Had you read Tomorrow.sg lately? Seen the burst in comments and the hoo haa about all the trouble brewing because some editors thought they need to do some service to their deceased editor by setting up a fund to *gasp* maintain her weblog? And all the mess they made by making public the photos and identity of a supposedly private person editor who passed away? Well, like what the superheroes in comics always believe, great powers comes with great responsibility. Therefore I can understand why the editors, granted with "powers" would be eager to "save" the world when there's trouble. Problem is, Tomorrow.sg is crossing into too many areas that they should not have crossed to.
What started as a bulletin for local bloggers to contribute for their five minutes of fame now became starving for local contributions. (see my previous rant about the quality of posts in tomorrow.sg here). A count of the posts frontpage on tomorrow.sg on 7 Dec 05 at 11:30pm shows 6 posts from online news sources such as CNA, 2 posts from editors, 1 from a forum, 1 foreign blog on SG, 1 foreign blog not related to SG. A farcry from the glorious past where there is better quality and quantity.
Perhaps paddychicken was spot on when he commented on tomorrow.sg 4 months ago.
AutocracyThe editors may have lost the plot and as a result, lost their credibility. It is clear (from the poor quality of posts) that some editors lack the expertise and affected the reputation of the team. The editors must be feeling increasingly insecure with the falling numbers of contributions to tomorrow.sg. I counted the number of posts between the 1st to 6th of Jun, Aug, Oct, Dec and found that the number had fell from over 50 posts in Aug to almost half that in the same period in December, including all those posts originated from online news sources. Surely these must be worrying signs for the editors at tomorrow.sg.
Under an autocracy, the selection of articles would be carried out by a self-appointed person or persons, as they see fit. The merit of this system is its simplicity. It draws its strength from the reputation of its editors and in this case, the presence of individuals such as Mr Brown is clearly a boost to credibility. Some countries have benefited from the wisdom of enlightened autocrats and Tomorrow.sg can gain in the same way, but this is highly dependent on the expertise and reputation of its team. With no clear agenda (either individual or collective), it is unclear what direction this model will head in.
Hopefully after these saga, the editors at tomorrow.sg would learn a valuable lesson on managing such a huge project and make some changes on the system before it's too late.
Updated 8/12/05:
Scratch beyond the surface of the personal attacks and distasteful remarks you will see more than the privacy and fundraising problems, which are just the catalyst in the reaction.
1.) Making everything a big thing. (Like Gahmen, everything also setup committee or campaign)
Tomorrow.sg editors pride themselves with organizing big things for the local blogosphere. They had their conference, their donation for cat welfare society and many editors have their column space in printed media too. So when they thought of doing something for their beloved compatriot, they wanted to make it big too. For example, asking for contributors chip in to pay for idledays.net is okay but blowing the whole thing up to the scale of an idledays fund is too much.
2.) Taking things personally.
There are criticism from people, some of them claims to be friends of La Idler, on the efforts by the editors. But some editors took things personally and started to war on who is La Idler best friend. If the editors choose to honour and remember La Idler this way (publicly), they shouldn't try to convince others to do things their way but to accept everybody's differences. It all seems to be my way or highway attitude coming from some of the editors.
Links: Fighting fire with fire
Tagged: singapore tomorrow.sg
1 comments:
- At 9:41 am Kevin said...
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Nice roundup of points. Hopefully we'll see improvements in their editorial soon... if not, we can always try starting something new ourselves.
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