Sherry: Good question! I don’t even know why I am still posting here sometiems. Maybe the merlot is making me do it….
I saw Dick Puffer today. He told me about a meeting yesterday about the status of HVTD that he attended. I didn’t know about it. Only a few people attended, mostly the staff from the Flo Mo News side, if I understood him correctly through my hearing aids…he seemed discouraged about the outcome of the meeting.
I won’t be posting any photos or major news items here until this site goes back to being what it was before the crash.
The ads taking up almost half the sapce of the page turns me off completely. We are sick of them.

Jimmy,

On the technical side, there are people working to improve the look and to recreate the features of this site’s former life. However, the exact look was totally lost with the crash, so it will never be exactly the same.

That said, I encourage everyone to continue posting because that is what made Hartsville Today what it was, not a button or avatar. It was the people and the community that lived here.

That is what made the site special, and that’s what makes Hartsville special.

Without community input, news and photos, Hartsville Today can never be fully revived.

Without you Jimmy, Hartsville Today can never become what you want.

The meeting you refer to included Jon Shannon, Dick Puffer, Jana Longfellow, Publisher Mark Laskowski, Doug FIsher and myself - hardly just folks from “Flo Mo News.” Those were the only people invited besides one person from IT and Audrey.

We met to discuss ways to improve the site as well as to discuss its role in connection with The Messenger, historically and in the future.

We are trying to reestablish its utility and impact in the community, but we cannot do it without the community’s involvement. Improving the site is a process, and I ask everyone’s patience as we work on its features.

In the meantime, please post your news, photos and commentary. They are the lifeblood of this site.

Feel free to contact me with any questions. 843-332-6545.

Lisa

Sherry - thanks for putting my name up in pixels. Everybody loves to see their own name. : )

LIsa - Is it a news site? is it a forum? Maybe posting Messenger content from the SCNow site might stimulate conversation. . .

I would love to see the color palette revisited. I’m getting yellow green and blue green backgrounds with olive text in the forum and black text in the ads. Maybe its my system settings maybe my personal taste is just twisted but something different may help. It’s a small fix yet I am always surprised how color schemes change things.

I know it will take a while to master Expressions Engine but the details you mentioned, while not the heart of the enterprise are still important, particularly photos within the posts and not on a separate thread. We’ll wait. It would be nice to get periodic updates from the site manager on what to expect. Thanks for your (and that means everyone involved) work.

This site is for the community to use as it sees fit. The initial vision of the site was as a community news site with a taste of the public square (forum).

I did not mean to say the details/features were not important - they are, but the MOST important thing on this site are the people who visit and the people who post.

The Messenger will be posting more items from the print edition and http://www.SCnow.com, but I think this site is less about The Messenger and more about the community.

As I am made aware of status updates on features, I will certainly pass them along. I do hope you continue to post.

Thanks.

Ted, I am glad to see you post.  I like to see new content on hvtd, especially the old familiar names.

It seems that many people have given up the hvtd habit because of the difficulty in finding the latest content/comments. The disconnect between articles and photos is a problem too.  It is just hard to get that warm and fuzzy feeling now.

I haven’t had much time to devote since I have taken to working for the government.  As soon as I finish counting all these people, I will try to start writing more often.

I know of at least 3 people who have repeatedly attempted to register here without ever receiving a response.  I helped one of them do it from my own computer, so I know all of his information was entered correctly.

This was a problem before the site change as well.

Though I don’t know how the process works now or if it has changed since the crash, I will look into the issue and try to correct it.

J. Wilson:
Please contact me directly with those names so that I can check.

I’ve been very vigilant in trying to approve memberships, rejecting only those whose IP addresses check back to Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, etc.

I was noticing today that out of the 170+ registered users several dozen have never visited the site again. That makes me suspect the confirmation announcement ended up in their junk queue and got zapped.

I will create a separate post with those names. Please encourage people to look at them.

Unfortunately, I can no longer retrieve or reset passwords if they have been forgotten. All I can do is try to delete the account so the person can start over.

Doug

Ted et al.:

I have been giving you updates as Matt has given them to me.

Our discussion the other day was very useful, I think, in reminding everyone about why the site was set up and some of what our research has shown

—Hartsville Today is a “community news” site. We chose those words carefully in setting it up.

—Its purpose and goals are still right out there for everyone to see: http://www.hvtd.com/index.php/site/about/

—Jon Shannon was very vigilant in making sure the conversation did not break down into one of just adding features. And that’s good because it’s not about features but about stewardship, both by the community and the Messenger.

—“Benign neglect” would probably be the best way to characterize the Messenger’s orientation toward the site, first in the latter days of Osteen ownership and then when Media General took over. Our research clearly showed the staff—both the newsroom and sales—had not figured out its relationship to the site, but it also lacked the leadership to help it do so. (In some cases, e-mails or comments to me from senior staff were openly hostile, but I don’t feel like getting into details.)

—Having said that, people like Jim, Duane and Will were big supporters. Unfortunately, except for Jim, they no longer are there. And Lisa is a supporter who needs some time as editor to work with me and those in her company to determine how the newsroom will interact to nurture and support the site and those contributing or just reading.

—The crash unmasked the benign neglect, both in terms of IT and elsewhere. I had been able to do a lot of things in our old system (Drupal) in terms of activating features and making changes that did not require intensive programming to keep the site fresh and user-friendly. This ranged from creating polls, which were fun, to helping people who needed passwords reset. I had the ability to read extensive logs that let me know if there was trouble. With the new system, I no longer have any of that ability.

