Pimping Wordie

Ok, I know I’m a pathetic whore for doing this, but a blog I enjoy, Mashable, is hosting a series of Social Networking Awards. Please click the big dumb button below if you wouldn’t mind nominating Wordie in the “Niche and Miscellaneous Networks” category (sorry, they don’t have a gaytarded category).

Flickr Group, List Descriptions

Two updates today. First, Lampbane set up a Flickr group for Wordies, open to all. I’m thrilled about this — there’s something inately interesting about photos of signage and text, heightened by the slight irony of a group of people from a text-only logophile site sharing photographs. Maybe the slogan for the group should be “Like Wordie, but without all the words.”

This joins the LibraryThing group for Wordies set up by angharad.

One good use for the Flickr group might be posting images related to a specific word list, and it will be easier to link the two now that word lists have proper description fields. Up until now it seems like most of us have been using comments to describe our lists, which was imperfect, since the description would get pushed to the bottom of the page as more comments were added. Well, no longer — you can add a proper description, when either creating or editing a list, and it will stay up top where it belongs, below the list name.

Move Words Between List, First Wordied

Added two frequently requested features: the abilities to move words between lists and to see who it was who first listed a word. Both pretty self-explanatory: to move a word, go to the list it’s currently on, click the ‘move’ link next to the word, select the target list, and click the little button. To see who first listed a word, go to any word page and look. Wordie at the top of the list got first blood, with the most recent person to add the word appearing at the bottom.

Please let me know if you see any weird behaviors; as usual, I cranked these out and didn’t test a whole heck of a lot. Though they seem to be working fine so far.

Ascertain Guy

Another excellent video clip, this one poking fun at word pedants (that would be us, people). Many thanks to pedalinfaith for sending it in.

I love all these videos about words. Errata goes all frickin’ mixed-media.

Click the image to open in a new window:

WotY: Truthiness

Every year the Associated Press chooses a word of the year; it’s sort of the Wordie equivalent of the Swimsuit Issue or the Playmate of the Year.

This year’s winner, by a 5-1 margin over the runner-up, is “truthiness.” In honor of that timely neologism, here is a list of Colbert Report Neologisms.

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.