Who owns austinimprov.com?

[ratliff]

It looks like someone put a a lot of work into making a really sweet site but then got distracted by real life. (The last post of Miller's excellent nightly guide is from January, and the history of Austin improv, while well written, is ... um ... somewhat incomplete.)

Maybe this was dropped because it doesn't get any hits, in which case maybe it should be boarded up? But if the owner wants to keep maintaining it, I would volunteer (some) copywriting and copyediting services to keep it up.

I know it's an anachronism in a market economy, and that the individual theater sites collectively perform the same function, but it's a nice online representation of the community as a whole. Just a basic guide to the theaters and Kevin's listings could be really helpful for someone trying to navigate the scene for the first time.

[happywaffle]

My bad on the nightly listings. I lost the bookmark to post and, rather than take the 45 seconds to re-discover it, lazily decided to wait and see if anyone noticed. So the answer is "Yes, but not for two months." Hmmm.

As for the history of Austin improv, Peter's going to have an announcement in that area very soon. (SUSPENSE!)

Pending Peter's announcement, I might suggest removing the History section. I *could* resume posting the nightly listings here, but does anybody look at them? Anybody know what the hit count is on the front page? Or should we remove the Blog section as well? That would leave a super-clean front page with links to Classes, Theaters, and Forums.

(Also what happened to the kitchen-sink icon? No offense to whoever made the banner graphic, but the Texas-star logo is super-generic.)

[ratliff]

Yeah, the simpler the better, I would think. The nightly listings and links to the schools/theaters and forum would give anyone enough to start exploring.

And I take your point that if it took someone two months to notice the listings weren't there, it's probably moot. I guess that whenever I see a page that's not maintained, I assume that whatever it refers to is defunct or in decline, and since that's obviously not the case with Austin improv, it seems a shame to create that impression. I don't really think that thousands of people have googled "Austin improv," come to that page, and decided on that basis that nothing was happening around here ... but somebody might've.

Anyway, good work thus far; glad to see it's a work in progress.

[happywaffle]

That's why I asked about hit count to the front page. Most visitors *aren't* going to report issues. If the front page is getting two hits a day, I'd just skip the nightly listings. If it's getting 100 a day, I'd go ahead and resume them.

Anybody know (or know who knows)?

[bradisntclever]

I believe Roy is your main point of contact for that sort of info. He's the one who dragged that page out of the dark ages last time.

[Roy Janik]

I don't know what the hit count is. But I do know that AustinImprov.com turns up pretty frequently when you search for improv in Austin.

Over the years I trimmed the site down to an easily maintainable handful of pages that I more or less didn't have to do anything with, for the reasons stated above. Every once in a while a new theater would open (yay!) or someone would move or something, and I'd update that.

Jason Pelker and Andy Crouch overhauled the site, and coordinated with Kevin to keep the listings up to date. Then Jason moved. I no longer have much to do with it.

I agree, though. Let's either keep the listings up to date or remove them from the front of the site.

[acrouch]

I have access!

I took a pass at a basic update to present (using some content from the Austin Improv entry on Wikipedia that is also wildly out of date).

http://austinimprov.com/history/

Maybe once Peter gets the Austin improv history wiki going the page can link to that instead.

I think that page gets enough traffic in general that including Kevin's daily updates is worth it.

[happywaffle]

Maybe once Peter gets the Austin improv history wiki going the page can link to that instead.

Spoiler alert, sheesh!

I think that page gets enough traffic in general that including Kevin's daily updates is worth it.

Alright, I'll add it back to my workflow.

[Jon Bolden]

Let's buy Kevin and Andy a drink next time we see them

[happywaffle]

Okay, I've resumed the daily postings.

And the wiki is live: http://wiki.austinimprov.com/wiki/Main_Page

So I'd suggest linking to that, and retiring the History page.

[happywaffle]

*poke*

Could we change the Blog link to a Wiki link?

[Roy Janik]

Best to probably just send an email to Andy directly.

[Roy Janik]

Feh. I went ahead and changed the History link to a Wiki link myself. Don't know how to do the subtext for a custom link, though.