An open letter to John Hurrell

Dear John,

I'm pleased you've started your own blog. I've thought for a while this would suit you better than Artbash. Sad to hear though that you're struggling with the Blogger platform.

I don't know if you read Best of 3, but I know you read Over the net, so maybe you stumble over here sometimes. Who knows, maybe you've hit on Google Alerts, and are tracking the blogosphere's reaction to your new enterprise. Anyways, here's a few bits of advice:

1. Formatting images

Don't blame the browsers for the image/text crunching. The cleanest way to display images is to set the default to 'centre' instead of left or right align when you upload images.

Bonus tip: dot images though your post instead of piling them at the top by cut'n'pasting the image in the HTML view. You can tell the image file 'cos it will have BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID and a whole bunch of other code between the tags.

2. Get a Feedburner account

If you're not posting on a regular basis, people will get sick of visiting your blog to find new content and being disappointed. This is going to make you dependant on search engines and feed readers for your readership.

Make your blog feed nice and easy to find by setting up a Feedburner account and displaying the icon they give you prominently in your blog's nav. Added bonus - you'll be able to track the number of subscribers to your feed (although warning: feed stats are slippery little buggers).

2.5 Change the dates on posts

Or, you could post regularly. There's this sneaky little defect in Blogger, which I suspect you've yet to spot.

If you load up a post and leave it in draft, and then return another day to publish it, it will appear with the date tag for the day you loaded the draft. This means if you load up all the posts on Monday, then publish one of them each day for a week, they'll all still appear as if you published them on Monday.

To make it publish on a different date, you need to re-set the date, by going back into the draft post, and using the 'Post options' button at the bottom of the text box.

3. Set up Google Analytics

I know you'll have to give CNZ a what-I-did-with-my-grant report (PDF). Wouldn't it be nice if you could say how many people read your reviews?

4. The web is built on the hyperlink

I just skimmed through your posts, and found a handful of URLs - but they're not links. This makes me think you haven't met the link button yet: it's the symbol with the green globe, on the right of the text colour button. Highlight the text you want to turn into a link, then hit the button and paste in your URL. Voila.

Beyond the obvious benefits of giving your readers further sources of information, here's why you need links:

a. Links (esp. with meaningful link text, none of that 'click here' business) will help your blog score better with search engine algorithms.

b. People are more likely to link to you (blessing you with traffic) if you link to them.

c. The change in formatting creates some stickiness in long posts full of black type.

d. You'll look like you belong to the online community.

5. A personal comment

Goodness knows I've been had up before for blogging anonymously. But I enjoy it. I would have left some of the feedback in this post on eyecontactartforum, but you're sticking to your first-name last-name guns. Given that you're moderating the comments anyway, do you really need full names to "minimize personal abuse, waffle and shameless self-promotion"?

Kind regards,

Best of 3

Trash talking on Artbash

Yeah, I'll admit it. I lurk on Artbash. Sometimes I laugh at Artbash. But I never contribute.

Over the last few weeks, there's been a rash of reviews, apparently by students enrolled in a contextual studies course at a tertiary institution (going by the Wellington skew, I'd guess Massey).

There's been grumbling from Artbash regulars over the quality of the writing and thinking in these reviews - and fair cop to, in some cases. A review of Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, describing it as a ineffectual public sculpture about the Vietnam War, drew particular ire. (One site regular plausibly suggests that the writer was actually reviewing Maya Lin's Vietnam memorial, and got a bit confused).

In response to the criticism, one of the students posted this comment:

You wanna know the hilarious things Alibi... you're right, we are here completing projects that we have to do for our contextual studies -- and yes, some of our writing might be garbage as you and John have pointed out in some other comments.(we're obviously not as intelligent as you appear to be!)

None of us want to post on here because the environment is completely negative and does not inspire me to want to engage with any of you and learn anything from you at all. While I agree with what it says on this page about criticism being good (and therefore encouraged)-- there's a difference, I think the criticism we're looking for is 'constructive'.

So, don't worry, we are all meeting with our 'teacher' to get our 'homework' marked today, so you can be glad that many of us will probably disappear and you can have your elitist website back.

To which John Hurrell replied:

The site is hardly 'elitist', Jabby, and hardly 'negative' when regulars mutter about the site being bombarded by contributors who lack the conviction to stand their ground and argue their point of view.

If you write when you don't want to and say things you don't mean, what use is that? The result is clutter with no substance.

The review and its comment thread have now been moved to the trash section of the site. Which is one way of arguing your point of view.

It ain't easy being an editor

John Hurrell's most recent comments on Artbash:

15 Aug 2007 12:48 pm: Your article needs images. They are essential.

15 Aug 2007 12:47 pm: I'm not sure whether a non NZ work should be discussed on Artbash. Please paste on an image.

15 Aug 2007 8:08 am: Do you think your council is stable, Alibi? I've heard they are heading the way of say Hamilton, Wanganui, Invercargill and Palmerston North - thinking of merging the galleries /museums with libraries or theatres. And removing the galleries' independence. If so, no art professional with half a brain would want to work there. The environment would be far too hostile.

14 Aug 2007 8:59 pm: The magic word begins with 'I' and ends with 'es'.

14 Aug 2007 8:57 pm: I-m-a-g-e-s, yullofello pretty please

14 Aug 2007 8:55 pm: Some images, please...

14 Aug 2007 8:54 pm: We need images of the work, Akiras.

14 Aug 2007 8:52 pm: Please give us some images, b-man.

The what, John?

Sometimes artist's talks can be doubly revealing.

At the first public programme accompanying City Gallery Wellington's Telecom Prospect 2007 exhibition, Rohan Wealleans was talking about his work Cold Comfort, when John Hurrell (of Artbash) asked him whether he thought that using polystyrene in the work altered its meaning. Rohan , rather bemused, peered at John through his sunglasses and said "The what, John?".

Image: Rohan Wealleans, Cold Comfort, 2006. Acrylic on nylon, polystyrene, metal and wood.

The bash is back

Artbash seems, after a few months of summertime languishing, to have sprung back to life. Well, 'sprung' might not be the right word, but some of the regular contributors, including John Hurrell and 'Jean' (Emily Cormack) are posting again.

Artbash describes itself as:

... an online community of New Zealanders who love art and love to talk about art. Sometimes things get a bit scrappy, but generally there are a bunch of intelligent and educated (well, we've been to art-school anyway) people to interact with.

Run out of Christchurch, it can be a bit Christchurch-centric, although Hurrell does his best to broaden the discussion. On the other (even) hand, it can be interesting to follow a community that's largely talking to and about itself - for example, the Christchurch Art Gallery review, restructure and re-staffing.

So - welcome back Artbash. Looking forward to seeing some sparks fly: Prospect 2007 would be a good launch pad.