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Spring Cleaning results

March 28, 2011 Follow Up, Meta

I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction with our first-ever spring cleaning challenge. Readers have spotted issues with roughly one-third of our 1,440 posts, which we’ll be resolving over the next few weeks.

We’ll be keeping the spring cleaning flags available another week or two, but I consider the contest portion complete. More than 40 different users submitted reports. Thanks to all of them.

In the end, our top ten spring cleaners caught 92% of the bugs:

Name	Flagged Posts
Lauren Ocean	104
Tyler Leisher	89
Jared	59
Patrick Bowman	45
Peter	43
Ryan Stauffer	39
Matt	34
Chris	15
Mike	10
Shaun McKinnon	8

Lauren Ocean and Tyler Leisher were the top two throughout, pulling far ahead of the pack. They’ll both get Related Schwag Prizes, with Lauren getting first pick.

What people found

The biggest issue readers encountered was link rot. Many utilities can detect when a link is dead, but it takes human eyes to recognize when a functional link is now pointing somewhere unintended, such as a general catch-all page. This often happens when a domain is sold, or the underlying CMS changes.

In most cases, we’ve simply removed the bad link. Other times, we’ve found a better source for what was there.

A thornier issue was what to do with posts that were out of date. A one-sentence post from 2008 explaining that I was too sick to picket doesn’t seem have a lot of value. No reader is likely to find that useful on its own. But as part of the larger context of all my posts about the WGA strike, it has some historical value. So I’ve kept it.

Some older posts had formatting issues arising from a long-ago change in character encoding. These are the happiest problems, as global search-and-replace can work wonders.

What’s next

Several users wanted the opportunity to rate articles, so that other readers might come across the “greatest hits.” That’s certainly something we’ll try.

It’s also clear that the site’s blogginess can make it harder to find answers to very basic questions, like “How long is a screenplay?” I have some ideas for addressing this Screenwriting 101 material in ways that won’t dumb down the site for normal readers.

Sincere thanks again to everyone who participated in helping polish the site.

Spring cleaning

March 24, 2011 Hive Mind, Meta

spring cleaning This site has 1,440 posts, stretching back to 2003. Unlike many blogs, most of these articles are still relevant. The basics of screenwriting haven’t changed much in a decade.

Yet some problems inevitably creep in with age. Links break as external sites vanish. Formatting glitches arise. Graphics get misplaced.

To help fix these issues, we’re doing a few days of Spring Cleaning on the site. And if you have some free time, we’d love your help.

At the bottom of this post is a list of articles that need checking. (It generates a fresh list each time.) Click on an article, read it, and look for mistakes or issues. Repeat as often as you choose.

If you notice any problems (typos, missing graphics, broken links or other mistakes) click on either the “Flag for Spring Cleaning” button at the end of each post or the Send To button. This will send a report to Ryan, who will verify and correct.

Once a post is marked “Flagged for Spring Cleaning,” you can’t send additional reports on it until Ryan checks it out.

Yes, private, this is a bug hunt. Twice daily, we’ll be posting results showing who has caught the most mistakes.

Ryan is the final arbiter of who gets credit for what.

UPDATE: You can see the leaderboard here.

We originally had a checkbox marked “Outdated,” but too much was getting flagged. Some posts are old and not exactly actionable (e.g. anything related to the 2008 WGA strike). That’s okay. History counts too. The publication dates are there for a reason.

As with the Scene Challenges, the winner gets public acclaim and bragging rights. But I’ll also happily send the victor his or her choice of movie swag, such as a signed script, DVD or poster.

I’m sure there will be issues we haven’t yet considered. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. Thanks, and happy hunting.

Two things I liked about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark

February 14, 2011 Broadway

Taped to the back of my seat at this past Friday’s performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark was a survey soliciting audience opinions of the still-in-progress musical.

Survey cards are common in the film industry, but this was the first I’d seen used for a Broadway show. The front side of the form was designed to be filled out before the show began. It asked questions about demographics (age, income, education, whether you lived in NYC) and why you chose to see the show. It was more detailed than I’m used to seeing for movie test screenings.

The reverse side was for after the show, asking questions about scenes, songs and characters. I didn’t fill it out very thoroughly, because there’s not much I can offer as criticism of the show that hasn’t been said at length in last week’s excoriating reviews. Piling now on feels like schadenfreude.

I did make a point to highlight two things I thought worked. I’ll share those here.

**”If The World Should End”**
This is the song MJ (Jennifer Damiano) sings in act two. It’s lovely, spare, haunting — and nicely on-story. This and Peter’s song (“The Boy Falls From The Sky”) that comes right after it felt like they snuck from a much different, much more compelling musical.

**The Skyscrapers**
How do you translate an idea that centers on a vertical cityscape to the stage? In this case, really well. The forced-perspective Fritz Lang-ish skyscrapers are constantly in motion, culminating in a a fold-out Chrysler Building that juts overhead like a plane taking off. In general, talking about how pretty the sets are is damning, like complimenting a writer on his punctuation. But in this case, the skyscrapers really are something worth seeing.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with this musical. On one hand, it’s selling well, so maybe it’s review-proof. On the other hand, the producers are publicly and privately acknowledging it needs work.

I’m pointing out these two bright spots because (a) if it keeps running in its current form, they’d be the two reasons to consider buying a ticket, and (b) if it closes, these were Things That Were Cool.

It’s too easy to file things away as “success” or “failure.” Almost every creative work is a mix of both.

Anatomy of a script series

February 1, 2011 Education, News, WGA

Each year, the Writers Guild Foundation holds a series of discussions with film and television writers focusing on one of their past or current projects. This year, I’ll be a guest, talking about Big Fish.

The lineup for the series looks great:

Tuesday February 22: Debra Granik on Winter’s Bone (screening at 5:15 pm)

Wednesday March 2: Glenn Gordon Caron on Medium (screening at 6:10 pm)

Wednesday March 9: Steve Levitan on Modern Family (screening at 6:30 pm)

March 16: John August on Big Fish (screening at 5:00 pm)

March 23: Marta Kauffman & David Crane on Friends (screening at 6:30 pm)

March 30: Mike Werb & Michael Colleary on Face/Off (screening at 4:45 pm)

Winnie Holzman (Wicked, My So-Called Life) and Robin Schiff (Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion) are hosting.

It’s a pretty small room, and the event always sells out. So if you’re interested, you may want to get tickets now.