As you know, Ichthyomancy 2.0 has been a rousing success during the second half of the season. And if you didn't know that, I'm telling you now: Ichthyomany 2.0 is great - the tweaks we made to the rules and the scoring have been excellent.
Why do I bring this up? Well, because we're going to do much the same thing with the site. We're going to tidy some things up, make some changes, and improve the overall experience.
For about two years now, I've been blogging about the Marlins. In the past, at my old site, it was a fairly regular thing, but certainly not a daily thing. This season, here at FishStripes, it's been a daily thing. That's been great and I really love it, but with my life and other commitments, I haven't quite been able to give everything the attention that I think it deserves.
While that's been happening, we've had some great things go on here at the site. Craig has stepped in and "covered" for me throughout the year. It started early in the year when he would get the open threads moving when I was at the stadium. More recently, when I've been on vacation, Craig has made sure that the site stays moving - both by publishing stuff that I've written and by writing things of his own.
Starting very soon (as in Tuesday), you'll start to see more of Craig's work here. You'll see it every Tuesday and Friday, in fact. Maybe even more frequently than that. We'll have to see how it goes.
Wiggins will also start writing on a more regular basis. We're not quite sure when that will start to happen or what it will be about - but that's part of the magic of Wiggins. We'll just have to wait and see what we get.
That's all for now. FishStripes will continue to be what it has been (for better or worse). We'll now just have some thoughts and commentary coming to you from some different angles. I think this will help to keep the site fresh and to add some broader perspectives to our discussion.
On the comments and diaries side, absolutely nothing changes. Keep chiming in when you feel like it and send me an email or an IM when the mood strikes you. In the long run, we'd like to build this site into a community of and for Marlins' fans. So we all have a stake in building that. This isn't my site, it isn't Craig's site, and it certainly isn't Wiggins' site. This is our site.
It's a site for people who despise David Samson. It's a site for people who think Jack McKeon is crazy - or crazy like a fox. It's a site for people who love Larry Beinfest as much as they hate him sometimes. It's a site for man-crushes on your favorite Fish (whether that's Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Delgado, Jeremy Hermida, Mike Lowell of 2003, someone else, or a combination of all of those folks).
Eventually that previous paragraph will turn into something of a manifesto, but we don't have that yet. My point is, this site is what we make of it, so let's make it into something.
At the same time, as you have ideas for this site, please continue to share them. Jsprt suggested the Favorite Marlin Contest - which was a lot of fun. Daniel suggested the voting for the Comment and the Diary of the Month, which I also think (hope) has been fun. Keep that sort of stuff up (and remember - there's no such thing as a stupid question or a stupid idea, there are only stupid people).
Go Fish!