Seriously, after nearly six years of doing a joint blog with my husband, I have to say if I knew then what I know now, I'd have gone with two separate blogs. There's no upside to having one single blog, and there are negatives:
- People who only link to "women's blogs" won't link to you any more.
- People who you'd think would know better will assume that everything on the blog was written by Patrick.
as just two.

If it's not too late, reconsider.

(I have no dog in this what ain't a fight: I'll link and read you both wherever you are. I'm just curious.)

That's a negative? I'd call it more of a filter. Anyway, I doubt either Nielsen Hayden is starved for links.

- People who you'd think would know better will assume that everything on the blog was written by Patrick.

Local custom is to use those people as piñatas. *anticipatory grin*

It's hard work, after all. And sometimes there is a dispiriting pressure when you feel you haven't been "posting enough". If combining the blogs helps ease some of that, and if that helps keep the spirit willing, I'd say go for it.

Both of your blogs are invaluable, so if we get something like both blogs together with one URL, that's fine with me. It would be good if the little sidebar things are kept separate, if you can manage that. I don't really know why I say that. I just want them to remain separate, is all.

I think if the way you set it up makes it clear that "This is Patrick's post regarding his particular thing" and "This is Teresa's post regarding her particular thing", I don't see a problem with it all. I mean, there is an impusle to do it coming from somewhere, and I think you ought to give in to that impulse if it really feels like the right thing for you to do.

Is all I'm saying.

I'm all for the combined power it gives you, links and hits and pings and comments and community. It seems completely natural to me. But then, I remember Telos and Izzard.

Mimeography has given way to Moveable Type, but some truths remain. There will always be people who think there's one writer named Patricia Nielsen Hayden; ditto people who credit my writing to Patrick; ditto people who think I'm the charming one but Patrick's the political writer; ditto people who ... oh, lord, I'm not going to run through the whole list. Folly is fractal: the closer you look at it, the more of it there is.

There are people who only link to women's weblogs. Forgive me if I'm mistaken about this, but as far as I'm aware, most of them don't link to me as it is. And what if they don't? I'm sorry, but to my mind, if they drop me for having a male co-editor, they're just making their world stupider. I thought the same thing decades ago, when a prominent feminist apa kicked out all its male members. Either men and women are part of the same discourse, or they aren't; and separate has a poor record of being equal.

If they're willing to link to a weblog written by one feminist, why shouldn't they link to a weblog written by two?

Here's the upside of combining our weblogs: we thought it would be better this way.

I won't even try to describe the months of intricate negotiations that went into this decision. If you're old enough to remember the brangle over square vs. round conference tables, you may understand two-column vs. three-column format. Arriving at the combination of my typography plus Patrick's color scheme was more like the Missouri Compromise.

Michael Weholt has unerringly identified a core issue: the Particles and Sidelights lists will remain separate.

Keith, Patrick's commonplaces will remain, but as of the last mockup, they're on the left side.

Lucy: Exactly! Just so.

Jeez, now I'm way psyched for the idea and can hardly wait for the unveiling. I don't want to put any pressure on you or anything but I think I should tell you that if it doesn't outdo the best of Christo, I'm afraid I shall perish.

This is highly quotable! Very clever indeed. As corollaries: Every great folly is built from a set of very similar smaller follies. Power Corrupts, and absolute power corrupts according to a power law generating a fractal folly. Don't call the President either "square" or a "blockhead." His folly is not 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional, but of an irrational fractal dimension. In the case of the current President, his folly is transcendental.

If so, I will miss it.

They're your blogs, so you get to do as you will with them. I'm just glad to be part of the audience.

JVP: Very good, Jonathan.

Christopher Davis: Full-text RSS feed...?

Uh-oh. Must sort this out.

I am informed that we shall have a full-text RSS feed.

I feel strongly about this.

Why not keep _some_ style differences between your two postings?

I just figured that I'd pass along my own less-than-wonderful experiences. But just the thought of a full text feed of Making Light makes me happy all over, so I've got nothing to gripe about.

Ah, and now if we could only get a full feed of the comments? Oooh, oooh, please? Pretty please? All your comments showing up in NNW, without me having to reload your site to see what's new. sigh...

I think you're about to get his answer on RSS feeds and comments.

Like Lucy, I remember Telos and Izzard. But I also remember Flash Point. I hope you'll manage to keep some of that ambiance in the mix.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! I had no idea such a thing was even possible. I think I have to lie down now.

MKK

(Actually, I've found this to be the area where Livejournal has the advantage over the others...the threading of comments, and the automatic emailing of responses, means I can keep track of conversations I'm having without needing to continually reload a page...but that's another argument.)

So, feel free to merge the blogs, or not. I'll keep reading this, and electrolite until it closes, through the makinglight .rdf feed on LJ.

