Far too many hours of my day yesterday were eaten up by trying to turn Movable Type into not only a general purpose content management tool (using category restrictions), but also a pseudo-discussion board (using MTThreadedComments). (My own fault, I know. I’m not griping about the software so much as I am my own foolishness at attempting to make MT do so much in one place!) None of this was for my site—it was to help a friend.
If you’ve been wondering why so few people use ThreadedComments (I think the only person I read regularly that does is Phil Ringnalda)…stop wondering. The functionality is very cool, but it’s a b*tch to install, especially if you’re trying to implement it in a non-standard (i.e. you’ve modified the index and archive templates) environment.
I was trying to think about how to blog this technology-wrestling experience I just had, when I stumbled across AKMA’s post this morning regarding the Trotts’ visit to Seabury, and his request to them for a “trackback for dummies” page (as well as other “dummified” docs for MT). He’s right, of course. Those of us who grok the power of trackback try so hard to evangelize it. But for some reason, the concept is really hard to convey to the rest of the world. So the geeks merrily trackback each other’s posts, and build TopicExchange ping aggregators, and wonder all the while why nobody else seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.
This is always the problem, isn’t it? The best toys start out as the hardest to use, and that ends up stratifying users. For me as a technologist, MT is like a giant tinkertoy set. Or maybe Lego is a better metaphor. Blogging as Lego construction. You can go for the Duplo blocks version, the basic blocks set, or splurge on the gears and motors and even the robotics. Movable Type is clearly the geek tool of choice—bells and whistles galore in the basic package, and a plethora of plugins to take it even further. Someone trying to…oh, avoid hearing about the fast-approaching war…could spend hours and hours tweaking templates, adding functionality, playing with features.
But I know that those of us who take pleasure in that kind of tinkering are the exception, not the rule. I sat down yesterday with two friends—both sophisticated users of technology, but new to the world of blogging software. After a couple of hours with them, it was obvious to me how difficult it still is to explain how a tool like MT works, and get them up to speed on it.
Is the problem with the tool? I don’t think so. But there are definitely still things that need to be improved before MT can go “mainstream.” The installation, for example. It’s very well documented—but it’s daunting nonetheless. The customizing of interfaces for entry. The customizing of templates for display.
So, to follow up on my “blessed are the toolmakers…” entry from a few days ago, here are the kinds of things I’d love to see in Movable Type (and, by extension, other sophisticated social software tools). I’m not asking Ben & Mena to do this—lord knows, I’m grateful enough for the software they’ve provided, and I’m certainly not trying to be churlish. But when people ask “what’s left to do?”, or e-mail me asking for ideas for their graduate projects, these are the kinds of things that come to mind.
I know there’s more, but I’m tired and grumpy and sore (pulled an abdominal oblique muscle yesterday in the gym), so I’m going to take a hot bath and then drag myself into the office.
Over at Idlewords (where they’re celebrating “French Week”), they’ve provided a telling comparison of two school lunch menus. One from an elementary school near Paris, France; the other from one right here in a suburb of Rochester.
Following the comparison, there’s some pretty damning commentary—none of which, as a parent of a child in an American elementary school, I can really argue with.
School administrators (along with many parents) will argue that they have no choice in what they can offer, because kids just won’t eat healthy food. But that is Lord of the Flies logic. If you applied it in the classroom, you would be forced to teach English from comic books and math not at all. In fact, some schools do take this line of thinking it to its logical conclusion, and allow fast food franchises to take over their lunch programs. Many more set up vending machines that give kids unrestricted access to candy, soda, and snacks. The dirty fact about American school lunches is that they are a dumping ground for surplus and substandard beef, chicken and dairy products. Many of these foods cannot be served fresh because they would be too dangerous to eat. This is especially true for ground meat, which is at times so contaminated with bacteria that it would not be legal to sell it in a supermarket.
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