Horizon

New Horizons

Studious calendar-watchers will notice that Horizon has almost reached its first birthday. I will probably be out of e-contact on the day itself, so I'm pre-empting the party slightly to make a couple of state-of-the-blog comments as one of the parents of this, erm, blooming cherub.

I've enjoyed writing for Horizon this year, and much more I've enjoyed reading it. Alan H and I started out alone, and I think he would agree that the project didn't really pick up any life until we assembled the other four members of our little Band of Brothers (yes, and Sister). I would like to congratulate my colleagues on what has been twelve months of provocative, occasionally infuriating, but persistently interesting discussion.

When we created Horizon it was very much in the context of lessons learned about earlier Internet discussion forums, The Scottish Newsgroup above all: what I hoped we could do would be to recapture the best of that particular experience without the corrupting rot of its flamewars and trolling. On the whole I think we haven't done too badly. The invaluable editing (and sometimes self-editing) tools have only been needed occasionally, and I think one of the advantages of the post-and-comment format is that flamewars tend to be contained: the formal demarcation of one thread from another creates 'firebreaks' which prevent their spread and allow them to harmlessly burn out in isolation. Spam has been a more niggling problem, though the MT blacklist that Alan H added has helped micromanagement of that problem.

Anyway, part of the reason for this little bit of throat-clearing is to point out that our rent is due and we need to decide where we go from here. Are the regulars keen to continue our modest experiment? Do they have any suggestions about changes? New posters? New directions? The floor is open, gents (and lady).