Hey Brian, hope you can make it to our monthly pub meetup tomorrow- should be a good one as have a special guest speaker

Brian

I’m very happy my website is on your radar, and wish you all the best whatever occurs. I’m very fond of Samizdata and still tune in, though the frequency of output seems to be lower and I have also missed Perry de Havilland’s writing.

Ironically, the speaker which Andy Janes mentions is one of your fellow Samizdatistas. It’s a testiment to the importance of what you’ve done that groups like ours are inviting members of groups like yours to play a key role in what we’re up to.

Like Andy, I’d be honoured to have a pair of Samizdatistas along tonight and am certainly not worried about being attached to the old guard. I hope to learn as much as possible and I hope it helps me to achieve a fraction of what you have.

Simon Gibbs

Andy, Simon: I certainly enjoyed last night. Good meeting (and, importantly, you have chosen a good venue). I think having a break as you did between the talk and the questions so that people can top up their refreshments is a good thing, too.

Back to Samizdata, I think another issue is that the website looks old. If feels like a somewhat clunky site from 2002, and web design has really moved on since then. I think a redesign and a streamlining of the software would help us all feel rather refreshed, which would be good.

I was partly in the mood to respond to this “Fred” character and suggest that he set up a blog of his own or join as a commenter, but did not want to sound like I was being peevish. The truth is that Samizdata is over a decade old and the blogging format is not that young, hip and happening thing it used to be. It has matured; there are now many more places for people to check into.

I am sure the site could and should have a makeover; we also need some fresh commentators. Without being falsely modest, I have been one of the three or four mainstays over the past 10 years; for about two years, it seemed I was about the only person writing there. It is tiring and difficult to come up with inspiration for a new post every day when you also have a busy life. And I do rather enjoy my life.

The comment threads are also less busy than they used to be. Some have just moved to other blogs, and from time to time we have culled various trolls and bores. But there are many readers who rarely leave a comment.

Idea I just had, possibly not well thought through, but take a look at this site: http://lesswrong.com

Not the content (though I am enjoying that) but the setup.

There’s a blog section and a discussion section. Anyone can post to the discussion section. If your discussion post gets up-voted enough it gets promoted to the blog section.

This could be a way to recruit new blood without appearing to be a bunch of old guys casting about for it.

Oh by the way, what gave me that idea was this bit from this article about the costs of trivial inconveniences:

He mentioned how surprised he was that so many people were posting so much stuff on Less Wrong, when very few people had ever taken advantage of Overcoming Bias’ policy of accepting contributions if you emailed them to a moderator and the moderator approved. Apparently all us folk brimming with ideas for posts didn’t want to deal with the aggravation.

Samizdata has the same policy - email an article, it might get posted. No-one does. Make it trivially easy for anyone to post anything, scoring system to filter… What could possibly go wrong?

Brian,

You know what needs to be done at Samizdata - and nobody wants to do it - it needs to be archived properly.

The problem is that the archive is set up for searching only the postings themselves with a boolean search, yet it was often the comments section that contained the most valuable discussions (e.g. Midwesterner’s contribution was always far more in the comments than in any mere postings he did).

Figuring out a way to facilitate recall of the best discussions and arguments is the job that is crying out to be done at Samizdata. But otherwise Fred is right - it’s just Jonathan strolling around the libertarian perimeter fence again and again and again.

mike

Strongly agree about the archiving.

Speaking as a writer of the occasional quite good post, in among shorter chatty ones (where, you’re right, the good comments are what matter), I dislike that there are not even any author archives.

One of the reasons there are so few commenters is that Perry drives them away - as in when he threw a tantrum and barred Ian B (not me, the other one!). Couple that with Paul Marks’ interminable conspiracy ridden posts and you don’t have much to stay for.

I too wish that Samizdata had (what I consider!) proper searching capability--for instance, Micklethwait AND ("Sean Gabb” OR “David Davis") NOT 1901” .  And archives by month.  Also, as an example, I tried to find the much-praised reviews by Findlay Dunachie, but, alas....

But other than that I LOVE the look and style of the site.  It’s clean, it’s no-nonsense, no silly advertisements, banners, heaven help you if you mouse over a trigger phrase, etc.  And (as said on-site one time) I REALLY like the white on darkish-blue.  I find that so restful to the eyes!

As to content, I find a good deal there that’s of interest, from both the featured writers and commenters.  And I very much appreciate the general tone of civility.

Samizdata is one of the all-time great blogs, and long may it prosper. Perhaps it is being affected mainly by the reader migration to newer social media that seems to be reducing traffic on other blogs, network colossi such as Instapundit excepted.