That's what I *usually* do. I don't know why I've been embarrassed to
admit it, up until now.

As long as you both keep writing, I have no complaints.

I was kinda hoping for "Electromake". Or maybe "Making Electrons".

"Welcome to the Occupation".

"When will the combined blog then incorporate Worlds of If?"

which made me laugh out loud, immediately before it made me feel really old.

Teresa, Patrick: It's your party - - as one of the guests, I'll be glad to visit, however the furniture is arranged.

My only concern is that there are two distinct voices here, and I like those two distinct voices. If they remain distinct, fine. I wouldn't want a composite.

I'll continue to read avidly.

You'll retain the archives of each? It would be really terrible to lose them.

By the way, I'd like to share something. Back during a rather bleak period of under and unemployment, Making Light and Electrolite gave me a small but vital sense of belonging, even as a newbie. This made a real difference and helped me keep my bats safely in my belfry. Thanks to both of you, and to the exceptional group of regular commenters that you've attracted.

Oh, and one small thing. Perhaps you can create some small visual device that calls out authorship of a post. Even though your voices are different, nothing beats a visual marker.

I'm curious to see how you'll implement RSS feeds of the comments without making things vurra vurra confusing. I'm sure you have it figure out though, you guys have done superior things with the blogging user interface.

There's only one thing left to ask for: may I please have a pony? You've just given me everything else I wanted.

<big grin>

Crimony, I've been reading marketing literature for 16 years and it has finally rotted my brain.

How to -- maintain message flow,
With joint opinions residing;
How to -- keep Sidelights aglow
And Particles from colliding:
How to -- mark hotlinks in text
So when you scroll down the page now
One century turns to the next
And Izzard’s one guy on stage now

How to recall how their fanac was spent
Toward this task -- and if NESFA should ask --
I’ll draw the Pete Framish descent.
This union’s all that we need;
Now then, hold on -- where’s my screed?

(with the sincerest apologies to Frank Loesser, who holds too many of my markers already)

This country outsources people for lesser things

You're no Matthew Broderick, you know

You should only run into John Lahr in Shubert Alley late some dark night, and may the Sherwood Schwartz be with him

Yes, of course the combined blog will link to Electrolite's old archives; that's easy to implement, and the prototype-in-progress already does so.

As Mitch Wagner notes, syndicating the comments is likely to be more of a challenge, so we may not have that ready to go when the rest of the merged site goes "live." It'll happen, though.

I was thinking "Making Electrolite". I'm boring that way.

And if it makes things easier for me, what luck.
If it doesn't--I shut up and learn to like it.

Jane

As to "some small visual device that calls out authorship of a post," we were thinking of the arcane glyphs "Posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden" and "Posted by Patrick Nielsen Hayden." Would those do?

Will it be at the top of the post? Not that I wouldn't be able to detect the author's identity almost immediately after beginning to read, but I like knowing before I start. It's like getting a phone call where the caller starts off: "Hi, it's me." For those times when I'm not quite sure of the voice, I hate having to think: "um, which me is this?" It's a brief but generally unnecessary moment of distress.

I should think "by Patrick" or "by Teresa" will suffice unless of course you prefer the entire name.

Also, will there continue to be a free coffee with every post, and the weekly book of shopping coupons?

The existing page is generated with this code:

<MTComments lastn="400" sort_order="descend">
<MTCommentEntry>
<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID$>"><$MTCommentAuthor$>
on “<$MTEntryTitle$>”</a><br>
</MTCommentEntry>
</MTComments>

There is in fact a Movable Type tag for comment timestamps; it's MTCommentDate, and it takes the usual timestamp flags -- "%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p", etc. However, as far as I can tell, adding <$MTCommentDate format="%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p"$> anywhere to the above yields, not the individual comment timestamps, but the timestamp of the weblog post to which the comments are attached. So, for instance, all the comments in this thread wind up being identically tagged "May 22, 2005 07:33 PM."

Anyone whose MT fu can divine the solution is encouraged, yea implored to clue us in.

The free coffee will continue, along with mandatory attendance at Nielsen Hayden Opinion Reformation Camp. (I always thought one of the best weblog titles EVAH was Opinions You Should Have.)

Concerning Patrick's blogroll: Will anyone be surprised if I say that that was another source of thrash? I wound up caving completely on that one, though, around the time I realized that it's the links-list equivalent of his precisely arranged and endlessly fussed-over desktop.

(What you have to understand is that Patrick's work areas are a manifestation of what Will Shetterly calls "altar-building behavior." There's encoded meaning in the placement of every object, and it all has to be just so. Somewhere around here we have a picture of ten-year-old Patrick working at his desk. That photo spooks me. If Patrick weren't in the picture, I'd still know whose desk that was.)

