John's Journal is a series of posts that serve as a place to ramble about the day to day life of living in Darke County, Ohio, The USA, and Earth. It is written by the curator of DarkeJournal.com, John Liette. Join the conversation by commenting below the post.
A Call For Submissions...
It feels silly to post a call for submissions when I feel bombarded with the ones I already get, but I'd like to gauge interest in different kinds of articles than what you typically find here. The vast majority of submissions I currently receive are from local organizations who provide updates on their programs and promote upcoming events. These are wonderful and I'm very happy to be able to share them with everyone, and I'd like to augment those by soliciting submissions of varying content.
Posts from folks like Abraham Lincoln and Elizabeth Horner are fairly popular, as well as some of the great photography from folks like Dick Brown and Anne Mangen. I'm interested in posting more "life" type items. Do you write or take photos or videos? I'd love to share them the rest of DarkeJournal.com's visitors.
Essays, photos, videos, poetry, fiction, illustrations, I'm interested in all of it. It helps if it is related to life in Darke County, but that isn't necessarily required either.
If you have a work that you'd like to share, send it to darkejournal@gmail.com.
A note about comments on articles...
The chat box was one of the most polarizing things this site has ever had. If you were not around when it was active, it was a 24/7 chat room embedded on the page where anyone could (anonymously if they didn't declare who they were) sign on and chat with other readers of the site. This was both a fantastic use of the web medium and a pain in the rear to monitor. Every once in awhile someone would pop in and anonymously start and/or spread a rumor, gossip, or generally share uninformed, misguided, or in some cases, malicious opinions often masquerading as facts. Eventually, I made the decision to remove the feature as the amount of time and energy I was spending monitoring it was ever increasing as the amount of participation and enthusiasm from those who used it positively seemed to be at an all time low.
As popular as the chat box once was, I get the feeling that many people refrain from using the commenting feature because, in the past, comments were submitted to a queue and only displayed after they were approved by a moderator, among other reasons, but that large hurdle is no longer in your way.
For the past month or two, comments on the articles no longer get held up for approval when they're submitted. As long as the built in spam filter doesn't pick it up, it is posted immediately. This means that comments can now serve as a form of 'chat' function in real time. You can post comments with your Facebook or Twitter account, or you can create a Disqus account (Disqus is the plugin I use for the comment feature). Or, if you prefer, you can post as a guest, providing a name to post it under as well as an email address. Guest commenting is fairly close to being anonymous and will be available so long as it isn't abused.
I wholly encourage DJ visitors to interact via the commenting feature as it's now positioned more closely to the function the chat box held: interacting in real time with other visitors to discuss a topic at hand.
And of course, if you ever have an issue relating to this or any other feature of the site, feel free to email me at darkejournal@gmail.com.
