Phil Gyford

Articles

Phil Gyford has written four articles:

Annotations and comments

Phil Gyford has posted 771 annotations/comments since 27 December 2002.

Comments

First Reading

About The new Background Info section

Phil  •  Link

I didn't create a Language section at first because it's obviously going to be slightly different to the other sections. And I prefer to do one thing at a time, as it's easier to tell what is and isn't working. I'll get on to it at some point.

About Monday 13 February 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

I'm collecting any typos I've noticed and passing them on to David Widger, who prepared the Project Gutenberg text. I'll add this to the list I have so far. Feel free to email me any if you come across them.

About The new Background Info section

Phil  •  Link

Good idea Glyn - it's done. I also changed or added similar notes to the names of Pepys' immediate relatives, if only to stop me getting them confused!

About The City of London

Phil  •  Link

Bored is probably right - I've moved the pointer on the map to point at the junction by Bank.

About St Paul's Cathedral

Phil  •  Link

The cathedral of Pepys' time was mostly destroyed in the Great Fire and was replaced by the current building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

About Temple Bar

Phil  •  Link

According Latham's Companion volume, Temple Bar was a gate and gate-house that marked "the end of the city's jurisdiction and the beginning of that of Westminster."

About The City of London

Phil  •  Link

The arrow on the map indicates the rough centre of the area known as the City of London. "The City" does not refer to London as a whole, but a small part of it, what was the historical centre of the city (since Roman times). It is the financial centre of London and its government and independence retains many anachronisms of history. The offical site is here: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/

About More background reading pages?

Phil  •  Link

I know exactly what you mean Paul, but I think many of these changes would be of use (and wouldn't be too much work) even if/when traffic and annotations drop off dramatically.

About More background reading pages?

Phil  •  Link

Phew, thanks for all the comments. I'll try and answer as many points as possible without going on for too long...

Promoting annotations: This kind of feature could be useful but it would require transferring annotations from Movable Type to some kind of forums system. When I built the site I was only anticipating around 5% of the number of annotations we have and Movable Type is fine for this. But we're certainly testing its limits on this site! It's only really geared for commenting, rather than lengthy discussions.

Different kinds of diary entry annotations: I'm not in favour of this as I think it will make pages more confusing for a relatively small gain. Technically it could also be tricky. I'm hoping that an expanded section of background pages with annotations will remove the need for some of the current annotations, such as repeated questions.

Making diary entry annotations more obvious: I don't want to change the links to "Discussions" as this changes the tone and only encourages more chatter. Some chatter is fine and often fascinating, but the site isn't really able to cope, in many ways, with huge discussions. "Reader Annotations" might work. Or I'm still thinking about making the front page of the site only contain the current entry, with annotations, with a link to the previous entry.

Background pages: Thanks for the category suggestions David -- great stuff. Some people asked for an FAQ, and this is the purpose of these pages. To hold information that will come up over and over, leaving diary entry annotations more open for topical and less repetitive matters. I'm thinking of putting links to the pages in the right-hand column, below any diary entry footnotes. This way the topics will always be obvious to anyone reading the entry.

Annotations on the background pages: Because the pages will be useful for the duration of the diary I do want to limit the annotations somehow to prevent the pages becoming overwhelming. I have no intention of deleting annotations from diary entries, but a policy of removing questions (after they've been answered) and only leaving useful info/links on the background pages would probably work.

Another general discussion forum: I've considered this since the beginning, but I'm wary of separating any discussion from the site and the content it's referring to (whether it's diary entries, people, places, etc). On the one hand I don't want to inhibit discussion, but on the other I don't want to risk losing valuable information and thoughts in a separate forum or email list.

I hope that all makes sense... feel free to post more thoughts!