{"id":173,"date":"2007-01-26T13:19:30","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T18:19:30","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-08-18T12:48:03","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T12:48:03","slug":"mailbag-1-26-07","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/mailbag-1-26-07\/","title":{"rendered":"Mailbag, 1\/26\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those of you new and old to Rock Town Hall<\/strong> who have little to no interest in the behind-the-scenes drama and upstairs\/downstairs dynamics that we’ve dragged over from our original home are advised to steer clear of the following link:
\n<\/p>\n

So, if you’re into this kind of thing, here’s our initial Mailbag for the new home of Rock Town Hall!<\/em><\/p>\n

Expanding the list from its initial home and broadening the list’s aims were met by the sort of offlist messages we’d hoped for: <\/p>\n

I think this sounds great<\/em>. To be honest, the old format totally bums me out because it’s so archaic, yet at the same time I totally dig the nerdiness that goes on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As well as the sort we’d expected:<\/p>\n

When you change something freewheeling<\/em> and reactive to a cinched down proactive thing, you take away any compulsions that could come over me and force me to be part of some segment of society, however slim, instead of just being able to while away the years in the hermitage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We took the comments of veterans into account and tried to respond to people both directly and in the initial design we’ve rolled out. Of course there are limitations and disappointments, but we’re keeping our eyes on the prize<\/strong>. Some of the initial offlist messages we received reflected our collective hope and ambition, such as this one:<\/p>\n

Looks excellent! Great Job – you guys should go celebrate<\/em>. The splash page picture is awesome – Is that an original? You should make that into t-shirts. Another idea is to take great pictures from history and “RTH” them up and rotate them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this one:<\/p>\n

I give up! You’ve won me over. I should not have expected less from you<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We even got the obligatory<\/p>\n

You guys rock!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know what we think? You guys rock!<\/em><\/strong> This is about all of us. Look at the stuff that your Moderator<\/strong> and your Back Office<\/strong> send to each other – offlist:<\/p>\n

Poindexter’s rippin’ it up!<\/em> You wanna give him blogger status or some coke and a reacharound or something?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We welcome your enthusiastic compliments. In fact, we feed off your energy!<\/strong><\/em> Keep it coming, but don’t hold back on the other stuff. We appreciate your struggles:<\/p>\n

We old men have no idea what the Sam Hill you’re talking about<\/em>. Bloggers, administrators, who can view posts and comments. I know nothing whatsoever about all the levels of this. My understanding was posts could be made by any registered member – comments could be left by anyone – it’s all overseen by an administrator, who keeps it all PG-13. What else is there?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your thoughtful consideration:<\/p>\n

After giving things a bit more brain time, the following thoughts occurred to me:<\/p>\n

1. A public forum will squelch some of the asshole-ism<\/strong> that makes RTH’s gated community so much fun. Speaking for myself, you will see no more dickhead anti-hippy commentary.<\/p>\n

2. The mechanics of the blog version will be crucial to its adoption. I’m a Web-based RTH user, so the change may not mean as much to me, but I dunno. If the new format makes the threadiness<\/em> of RTH go away, I expect dire consequences. But, again, I retain my open mind<\/strong><\/em> about the whole thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your frank initial impressions:<\/p>\n

Frankly, I’m not feeling the blog so far<\/em>. The list is a conversation, stretching over a variety of topics all at once. With the various threads segregated like this, it’s impossible to sustain the same flow and tie various threads together, even when you’re using the last comments function. It’s all just too fragmented.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And your concerns regarding our financial welfare in this venture:<\/p>\n

But regarding the Amazon<\/strong> store…do you get your vig on anything purchased from Amazon as long as I enter thru a link on the page? or only if I order things listed on the page? or only if I order the specific item I entered Amazon via RTH?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(By the way, we’re looking into this question, but a good way to help us get an answer might be to both order an item in our list and one not on the list but through the initial portal of our list!)<\/em><\/p>\n

What’s it all about? It’s about thanking you for giving this a try, for taking a few seconds to register, for your comments, for your suggestions, for your contributions, for passing the link to rocktownhall.com<\/strong> along to your rock nerd and rock snob friends, for coming back for more of whatever develops tomorrow and the next day, for making us laugh, for helping us reconsider an artist we’d long ago written off or ignored…for getting it<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you new and old to Rock Town Hall who have little to no interest in the behind-the-scenes drama and upstairs\/downstairs dynamics that we’ve dragged over from our original home are advised to steer clear of the following link:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}