"The happiest place on earth"

Get email updates of new posts:        (Delivered by FeedBurner)

Friday, January 20, 2006

The following is written in my personal capacity, and is not representative of the views of Tomorrow.sg as a whole. I feel like I'm writing a minority opinion for a court judgment.

Tomorrow's policy is that it has no policy

Tomorrow.sg was started because the editors were bored and decided to contribute something to spice up the local blogsphere. On my part, I thank those who have shown support over the last months, as well as those who have taken the time to provide feedback and suggest improvements, even if such criticism is not always well received. As with any project, it is inevitable that we run into difficulties along the way.

Many look at the star power behind Tomorrow.sg and have high expectations, but really, one should not expect too much - the editors are just normal people (well, mostly). We disagree, we are biased, we make mistakes, we have offline lives (no, really! The cat needs to be fed, the grass cut, the baby burped and so on) and we're not getting paid for this. We do what we can - some editors more than others, depending on time constraints, real world commitments, dispositions and differing interests in various aspects of running the site.

A lot of readers project their hopes onto us, and view the site as a one-stop hub for Singaporean bloggers: a place where they can say anything they want without censorship or being knuckledusted, and are disappointed when we don't live up to them. However, as our "About Us" page reads, our mission statement is to: "[try] to bring together interesting blog posts and other Internet content about Singapore or by Singaporeans", and we note that we have no agenda, so this projection is not quite justified, even if it has a seductively romantic aura about it. Perhaps the tagline, "Bulletin of Singapore Bloggers", can be misleading and make the site sound seminal or authoritative. However, as a fellow editor once opined, we are more like "a bunch of not-terribly-organised fellas doing this for our own reasons, who even contradict ourselves now and then".

With regard to the occasional confusion, Tomorrow.sg does not have a Constitution or SOP: in some respects, we make it up as we go along, and since we work like the WTO (consensus), it can take a while; as one editor commented: "to even get the editors to be decided on where to eat lunch would be a minor miracle". Editors do not invoke the power of the High Council in their comments, especially since we are a diverse bunch, with different visions, ideals and dispositions. I apologise if many people got the wrong idea, or if some editors seemed to speak authoritatively for the rest.

Also, it takes 2 editorial votes to publish a post, but editors can revoke their votes, whether the original votes were cast by accident, mistake, or whether the editor changed his mind on reflection.

And so this is roughly how things stand, at least until we lurch to the next crisis. There are many questions raised by the community which unfortunately cannot be satisfactorily answered, but this is how it is; our policy is that we have no policy. I may not agree with the other editors' silence, but it is their prerogative, and I cannot issue official press statements without the approval of the rest.
blog comments powered by Disqus
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Latest posts (which you might not see on this page)

powered by Blogger | WordPress by Newwpthemes