Hey everyone,

I've just added a ton of new SF/F blog links to the Web Sites page in the Resources section.  I've also built a SF/F Blog Roll box on the home page sidebar to display the same links.  Take a look and let me know what you think. 

All the new links came from my StumbleUpon favorites.  Do you know of any quality SF/F blogs that we should add to the list?  I'm always looking for great science fiction web sites.

Such an obvious one and I just missed it!  Added now.

I'm mostly looking for SF/F blogs that focus on written works, specifically novels or short stories, rather than TV or movies or comics etc.  Links that tie into WWEnd a bit.  There are plenty of sites that cater to those other aspects of genre fiction.  In this case, io9 covers a lot of ground including books so I'm happy to add it to the list.  Thanks for the reminder.

I follow a couple dozen or so of these blogs via RSS/Google Reader.  There are just too many to try to web to them.  What I do is subscribe to the ones that I think have potential and I check out the posts that come in for a couple weeks or so to see if they're worth keeping up with.  I follow a lot of them just to keep up with what's going on for WWEnd.

Here are a dozen of the ones that I'm following now that I really like - in no particular order:

1. Science Fiction Awards Watch
2. SF Signal
3. Walker of Worlds
   
4. Stainless Steel Droppings
5. Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews
6. SF and Fantasy Masterworks
   
7. The Ranting Dragon
8. Pat's Fantasy Hotlist
   
9. The Website at the End of the Universe
10. Adventures in Reading
11. Blogging the Hugo Winners
12. Val's Random Comments 

I just use Google Reader to put all the articles together in one spot so I can click the ones that look interesting.  I rarely read them on Reader unless they're really short.  Really just a filter.

Well, I guess it's obvious that I'm not able to make the time to edit the websites page.  There are just too many other daily maintenance tasks and higher priority projects.  But, in case ya'll want to do the cleanup and new additions, I've copied the data table into a Google Sheet where you can have at it:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KKI-XT3cnPcnUvt4fG9htf3_cS6CtuZ9URbbYHVcaX4/edit?usp=sharing

It's a really basic table.  RN_Type_ID = 1 for general links and = 2 for author links (see sheet 2).  The Title is the link text that shows on the page and the URL is self evident.  The DateAdded column I left in there in case you wanted to sort by date to see the really old links which likely need the most revision.  Don't bother filling that one in if you add new links.  It'll all go into the DB with the same date when I copy the changes from the updated sheet into the DB.

Ya'll let me know if you have any questions.

hyperlinked link: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KKI-XT3cnPcnUvt4fG9htf3_cS6CtuZ9URbbYHVcaX4/edit?usp=sharing

Well, that was fast!  Thanks for managing those.  I'll get your updated list copied over to the DB tomorrow if time permits.

I really appreciate the effort because there are few things more irritating when you're surfing than to run into dead links.  I consider the defunct sites as dead links so I'd rather they come off the list too.  As for categories I was talking to whargoul about creating some new ones so we can sort the list by type of site:  official author site, author blog, fan site, general, twitter, Facebook etc.  It would make the list easier to navigate to have headings.  Any thoughts on that?

Is it still in the works to make "Links" for the Author records something we add, rather than scraped from the Internet?

I'd like to see:

Official Website: http://www.authorsite.com
Blog: http://www.authorblog.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/author
Twitter: http://twitter.com/author
Other: http://www.cookingwithauthors.com  

You would then be able to scrape all of these for a Links page(s), as you do for the WWEnd Member Web Sites.

 Could you please hold off for a couple of days?  I've just now noticed this and would like to add more sites, but it'll take me a day or so.  Thanks!!

Also, could you please edit the SF Mistressworks page to incorporate a link to the official SF Mistressworks blog.

I'll hold off until y'all are ready.

Use sheet 2 in the doc to add whatever categories you want and just number the links to match the new categories.  I've talked to whargoul and he's cool with as many cats as you think we'll need to organize things properly.

No, I meant something like this:

(NewAuthorEdit2.jpg)

NewAuthorEdit2.jpg (92KB - 0 downloads)

illegible_scribble, the example jpg can't be seen or downloaded - perhaps try a different approach?

I added a bunch of possible categories to the Categories page (formerly page 2), each with some example member sites.  Some of the sites are a little hard to place in one category or another, but I think that the key thing is to get all the important sites included (how can the SF Encyclopedia be left out, for example?!?!).  Maybe take a look at the Locus links page to see how they categorize things.  I can see that the categorization of sites might turn into a project larger than you have time for at present - if so, I think we should just add all the misc links into the RN_Type_ID #1 section (perhaps retitling it to General Sites?), and revisit the categorization another time.  Otherwise, let's set up more categories and populate them.  As I mentioned earlier, some sites don't fit  neatly in a single category, so we might want to list those sites in multiple categories?

Anyhow, I've finished adding blog links for now (it took me a while because I kept stopping to read the blogs! ).  I tried to include those WWE members who have a blog site and who are habitual bloggers, but I'm sure I've missed some people.

I've noticed that images attached to thread posts seem to disappear after a few days.

(NewAuthorEdit2.jpg)

NewAuthorEdit2.jpg (92KB - 1 downloads)

And then a compilation list could be created for each type of link by going through the Author records, just as the list of WWEnd Member Web Sites is created by going through the Member records.

I'd be a little hesitant to rely solely on compilation lists - they can contain a lot of cruft.  For example, there are more than 1000 WWE Member Web Sites, but only about 10 stood out to me as belonging on a curated list.  Of course, I didn't look at all 1000 sites...

The difference is that the links on Author pages would be entered by Uber Users. And there are tools which can be used on a periodic basis to detect dead links.

OK, so I've updated the list with the spreadsheet you guys all worked out.  Thanks for cleaning that up!

We have in mind a more robust link strategy that will tie into the author and publisher links etc. so that they can go in from multiple places into the same data table.  That way all the author links will be in the list section and show on the individual authors' pages etc. etc. etc.  When we get around to it anyway   For now this is a great update.

AUUUGGHHH! Alpha by first name! You're killin' me here! 

As well as the first name sorting issue, there are some additional issues, as follows:

• There were a couple of errors in the spreadsheet data (SF/F/H Blogs) which I've now fixed - a duplicate record (From Couch to Moon), and a typo (It Started with the Hugos) (either needs to be fixed manually or by reuploading the data).
• The link for David Anthony Durham was outdated and has been updated (Again, either needs to be fixed manually or by reuploading the data).
• There's a site (Mind Voyages) that was on bleebs' deletion list that didn't get deleted - it still needs deletion.

Hey, you guys made the updates!  There are not so many like yet that it's hard to find stuff.  It could be a problem later but we'll fix it before it does.

Those changes have been made.

Yes, I did. And I added a name breakout and sorted by Last Name.