Author Archives: John McGrath

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Please, only quality garbage

Ok, just retitled this post to be a bit less caustic, but with the recent bump in traffic I’m seeing an increase in junk words. Not fun junk (like strappleberry, which is fantastic), but putting in seven variations of the same word, in what looks like a lame attempt to get listed in the “wordiest wordies” section.

My new policy is to be an anarchist up until a point, after which I’ll be a tyrant, and freeze accounts with impunity. This nascent community is a lot of fun, and I plan on being protective of it. So, please be sensible, and considerate.

You can help. If you see anything that looks fishy or abusive, please let me know.

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TechCrunched

Wordie was featured on TechCrunch tonight. A nice post, complimentary and polite while still pointing out that Wordie is basically absurd. And apparently the site amuses Flickr’s Stewart Butterfield, which amuses me.

Some people got hot and bothered in the first few comments, upset that Techcrunch would have the effrontery to cover something not related to venture capital. But those comments were clearly penned by illiterates (“The quality of Techcrunch is getting bad day by day”, etc.), so you can hardly blame them for not grokking Wordie. I did appreciate the guy who liked our error message, and the guy (I presume it’s a guy), who took such pleasure in getting to use the acronym WTF. Language appreciators both.

Some people get a little crazed about getting covered by Techcrunch. And believe me, I’m psyched about it — I read it every day. But I’m not sure it’s a very wordie crowd. I’m curious to see if it leads to anything besides a momentary bump in traffic.

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New Features Roundup

Stuff added since launch, but before this blog went up:

  • Bookmarklet: Mad, mad props to angharad for contributing a Bookmarklet, which lets you select words on any web page and import them directly into Wordie. Works with Safari and Firefox (Mac or PC), does not work with IE 6. To install, bookmark the ‘Add to Wordie’ link below (on Safari and Firefox you can just drag it onto your bookmarks bar).
    bookmark this -> Add to Wordie

  • Comment Search: You can now search comments from the recent comments page.
  • Links in comments: When adding comments and citations wrapping words in [brackets] now links them to their Wordie page.
  • Steal this Word: ability to import words directly into your lists.

  • Favorites: ability to bookmark lists and words you like.

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A Brief History of Wordie

11/21: Idea pops into my head, gets dismissed as a joke.

11/22: Thanksgiving approaching, I decide it’s a good time to build something strictly for fun. Register Wordie.org (and also wirdee.com, but opted against that).

11/23 – 11/24: Build and launch site. Three or four friends add a few hundred words. I figure, that’s that.

11/28: LibraryThing Tim, my friend and neighbor, blogs about Wordie.

12/5: 1,000 people have registered. I spend week madly fixing bugs and adding features. Wordie makes front page of del.icio.us and lots of blogs. Blogosphere reaction spans the gamut from “pointless and lovely” to just “pointless”.

12/8: Launch this blog as a place to announce new features, and perhaps highlight choice bits from within Wordie.