring, some one is (dare I ask it?) laughing at my jokes. I’m trying not to care about whether anyone other than the three of us are reading it. I’m pretty sure Mark never opens it, and he’s the only one I would think might. But I don’t write about PC games or Windows hardware, so he’s not likely to arrive. The best thing about writing for myself, is that I don’t get mad when I don’t post a new picture or excerpt for a while. I just post when I feel like it.

I have a form on my site asking for people to define what they feel a webmaster is. It asks:

“Share your thoughts. What is a webmaster?”

And I received this reply:

“Title: Webmaster description…OMG                 I just read several responses to what others opinion are regarding what a webmaster is and quite frankly, the grammar, spelling, and English are deplorable. If one cannot master the fundamentals of communication, then the game is over. Webmasters will become specialized because of their skills and not because of a simple desire and a minimal education. How would like to go to a dentist who was self taught and just got by in school? Ouch………..”

I started downloading the disk images of CS5 for my reviews today. Yay! Of course, one of the images failed. Hopefully the other one will work. Then I’ll start the second one alone. Downloading Master Collection seems like a bit of overkill. At least I have a nice new BIG hard drive to store the 2 disk images. Then the second image failed as well - of course they wait until they are fully downloaded before they die. But YAY! Second time’s the charm. I got it downloaded this time, and have already started making some edits to a WordPress site using Dreamweaver.

If you’re asking me a question, and I reply saying “I don’t understand what you mean by this word.” Don’t reply saying “I just need information about the same word.” Last week I got an email that read:

I am a college student and I am having my thesis right now. I would like to propose a topic regarding CMS and my thesis should use an algorithm. Do you know any algorithms used for CMS?

I have been writing for the Web since 1995, and you’d think I would know by now not to engage the loonies, but every month or so I still attempt to interact with them. Today’s email gem was from a woman who found a typo/spelling error on my blog. A simple way to report a spelling error is to write: “I found a typo or spelling error on your site” and then point out the word and the URL where it was found. Short, to the point, doesn’t make any inane references. In fact, it’s hard to object to an email like that. When I get those, I typically respond with “Thanks! I’ll get that fixed as soon as possible.” But as you might have guessed, that’s not what she wrote. She informed me of the spelling error. Chastised me for not using a spell-checker, and then said that spelling errors like that bring into question all the facts presented on the site. I replied telling her that my spell checker (and I have two - one in the browser for blog posts and one in my editor where I write the blog posts first) did not object to my spelling of the word. But that I would fix it to her preferred spelling as soon as I could. I closed it with “Thank you for your feedback.” And I figured that was the end of it. I mean, I was polite in my reply, and I said I would fix it. What else could she want? Hahahahahaha! Apparently I wasn’t sufficiently cowed by her assessment of me so she replied to (in effect) call me a liar. She wrote, “I find it amazing how people don’t want to admit to their mistakes.” Then she wrote “look at the little red squiggly under the word, that means it’s misspelled.” And she closed with “I read your site every day and I daily find spelling errors on the Web.” Let’s take these one at a time: 1. admitting my mistakes: Yes, I don’t like “constructive criticism” but honestly, I don’t think her first email was all that constructive. It was rude and made implications about my abilities as a writer and fact checker. If she were my mother or my elementary grammar teacher, the tone would have been fine. But she’s neither. As far as I know, my only mistake was in using a spell checker that doesn’t conform to her dictionary. I did say I would fix it, even if I didn’t agree that it was an error. 2. looking at the spell checker. I told her in my first email that the “red squiggly” wasn’t there. If I accept her premise that I should use a spell checker, then I should trust its results, shouldn’t I? But in her world I must know what words the spell checker doesn’t know. 3. reading my site daily. If she really does read it daily, she would know that I don’t regularly make a lot of spelling errors or typos. And while I’d love to be “ruler of the Web,” that title has not been voted to me, so I can’t control the typos on pages that aren’t mine. As soon as I can, I’ll send electric shocks to writers who post spelling errors on websites. If you want to report errors to me, please do so. I appreciate it, And like most of my readers, I’m only human and do make mistakes. Just remember that even if you do read my site daily, we are not best friends, you aren’t my editor/mother/grammar teacher, and I don’t know you. Pretend you’re approaching a stranger in public when you write your email. Who knows, if you’re nice enough, you might even turn into a friend of mine (not making any promises). But if you’re rude, sarcastic, or mean, the best you can expect is a reply in kind. But I really should know better and not reply to you at all.