Three Sunday morning links

[dolorosa_12]

I've been out in the garden, planting tomato, bean and rocket seeds, so hopefully they'll be all sprouting before long. We also discovered some parsnips planted by the previous owners of the house, which will be a nice addition to tonight's dinner.

And now, some links.

The first is one of those absurd and bizarre stories that only seem to emerge from academia: scams, feuds, researchers disappearing with priceless archives or artefacts. Honestly, nothing I could say will adequately describe it — see for yourselves!

I liked this piece on the Irish language, and the sea. It also has lovely animated videos.

Finally, I wrote an essay of sorts about community, online platforms, and the eternal struggle to find a social media platform that won't, eventually let us down. You can read it here at dolorosa12.

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

These are all really good points — the RSS thing in particular is really crucial to why blogs began to die a death after Google Reader disappeared.

And as to community moderation, I have bitter experience of this. I ended up moderating a forum, just as it was in its death throes, and it was really far more work than I had the time for. The sad thing is that when I had first started using that forum, I probably would have had the time to moderate it — but not six years later, when I was in the final, frantic stages of my PhD! Really those sorts of communities only work if they can to a large extent police themselves, which only works if they have a robust code of conduct, and clearly shared social norms.