Typophile reacts?

Mark Simonson

I don't know if it's because of Typeboard, but they are finally starting to do some overhauling over at Typophile.

PabloImpallari

Awesome! Congrats James & all!

James Puckett

The downside to this is that Typophile might become and active again, and I have one less project on my hands. Not too shabby!

Kent Lew

Mark, James — Actually, I think the timing may be almost completely coincidental.

Much of what Jared is doing over on Typophile right now has been in the works for several months. For instance, I’ve been using the Flash-less theme [beta] since last October. But I believe that Jared got derailed from working on it before a majority of the bugs could be worked out.

Then that nasty, persistent image upload bug kept rearing its ugly head, which kept his techs busy with what little time they had to devote to Typophile support.

From what I understand, the current temporary implementation is a result of continued efforts to solve that pesky image upload bug, which has finally come to turning off many plug-ins and extra features, including the Flash, in order to seriously troubleshoot.

I think what actually instigated this last round of attention was that flood of 600+ spam comments that hit the other night. Since I don’t usually check Typophile in the evenings, it went unabated for quite some time. Stephen blocked the user and then e-mailed Jared to bring it to his attention.

Meanwhile, I just went in and cleaned it all up as part of my typical morning routine. (Tedious and time-consuming it was; but it had been about a year since the last flood of this proportion.)

Still, it was right after that that I noticed Jared doing some tinkering on the back end with settings.

And then I got an e-mail from James inviting me to Typeboard.

James Puckett

I am happy to know that Punchcut has been putting so much effort into Typophile. Hopefully it will work out for the best.

Kent Lew

Well, I’m not holding my breath. The track record is not stellar.

Stephen Coles

Kent's is my observation as well. I've recommended to Jared that he pay moderators and contract a Drupal developer. He's open to it and discussing with his partners.

Erik van Blokand

Maybe Jared should ask a subscription fee. No reason why all of this should be happening for free.

Mark Simonson

They had a paid membership system a few years back. Mainly, it just mean you got a badge.

Matthew Butterick

I don't know anything about Jared or Punchcut. But as a matter of rational incentives, it seems to me that if they were going to improve Typophile, they would've done so a long time ago. Either it's not worth it to them, or they're indifferent to what kind of traffic they get (i.e., 10 visits from one underinformed goofball is no better than one visit from 10 informed professionals).

Jared's comment seems to confirm this: "Any community will have strong personalities and differences of opinion." Sure, but he's copping out on the key issue. Any community will also have have a definable culture and values that are enforced. If those who run Typophile have no interest in enforcing a culture, then they have no reason to complain when their anchor tenants relocate to the new mall up the road.

Furthermore, there's been a demographic shift between Typophile's inception and now. The world of people interested in fonts & typography is much larger than it once was. That's a good thing. But in that environment, why should anyone think that Typophile can still be all things to all people? A few have suggested that the existence of Typeboard is an act of sedition. No, it's simply an act of invention and differentiation. We have multiple tools for making fonts. It seems entirely appropriate that we would have multiple tools for discussing fonts.

Erik van Blokand

Building something new and competing is fine. But complaining about the perceived lack of service that others are basically doing for free is a bit lame. 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Mark Simonson

Part of me wonders if it's a waste of time to start something new. I used to be more active in online forums. Over time, I've gotten less interested in taking part, except for the more technical discussions. Is it possible that people just lose interest in participating rather than because they are frustrated with the behavior of others or broken forum software? Will they come back if there is this new thing? Maybe they just got busy making stuff and don't have the time anymore.

James Puckett

I have had the same thought. But I think it makes sense to give a new forum a try because forums are so useful. They do not require a user account as Facebook and LinkedIN do; they allow long posts that Twitter does not, and they are easier to search and navigate than mailing lists. If nobody shows up I can shut Typeboard down and it won’t be a huge loss, as I won’t have spent much time managing a forum without users.

Eris Alar

I'm for both a free service and a paid service.

I also think forums would be better with a friend/follower model. It would help to focus the content I see.

Dan Gayle

Yup. Comedy is all about timing.