Welcome to Earth Chronicle Beta!
We're glad you're here! In the first place, you may have had a chance to look around and feel a little overwhelmed. Need help? You're in the right place. Please stick around long enough to see what we're doing here. There are two kinds of people who help us on the Beta website, and they're both Critical to the success of the entire Earth Chronicle.
In the first place, there are the techies. People who actually know all about and understand web design, server side programming, front end development, web applications, or one of the disciplines integral to the success of a website. Welcome! You are the knights who will do battle with the future and our code to create a better, more powerful, more usable website. We need your help and expertise. Because just like every other aspect of Earth Chronicle, there's no one who can do this alone. Get your hands dirty, build an application, code some webpage content, rewrite the stylesheet, or create a .jpg or .psd mockup of a new design. Contribute your expertise and insights to make sure that Earth Chronicle is... if not as good as it can be... at least as good as we can make it. I will personally be very proud if we can achieve that.
Second, but of equal importance, are non-techies. You probably don't know Java from Javascript... and it doesn't matter. Welcome! The techies generally contribute and talk more here. The non-techies tend to lurk a little more until they jump in with uncomfortable truths that sometimes change the direction of everything we're doing here. So just because you feel like you must be the only one who doesn't understand something, be aware that the techies have an unfair advantage. They know more about the insides of what's going on and therefore have more to talk about. But your input is just as important to what we are doing. You know everything you need to know to contribute on important questions here. What should the website look like? What features should it have? How should it work? What do you want from it? Everything that the techies are working on here, is for you. And everything, Everything will ultimately wind up in the hands of users, of which you are one.
And if you don't like an idea, or some change is confusing and you don't understand what it means for how you'll use the site, Ask! Interrupt! Say something! Don't be shy, this is your website. The survival and health of Earth Chronicle depend on all of us working together.
Using holding pages and the holding link color is one way that we are different from almost every other website. We Want you to know where our site is incomplete. If you see a link in the holding link color, you can avoid clicking on it and wasting your time. But you still know that this is an area we want to explore. Anytime you see a holding link and think "Awwww... I really wanted to learn about that." Great! Please go do it, and then pass that information back along to everyone else. That's exactly how we patch those holding links and make them lead to ever wider vistas of information. You are the one who makes that happen!
[chroniclemaster1, 2007/07/10]