Submitted by Moderator on 2009, February 19 - 1:50pm
For some time now, we've been frustrated by the blog format, where one post simply replaces another at the top of the page, making it easy for a post which required a lot of effort to be buried under far more trivial ones. There are also a number of other online community-building features which we've wanted to incorporate, some of which you'll find in this Beta version (reader contributions for news & tidbits), and others of which we'll develop and introduce over time (events, podcasts, and others).
We're going live with a Beta version because it's a huge pain to import posts from our old platform into this new one, so in case you hadn't noticed, we haven't been serving any fresh rotis for quite a while. As a result, though we're excited about using this new platform and getting down to some blogging again, this version is still buggy. If you find something which doesn't work properly, or you think something needs improvement and you'd like to help us out with suggestions (greatly appreciated), please let us know in the comment thread of this post, or e-mail us at roti [at] passtheroti [dot] com. We'll make changes over time, and hopefully end up with something that's visually appealing and functional.
You'll notice that our front page is entirely different, and includes a log-in box. Anyone can register as a user with a valid e-mail address. Registering enables you to submit news stories and write tidbits.
News stories are links to external news sources (newspapers & periodicals). You'll be asked to submit an excerpt as well as the title and URL of the story. If the article you're submitting is from a source which pulls its articles after a certain time period (many newspapers do this with their online content), you can post the entire article. The idea is to compile a searchable database of news pertaining to South Asia and the diaspora which we can all refer back to at a later point, so please - no original content, only what's there in the article.
Original content is reserved for tidbits, which are brief pieces about anything. This is essentially an open space for reactions to and/or analysis of recent events, news, whatever. Keep in mind that this is a moderated site, and consider that your post might be edited or deleted, as per our policy (which will be much more clearly stated very soon).
Comments are now threaded, which means that if there's a comment you'd like to reply to, you can click the "reply" link below the comment, and your reply will appear immediately after the comment to which you're replying. If you'd like to display them differently, there are options to do so both above and below the comments list. As always, comments are moderated.
During the migration from the old platform to this one, we lost our categories, so we'll be rebuilding them as we go along. We will be making more use of tags as we go along, and we encourage you to do the same - it makes searching much easier, so don't hold back!
And as always, we accept contributions - so if you have something to say that's too important for a tidbit, or if you'd like to join the blogging crew, send us what you have and we'll be in touch!
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The new website is fabulous, especially the functionality pertaining to tidbits and news. (I had begun to wonder what had happened to one of my favorites blogs during your long hiatus.)
Bravo!
How nice of you, odear! Thank you!
Now enough coding, back to writing!
we stopped writing because based on demand from the blog's previous incarnation, we wanted to start a hair trading firm. if the financial crisis hadn't happened, we would have secured the start up money, but it's too late now. :)
I noticed that the PTR feed on my RSS reader is no longer working. Perhaps this is due to a bug in the beta version?
Oh, thanks for pointing that out - since there are now various sections, there are going to be several feeds, and they haven't quite been sorted out yet. I just realized that I didn't copy down the old feed links before burning down the old shop. Can you send them please, so I can set up a redirect once the new feeds are up?
Thanks!
hi, i wanted to contact one of your bloggers (kettikili) about republishing their blogpost. how can i get in touch with them? thanks!
Hi, you can send an email to kettikili [AT] passtheroti [D0T] com...
(contact forms underway)
Hi. Thanks for responding to the question about RSS feeds. Here's the feed to which I was subscribed under the previous release of the website:
http://www.passtheroti.com/?feed=rss2
Great, thanks a lot! I've set up the redirect to point to the blog feed
Hi folks,
All available feeds for the site are now listed here:
http://www.passtheroti.com/about/feeds/
More will be added as we go along.
I still swing by PTR periodically, but I am beginning to wonder if there is any point... apart from periodic "tidbits" there is very little fresh material from day to day or even from week to week. Are you guys on hiatus? Having technical problems with the new organization of the site? I'd hate to see this crucial forum fade away, especially after you have put so much work into retooling it.
Hi Moonsamy,
Thanks for keeping us on track. No technical difficulties, just inertia. It's been hard to switch gears from development back to production, but please do check back, we'll be starting up again soon.
In the mean time, you are more than welcome to register and contribute news & tidbits.
Thanks
Thanks M.
My personal opinion is that the current design gives people more ways of participating in the site than before while having a broader and more diverse array of information available to them. So people who are unregistered can still comment, while people who are registered can comment and post tidbits and news, and people are who are blogging for the site can additionally post blogsposts. And we are looking for people to do all three - at their level of comfort - and move around the different categories as they see fit. But it will take time and energy, as vivek pointed out, to build this sort of space, and I am looking forward to being part of it :) There is no reason why we can't all talk and see discussions abotu south asia from a progrsesie/radical vantage point as a community activity rather than the standard model of a blogger saying stuff (interesting or no) and everyone else subject to their whims.
I am grateful, for example, that I can be part of a space where someone can come along and say "why aren't you guys posting more" and we can have a discussion about it :) So I do hope that folks will feel not just able to, but excited by the idea of putting up tidbits and news and possibly writing blogposts, in a spirit of openness and love :)
Thanks for these thoughtful responses. My feeling is that in order to build/rebuild community around this site, you will have to generate some activity soon -- both to draw people in, but, maybe more importantly, to model for some of us the range of ways in which we can participate on the site. I'm a relative newcomer even to Blogosphere 1.0 and, while I'm open to the idea of participating in more multi-dimensional ways, I'm going to need some pointers. And frankly, people might be more inclined to invest themselves in the site if they feel it is a dynamic (and durable) forum. I don't think "If we build it, they will come" will suffice in terms of realizing the potential of the new site design! That last remark is not intended as a dis -- I get what you are trying to do here, and I appreciate and admire the vision. Openness and love...