—There are lots of reasons for the above, mostly institutional that are common to most media companies, large and small, I’ve worked with. Having said that, Media General, specifically Matt and Shawn in Richmond, have been as responsive as one could expect with their workloads. We are getting far more support than we did in the last months of Osteen.

—Reviving HVTD is not about strictly a punch list of features, as Jon and Lisa so aptly have pointed out. But even more in the digital age, form and function are interminably intertwined, and it is more important than ever that media companies listen to their users. I think that is being relearned with HVTD. Not having visuals on the front page is deadly; I and we know that. Not being able to easily link visuals from the gallery to the posts also is deadly, and we know that. Matt is working on that and many of the other things. I stressed the other day that a community calendar that allows people easy ability to make entries is important. So is the ability to edit your posts.

But we circle back to the beginning, and features or not, the heart of Hartsville Today remains as a community news site augmented by, we hope, lively but civil comment threads.

When Graham Osteen and I started out, we decided what we wanted to try to encourage from the community and the paper and then chose a content management system that molded itself to that. We built it and, eventually, with the excellent help of Dick and Jana, the community came.

The dance is more complicated now - the content management system is in place and dictated by Media General. But a community site is not a content management system; it is the content and discussions that go on inside it. That ability and opportunity still remain significant with HVTD. Media General, I think, has a much clearer idea now of what this site is (and I salute Mark Laskowski for acknowledging the community’s unrest and pledging to address it; trust me when I tell you there are more than a few publishers I have known who would have blown this off). I encourage everyone in the community to help remake it a reality.

Doug (and, as always, I will help however I can)

I just can not believe that those in the know about this site had a meeting and didn’t invite Jimmy Ballard or Bubba!  It’s obvious that they’re Democrats because of the vast transparency.  Sandy Sue will surely uncork another bottle of gin.

Should this calamity persist, Pine Ridge may well sever diplomatic ties with those uppity ‘downtown’ folks.

Well, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, Kemo Sabe.
I think this meeting was limited to the upper echelon.  At least they didn’t hijack your post and then ignore you in the comments….

Hey, Sherry!  I’m still here and just viewing it all from a distance, waiting for you, Jana, Puff, Jimmy, Audrey and others to start talking before I’ll join in.  Too shy, I guess. 

I AM alive and kicking.  I’ve lost 50 pounds in the past year and I am busy with family, home, church, school, exercise, reading and writing.  Thanks for asking!  Hope you and everyone else are doing well!

Jon organized the meeting, and I’m sure he did not intend to snub anyone by his choice of invitations. It probably had more to do with the logistics of getting everyone together from Columbia (Doug), Hartsville and Florence.

Sherry - I didn’t mean to ignore you in the comments or hijack your post. I apologize if you thought I was doing so. I was just continuing the conversation.

Caroline - Congrats on your success!

Caroline,
That is fantastic news! I think I may have found some of those pounds if you want them back. Thanks for the response.
No hard feelings to anyone, I was just feeling a little neglected.

I have been working a lot of hours on various Census operations as a crew leader. I have been selected to attend supervisor training next week.

Like a body on the beach, it jerks a couple of times, spits up a geyser of seawater and starts to cough! HVTD lives! Congratulations to all.

Things look pretty good down here with the white on either side.

Thanks, Sherry, for posting this.  I am ashamed that I haven’t been posting much, but I admit I hate the adds, hate the hospital looking green color with the Grandma’s bathroom purple, and lack of photos on the page… it’s just so darn ugly.  But, as Ted pointed out, the bottom of the posts is not so bad with the white on either side. 

I promise to do better about putting stuff on here, it’s just been so frustrating that our old site was lost with all those great stories and photos…but, change came and change we must.

So, forgive me for not posting and THANK YOU to Sherry for helping keep us on our toes.  (I have a green Census 2010 t-shirt for you, Sherry, but Teresa Mack took my green hat!)

Purple? Purple! I don’t get purple. Just green on green. I understand the folks responsible for this hay ride have more important issues to deal with and I can deal with the color scheme forever if necessary. No biggie.

I don’t get the ads when I am using my Firefox browser. Guess it’s the way I have it setup. Wish I knew more on how the setup works. When I use IE 7 I can see the ads. Although I preferred the old site I know it is gone and can never come back. Life changes and people need to learn to live with the changes. Years ago I was called to a company meeting where all of the project managers were flown to ST. Louis for a 4 hr talk with the owners. The reason for the meeting was to discuss changes in our industries and changes in the way we had to deal with our customers. Everybody was given a small book titled “Who Moved the Cheese?” It was all about accepting change. I have accepted the changes with HVTD and will continue to post. It’s not as interesting as before, but that that should increase as people come back. My posts may not be as intellectual as little brother Ted’s, but at least I try. The staff has done a good job with improvements and I hope will continue with them. Good luck to all involved and I will try to do my part to help it grow.

Ooooo! I’ve been punked. Intellectual you call me? Isn’t that a code word for communist? And here I was about to congratulate the staff on getting some pictures to pretty up the front page.

In regards to HVTDers

“If you build it they will come”

but,

“If you rebuild it they will not come”

any chance of switching software to something like ubbcentral?

it just seems this software isn’t user friendly at least with something like ubbcentral (cheap 149$ and very easy to setup)

has many features….

i think a lot of people would be willing to go through the hassel of re-registering just to get something that easily shows you new articles, avatars, notifications of replies etc… and private messages…

if not maybe it could be done on hartsvillesc.com?  jana?  that would at least allow for a city wide forum and the mayor/city coucil could use it too to provide information

Washington:
No, this is the software we are going to use per Media General’s decision.

Matt is working on many of the things you’ve mentioned and has found a module that will do logs of them. About the only thing I don’t think is planned is private messages.

Doug