Sven’s Glass House

I was taken a bit off guard today, and it concerns my people page.
If you want, you could jump down to the header, The Call.

The origin:
My friends were starting to scatter, and I thought that I, too might be off to the winds.
I wanted to maintain contact with my beloved friends, and I did so largely through LJ, Blogger and Xanga.
I realized that I was referring to people that many people don’t know all that well. It would be burdensome to expect my readers to know everyone that was being talked about, or for me to explain who Josh was every post.
So I tried to create blurbs that encapsulated key players that would pop up.

But then I became aware of a line.
There were super-active players in my life (such as Josh, who has remained that way), and then there were folk that would come up in anecdotes (key folk from my past that helped shape me). There were acquaintences, etc etc.
The orginal People page had ‘tiers’ that reflected the magnitude of role people had in my life. But it was a hassle. People would upgrade and downgrade in reality. And the page was designed awful, using one of those browser based web design tools.

In that era I put some terrible things on the page, as I was trying to shed my privacy. I did so with reckless disregard to the privacy of others. I learned and adapted.

The website as a whole was a thought experiment. It was putting some philisophical ideas about privacy and honesty into practice.

Stevenlong.net was born.
A massive redesign of much of the content was in order. The People page was not put up for quite some time. I don’t remember when that happened but I destroyed links to it and pondered about its purpose.

Between the completely legitimate privacy concerns of some folk mentioned, and a few hate mails I was on the fence about it. But I realized that with proper restraint, polite wording, it served more of a purpose than any harm it might inflict.

I realized that my way of seeing people, of describing people, and the connections I have are about me more than they are about the person being written about. It might seem ludicrous. One reads their name, and the words I use to describe them and I’m quite sure they will think it is about them. But there are 166 people listed there. That is a sea of people. The more people I had up, the less it was about any one individual, but more about me.

I can’t say why I want folk to know so much about me.
Or why I would think many would care to, but eh.

So the people page was revised, the tiers were destroyed and it was put in up full.

Hate mail followed (not much), but far outweighing the hate mail were little ‘heys’ from the past. Great people from all over my past would shoot me emails out of the blue. Additionally, there are people that got to know me better through my site. I’m grateful for the friendship of folk like Natalie Lomas, and the site helped. It is my voice, and it is there in my absence.

The thought experiment.
A great deal of time passed with no more insights or points of view on my site. People would sometimes gripe about what I said about them, and I’d try to talk things through with them, often modifying entries to make the situation better. I don’t mean to speak poorly of almost anyone. That is not the purpose of the thing.

So the people page rested.
It went about a year without any real modification.
Then I told someone about it.
They asked if they were on it, and I wasn’t sure.

I went home and looked, and nope.
So I added that person, and another.
And I updated some things.
Babies were born, and there was a marriage. Big stuff.
I updated entries of folk like Jeff Kinney, and then I felt done with it.

The Call.
I got a call today by the person who’d asked if they were listed (on the People page for those jumping down here), that I added.
They said they saw the page and they want to cancel future plans.
I tried to assure the person they could be removed.
I was assured that it wasn’t what I’d said about them, but the content of the page as a whole.
The person seemed a little manic, urgent and anxious.
So, what I’m saying, is that was new.

Stat Crunching.
Since I added Google Analytics 198 unique IP addresses have looked at my people page (versus 620 for the main page).
The people page has been viewed 254 and the average visit lasts 1min44sec.
Main page: 1071, 2min08sec.
The people page is about 16 pages long.
The total combined content of my site (not including blogs) is around 300 pages.
The people page is therefore a little more than 5% of the meat of my site.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 10:58 pm and is filed under waxing, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.