Well crap, back to te drawing board...
Seriously though, you're completely right. And to be completely transparent about this, we haven't strategized about how to carry this out - mainly because I think the crew as it currently exists simply doesn't have the bandwidth to do so.
Which is why, essentially, we've gone public with a beta release - to try and figure out what works, what doesn't, what needs to go, what needs improvement, etc.
I think there's great potential here with this platform as a foundation to build a space on the internet for progressive South Asian politics.
And by that, I don't mean sitting around a fire fueled by burning flags, singing about rejecting the nation-state and declaring that we're all South Asian, or brownz, or Subconti, or whatever in a dilluting sort of way. It's about providing a space where the divisiveness and blame-games inherent in nationalist narratives (whether in South Asia or in diaspora) is critically analyzed in a compelling and readable way.
So we started slow, giving users the ability to register and post news items and tidbits - where tidbits provide a space to comment on, well, whatever.
Anyway, that's where we are so far, and I know you're asking for pointers beyond the mere technicalities of how, but I'm not sure how to answer your question because I'm honestly a bit lost myself.
So the question really is, I think, what can the roti do for us?
We will work hard to make this work, and inshallah it will work. Thanks again for your comments M, and I hope you do take advantage of the functionality - I think it's amazing that anyone and everyone can write little tidbits and post newslinks and whatnot - i.e. vivek is awesome :)
I am also super happy that you have brought this up, M., because I think for too long there hasn't been direct, open public discussion about what the strengths and the weaknesses of various fora that discuss South Asian politics on the internet are. Myself included, it too often doesn't even get to constructive criticism and descends rapidly into the standard backbiting and crankiness and meanness that the Internet has WAY too much of. So I wanted to reassure you, and I think I speak for other PTRers too, that I'm grateful for the discussion you initiated and it's helpful! Please keep it going :)
Thanks for the energy, and receptiveness. Just wish there were more people having this conversation... perhaps in time? I don't want to dismiss other S Asian fora on the net -- of the ones that I have seen, many have their moments, and all have their possibilities. But I sometimes have felt, looking at recent comment threads on PTR, that that culture of oneupmanship and snark you describe, and that permeates blog culture, has found a foothold here. And it's often coming from folks who don't have any particular stake in the vision of the site, who just like to argue. Don't get me wrong -- those folks are needed if this site is going to be a dynamic space, and should feel welcome. But it seems to me that some of the same ideological wars of attrition that sometimes befall comment threads on, say, Sepia Mutiny, also happen here. And here they seem to do more damage. precisely because Sepia Mutiny (which I enjoy a lot) is more of a big tent type site, while PTR imagines itself as a space for more focused deliberation and reflection. I wonder if it will be necessary for you to perhaps recruit progressive/radical bloggers to participate actively in the site, and define the profile of the community and the content of the conversation more sharply from the outset.
The above is quite possibly half-baked, but I will have to leave it at that for now. I certainly plan to keep checking back often, and to participate more fully once a perfect storm of work/life pressures I'm navigating through dissipates. Good luck, and thanks!
I certainly plan to keep checking back often, and to participate more fully once a perfect storm of work/life pressures I'm navigating through dissipates.
This is exactly what besets the rest of us, whether bloggers, commenters, or lurkers! I know it's true for my own situation. (I hope to be more active in a month or so. I also hope to be able to write about what I've been doing. Fingers crossed.) Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Moonsamy. I think you're right, in that our bloggers do have a greater responsibility to create and encourage the kind of community they would like to see. It's too easy to get caught up in the "ideological wars of attrition" you mentioned, when we find ourselves passing through and able to make the time. I myself could make better use of that time by writing more instead. The new site has such potential, and I'm really looking forward to using all that it has to offer.
As far as bringing more people into this dynamic space, the architecture of PTR 2.0 is a much more open space than the previous set-up. But that won't necessarily encourage participation. I think it would be useful if we could set forth a clearer "About Us" and policy for the site. (I say this, knowing that it's all part of the plan! Let's get to it.)
Thank you, vivek, for your hard work and persistence.
Glad my comment struck a chord. I am indeed checking back often, though mostly restricting myself to lurking for now. That, and reading through archived posts -- I only came to know of PTR recently, so there is some nice stuff to catch up on. Actually, a thought in that regard: since one of the purposes of the redesign was to keep important conversations from sliding out of view, maybe the "Featured Post" carousel at the top of the page should include not just recent material but stuff from farther back that is still timely or relevant. "PTR Classics," so to speak.
This is a great idea, and it's underway. If you go to the blog page, you'll see the beginnings of a featured archives section. We need to go through old posts and make some changes to categories, etc. and the whole thing needs to be styled. Eventually the idea is that there will be a pool of archived posts that we think stand out, and ten of these will be randomly placed on the blog page.
I like the idea of having this on the front page as well, but the problem is that we're running out of room and I'm not sure what to move where. Tabs save a lot of room (as in the news section on the front page) but they don't seem to function consistently. When I load the page sometimes the other news tabs don't load until I refresh the page.
The front page arrangement is very important, and we definitely haven't hit on the right one yet.
Hi Moonsamy, your input has been really helpful, and I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. The "classics" feature is a great idea. Maybe it could be a separate box altogether? I'm told our admin is working on something similar-- what do you folks think? Is it better to specify which posts appear, or to bring them up at random? On the main page, or the blog subpage/menu?
imo anyway. :) look forward to seeing you here, and again, thanks for the needed prodding :)