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board | The future of Tek

Quick post on my plans with Tek (PS3 with a pile of games waiting to be played, house in dire need of cleaning, cats and my empty stomach waiting for food and what not).

How it used to be:

Tek originated and was driven from skinz.org's messageboard. Whenever something is popular, people start going meta over it. In this case, Ken(ray) and J(umbles) wanted to write about skinning, interview skinners and do tutorials, all nicely wrapped in one package.

To that end, they gathered a group of likely-minded, met in IRC and cranked out articles at a frightning pace, so that a new issue of Teknidermy could be released every other month.

In order to fill up the quiet periods in between issues, J put up a Nuke system (the horror!) and I started posting news on all things skin-related (and in a way got kicked out of my graduation project because I spent more time working on the news than on my project).

How it is now:

As time went on, the big sites of the day went down, the audience changed and staff members drifted out of Skindom. Eventually even founders J and Ken moved on to other fields of interest and Tek was left with a staff of two: Doreen and me. Ken still owns and pays for the domain.

Issues always were handcrafted, first by Ken and Alexandrie, later by me and I put up the current site a couple of years ago, where the news section is also done by hand. Meaning that I write a mixture of HTML and PHP to the main file, FTP it to the server, repeat that step a dozen of times to correct the typos, and every now and then move news to the archives (again by hand).

The good side of this is that I have full control in this way.

The bad side of this is that I have full control in this way. I and I alone am responsible for publishing stuff. It just so happens to be that I am both a perfectionist and have been a sloth in a previous life, so not much happens. Doreen used to provide interviews, but I then would toss 'em on the big pile of things to process and nothing would happen.

That is the prime reason why there hasn't been an issue #14, although the surface of Skindom has changed tremendously these past few years and we at Tek are more like travellers journeying through unknown lands than the "insiders" we used to be. We're pretty much irrelevant nowadays.

The promised future aeons:

About a year ago, I put up this board, because Doreen and I went without a decent "listening to" thread far too long. It is far from finished and the filter will randomly eat your posts if it deems it too spammy or the stars are bad, but I always felt that, like the days of yore, the board should be the center of the site.

In a way, both articles and news posts and the comments they receive are nothing more than threads on a messageboard. They allow people to post stuff without having to go through me. And this is exactly the direction I've been meaning to take Tek in, for years now, and if I ever get to it.

The future Tek will center around this board, or a decendant thereof, which will serve as the engine for both the board itself, news and issues and articles.

That way, we will eliminate me as the stumbling block and can focus on actually writing content instead of dealing with behind the scenes mechanics.

For that to happen, it will need ways to keep people informed of what's happening (ergo: feeds), more robust ways of formatting so actual articles can be written (along the lines of what MarkDown does) and clear and concise ways of classifying content (tags).

It's going to take forever, but at least now you know what has been on my mind ever since the turn of the century. Yes Pekomon, there will be a #14 one day and no, Doreen, I will not throw in the towel just yet. I'll just gradually phase myself out of the process.

// craeonics / 823 weeks and 2 days ago

Well my plans for Tek are as follows:

I'll be your partner in crime until the end or until you phase yourself out then I will phase myself out one second after (but if you phase yourself out as slow as you normally move we may both be around until retirement who knows?)

I'm pretty much obsessesed w/ handheld skinning whether it be ppc or iphone now as you know and since you never published my micky mouse articles/interviews I figured that was a waste of time (which is why I stopped) you need to take care of school or whatever business you have first and when the urge hits you to play just let me know I still can go tackle an interview or whatever if you need me to. I'm not sure if it's just me or it seems that Desktop skinning has really slowed from what it used to be.

// Doreen / 823 weeks and 2 days ago

I was wondering what happened to plastic? Aren't we on his server still? Yet another one that seems to have walked off into the Sunset.

// Doreen / 823 weeks and 2 days ago

From what I gather, plastic was last seen venturing into Habbo Hotel spheres (probably because of the pixel art thing going on there). We're still on his server.

I'm going to do the whole transformation one step at a time. First at some administration (perhaps user accounts) and feeds, then later tags and when that is done we can tag posts as "news", "articles" or "software" (for example) and that way populate the relevant sections.

// crae_work / 823 weeks and 2 days ago

This sounds good specially the feeds since apparently once again I missed a comment on someone out on the front news page (I keep forgetting to check there) anyways hopefully Boo and syro will fill the sections quickly and get things going.

Add me a Handheld section that I can play w/ as well and a way to post small thumbnails or screenshots...

// Doreen / 823 weeks and 1 day ago

I noticed that a number of really old articles on the front page have had comments in recent weeks. But since there's no list of recent comments anywhere, we miss out on that. So feeds and lists like that are a must.

Tagging is going to be free for all. Anyone can add the tags he or she wants. So if you post about handhelds, you can tag it "handhelds". We'll probably need to do some loose moderation on these tags, to prevent us ending up with more tags than posts and the like.

// crae_work / 823 weeks and 1 day ago

Yes feeds are a must I forget to check all the old news post to see if ppl comment cuz I'm a creature of habit and I first come running over here on auto pilot. I felt bad froggy asked me a question in an old news post and I did not see it for months later and he may have taken my non response as a cold shoulder (which I'm sure mattered nothing to him but that bugged "me" still cuz that was not the case)

Anyways looking forward to that year when I see you actually put things into play (it will motivate me too) plus so many new things coming soon I'd like to post about.

// Doreen / 823 weeks and 1 day ago

This should be another challenge and interesting to see how you try to keep the spammers out while letting the site be flexable enough for anyone to be able to post news or articles?

// Doreen / 823 weeks and 1 day ago

The spammers don't get past the filter (believe me, they've tried), so we're safe from that.

// craeonics / 823 weeks and 1 day ago

Some body needs to kick me in the overdrive button. I've gotten lazy. I worse than crae: I find news and then don't post on it. ^.^;

When I stop my lurking sprees, Tek is the first place I come back to. It's about the only place I'm active at atm. I'm glad you guys added the board. The shout box can zoom through on some days.

// Red / 822 weeks and 4 days ago

/me kicks Boo Boo in the overdrive button...

// Doreen / 822 weeks and 4 days ago

Eventually, the shoutbox too will be just a thread on the board.

// crae_work / 822 weeks and 3 days ago

Eventually, the shoutbox too will be just a thread on the board.

// crae_work / 822 weeks and 3 days ago

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