So Patrick's blogroll will carry over, even though it means we'll just list the weblog titles, instead of author-and-title the way I do it now. A possible project for the future would be to reinstate the authors' names as mouse-over title tags. (In our copious spare time, that is.)

Mike, I was reduced to delighted giggles by your lyrics, as I'm sure you knew I would be.

Seriously, though, I think it'll be cool. The next open thread should be parcticularly interesting.

I personally also like "Neilsen Hayden Overdrive."

Then they'd have to go to many government agencies and change their name to that particular spelling!

Jane

We'll stop now.

"Making Lite"

*ducks*

As has been said - your party, your furniture, and thank you for considering suggestions. Full comment feed will be nice if it happens. :-)

And Patrick, I think your arcane glyphs are lovely, but I was hoping for a New Yorkerish (and by that I mean New Yorkerish) "Patrick writes:" and "Teresa writes:"

Then you could have anonymous guest posts labeled "A young friend writes:" or "An elderly friend writes:" or "A friend in Iraq writes:". Or, of course, nonymous ones by, say "Christopher writes:"

Nahhhh. Not that sort of blog. But your "glyphs" seem slightly too formal for the style of either of your current blogs. To me. Whose electronically-expressed opinion on the matter is worth the paper it's printed on.

I thought it would be Lightolite.

Okay, leaving now for airport, on way to Dad's funeral [see Open Thread 40 for how important he was as a Science Fiction Editor].

That said:

"Lightsapor."

(Pity please line up on this side of the aisle; terror over there, thank you.)

My bank, a largish Seattle based institution, literally just put a whole new look and feel on their site with no advance notice. I went to the login page and then spent about 15 minutes reassuring myself that it was indeed my bank and that the site hadn't been hijacked.

Of course, we'd know if nielsenhayden.com had been hijacked; the poorly written post praising self-publishing companies and the revelatory declaration of allegiance to PNAC and the Club for Growth would be good leading indicators.

On IE 6, I find that \every/ comment is in the read-recently color if I've looked at anything in that thread (unless it has been ~3 days since I last looked in from a given machine, in which case \nothing/ is marked as read). Somebody once posted an arcane solution which I don't recall. Yeah, I know I should be using Firefox, but work doesn't like private installations of software and the home system is shared. I'd love to get this to work; timestamping would help locate the start point but not identify threads with postings I haven't read.

Mike: re your suggestions for invective: around our house, the usual warning is "Mike's slipped his leash again." I keep trying to write "Who Let the Mike Out?" and getting stuck at what sort of noise should follow....

It's not really a big deal, which is why I have never said anything about it.

I note this not to deny anyone's experience of women only linking to blogs by women, but to point out that, if this behavior exists, I strongly suspect it's a reaction to the much more widespread habit of not linking to (and never acknowledging) blogs by women.

Having said that - I agree with everyone else who said that it's entirely up to Patrick and Teresa how they arrange the furniture in their own blog(s), and that I will keep visiting, no matter what you do, so long as I'm let.

By the way, I'm in Japan for another month if there's anything I can bring you, just shoot me an email.

Still - they're your toys, so should play with them in the way you like - and I certainly won't stop reading.

I guess the combination of the two makes room for another worthy on my linklist, huh?

I miss the purple.

IE 5.2.3, to be sure. I use Safari 1.3 as my primary browser. I suspect we're looking at an OS issue. (Hey, if you copy and paste a multi-line URL from a Usenet post, does IE 6 automatically rejoin the lines?)

This is not terribly helpful to you, I know, and I fear that I'm only very slightly sorry.

But note that the blank with link for ads/blank with ads only page takeover problem IS NO LONGER! It became very bad recently, so this is a Very Good Thing.

Also noting the hurled objects, Epacris spp are good at tucking themselves away in the undergrowth inconspicuously.

I really like livejournal, even though I wish discussions were structured more like newsgroups. However, the friends system is a very handy way of keeping up with the ljs I'm interested in.

However, I've since found out that there's prejudice against livejournal which goes beyond the "not a real blog" thing--there seem to be a fair number of people who believe that lj is all boring teenage diaries. To the small extent I've used the "show me a random lj" feature, there do seem to be a lot of boring teenage diaries, but there's also so much good that refusing to read lj at all is mere bigotry. Or trying to avoid yet another timesink, but that's a different issue.

I recommend Brad Hicks' lj as a very good political and social essay lj which has gotten snagged by venue prejudice.

(I can't easily test this; I'm not running MT3 yet.)

Though you do say "anywhere", so you may well have already tried that. If so, sounds like an MT bug.

Okay, all I'm saying is that it could have been set up that way, with a little more planning.

Well, water under the bridge. I guess I'll go make a call on my cell phone and pretend it's my Communicator.

[It didn't. Spam from 91.0.40.233]

Hard to believe the merger was four years ago.