We have a lot to discuss. I hope that you all will be patient with EC and with me. I’m working very hard to improve the site and reader experience. Enchanted Conversation is my job now.
Before I go any further, I hope you’ll all take some time to read Kitta MacPherson’s fabulous post. I posted it yesterday, and wasn’t planning to post for another day so her work could have pride of place. So please go read her post. It’s the one with the sheep directly below this one, called “The Other (Better) Beast Story.”
Issues with comments have been popping up. The following issue was not a serious one until recently: If you are commenting as a Google user, you will very likely be asked to sign into your gmail account. This makes it seem like I’m asking for a password. I’m not. It’s Google! They want you to log in to your email so you can post as yourself, as the email account holder. If you don’t want to do that, you can use the anonymous option. If you want to make sure readers know it’s you, just add your name at the end of the comment before submitting. There is a post as your website owner option, but not many people use that one.
No comments are posted until I approve them. There are many reasons, but the most recent one is that I receive between three and 10 absolutely filthy comments every day. I wake up to them each morning. I’m sure it’s a bot, but it’s bad enough that I have to see them, I don’t want you all to.
I’m aware of the irony of me asking people to comment a lot, then having to post about how to comment, which should be a seamless process. I get it.
Why don’t I get off of the Blogger platform? After all, it’s a relic, and is very rarely updated. It’s also poorly supported. It’s old fashioned looking. So many things are wrong!
So here are some reasons why I’m still here:
Wordpress and I have some star-crossed, weird mojo that makes every attempt a failure. And, even when people who are really sophisticated in all things website-related try, something always goes wrong; please don’t try to convince me that Wordpress is better than Blogger. Of course it is!
There are other issues with other platforms, and they often go back to the following: I don’t want to leave this huge treasure trove of stories and poems and essays and art behind. Making it an archive will force readers to toggle back and forth, which could cause them to bounce away forever. (You really have a fraction of a second to grab potential readers. Everything must be easy.) That will be bad for the site, its fans, and its content creators. Attempts to merge this present site content with a newer platform have been failures (and far more skilled people than I have tried). Also, as much as the new content is important, the older content also drives a lot of traffic.
Okay, so enough about the issues. Just know that there’s a lot of trouble.
Now, after all of that business about comments, I’m about to ask you for your comments. If it’s easy for you to comment below, please do so. Or, you can email me at katewolford1@gmail.com.
In order to prioritize, and manage time and money, I’d love to have your feedback on the following:
How comfortable are you with EC in its current format? Does it work pretty well for you? Can you comment easily?
When I hold a Patreon campaign, would you be interested in giving small monthly donations, like $7 per month? Or would you prefer a one time, larger donation? (I’m working on rewards I think you will like in either case.)
When I expand EC into some bigger form, and that will happen, would you rather see a small press develop or make EC into more of a real digital magazine? The latter would have flippable pages you can read on your device. Once a year, an actual paper, printed yearbook would be published. The press would have anthologies published in ebook and print form, starting with two the first year, then scaling up.
I know a lot of you detest social media and want nothing to do with it. It’s hard to dislike it more than I do, but there is no way around it: If EC is to survive and thrive, the social media presence has to increase dramatically. So, would you join a Facebook group just for EC fans? Would you follow us on Instagram? Any ideas of your own you’d like to share?
That’s all for now. I hope to get your feedback. And, despite the troubles EC has posed lately, I deeply enjoy the work I’m doing. It’s important that you all know that.
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The image is thought to be by an 18th century Irish painter. It’s weird, and reflects my frustration with EC technical issues.
