Taking Stock at the Two-Year Mark
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input. It’s that time of year when we ask you to tell us what you’ve liked and haven’t liked on the site over the past year and what you’d like to see more and less of going forward. We’ve said it before, but we’d…
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input. It’s that time of year when we ask you to tell us what you’ve liked and haven’t liked on the site over the past year and what you’d like to see more and less of going forward. We’ve said it before, but we’d like to have more architectural appreciation posts. Given our own lack of formal training, we’d be interested in hearing from anyone who would be interested in writing occasionally about the borough’s architectural past and present. Other than that, we have an exciting (we think) new feature coming out in January that will being some order to the service component of the Forum. Also on our wish list: Video house tours of brownstones. And while there are times we wish there were less bashing of new developments on the site, we feel duty-bound to continue to hold bad developers’ feet to the fire. And, of course, we wish people could be a little nicer to each other in comment threads, but that comes with the anonymity of the medium.
Clinton Hiller sounds good to me since that is where we live! Love the site, the comments, everything. Husband is even getting into it. Happy New Year to you and your family and thanks for all the info you’ve given me in the past two years!
Call it “Clinton Hiller” instead of “Brownstoner” since clearly that’s the focus.
Kick-ass site. More and more impressed with how you pull it off with a full-time gig.
SUGGESTION: A DATABASE OF RECENT (2001 to date) BROOKLYN BROWNSTONE COMPS broken down by year built, width, lot depth, stories, type (i.e. Italianate), date sold, sale price, etc., all push-pinned on a map like MS Local Live. Different versions of the map could be queried by playing with the various characteristics listed above (i.e. Brownstones sold in 2005). Each brownstone would have a comment section to work out any objections to or unknowns in the data. In fact, the bloggership could help you build it if you provide some type of interface for data entry.
If confidentiality (street address) becomes an issue (already not so on this site), brownstones could be lumped into street-blocks (i.e., St. James betw. Gates & Green).
Maybe sites like PShark already have this covered, but for a fee and not specialized for historic brownstones.
I think someone’s suggestion to put a reminder directly over the “Comments” text box on “Post a Comment” telling people to be civil to one another, is a great idea. Sounds almost too simple, but I think it would help, truly.
No, no, no to requiring photos and showing one’s true identity. Not unless you want to invite creeps into this website’s users’ lives.
Holy crap. Mr. B I hope you NEVER, EVER reinstitute registration, let alone collect information about home ownership status, photographs, etc.! I have enough ‘big brother’ in my life, thank you very much. This just sounds like a good way to drain the life from this blog.
Everything’s working just fine…don’t ‘fix’ it.
And yet another idea — take a long hard look at apartmenttherapy.com.
They do a GREAT job at coming up with themes, polls, photo contests, and all sorts of ways for people to participate in the site. As an Added bonus it creates compelling content that the writer doesn’t really have to write AND it brings people back again and again to see results, etc.
Again, great site (I posted above). Another thought came to mind.
There’s a lot of negative comments on posts because people are anonymous.
Maybe move to a proper registration system and help people develop identities. Usernames, photos, home ownership status, etc. It would go a long way toward people developing deeper affinity toward the site.
yes, it would cut down on the number of comments but I also think it would improve the signal to noise ratio.
I understand this would take some solid technical chops — I don’t know if you happen to have those skills or not.
12:14, love the idea, and 12:39, point well taken about the hypocrisy of selective property seizure by the government.