State of Play Reports I

A new element in my website

There is a new content format on my website, this is the state of affairs report. I'll explain what I was thinking, how it all came about and what I want to do with it.

To summarise briefly: The progress report offers me the opportunity to work on a text for longer, in contrast to the rather ephemeral "running" blog post. In doing so, I would like to share and comment on my motivations for changes to the text with you - my readers. In addition, and this complicates both the technical implementation and working in and with the format, I would also like to make the changes in the text visible at the click of a mouse. What did I add, when did I add it; likewise, deleted text should also become visible again on click. That's still not all: in contrast to the Jardin Intérieur, which is actually only available here in my mother tongue German, the state of affairs reports should also be available in 3 languages: German, English and French. Everything is always kept well in sync, even the text changes and comments.

How it all came about, what motivates me and why I will most likely fail, I have written down here. I'm just going to embark on this adventure and let you take part in it.

And this is how it all began ...

Thursday, 17 February 2022

No time to write

That's how it was. In February 2022, I was stuck in too many projects at once. I had just finished scanning slides and digitising my photos, but was still in the middle of building bookshelves. In addition, I had to dismantle and partly scrap a model railway layout we had built together since 1998. In the garden there was a lot to do, in the workshop there were problems with the completion of the furnishings. And on top of that, there was also a lot to do in the schuermann.design office.

I simply had no time.

That's when an unbelievably brilliant idea (didn't) come to me: Didn't I write an exciting essay about Louis Henry Sullivan back in my university days? It had been lying in the pile to be edited for at least a year. Surely it was quickly scanned, digitised and published, right?

Er, no.

But now I had started on it, and since I, like most people in despair of impending failure, pursue nonsensical ideas to their often bitter end, I toiled through the errors of text recognition, correcting seemingly endless misrecognised double-n letters, twisted digits and incorrectly split and separated words. Finally, the text was ready. But it couldn't go online like that, I thought to myself. It's not up to scratch at all. Neither technically nor in terms of research. In 1996, I only had the possibility of researching in the holdings of the Wuppertal University Library. And what possibilities do I have today in comparison?

I started revising with commitment.

Then I met my friend Arne (https://arne.xyz/). I told him about my project and how far I had come with the revision. (The 31-page essay had already extended by a few full-blown pages).

Surprisingly, Arne did not confirm my intention. He expressed concern that in this way the original text would disappear behind my revision forever. From an editorial point of view, it should be possible, and I hope I am stating this correctly, to have access to older versions of the text. 

Bodo Plachta

Texts are historical documents. Their genesis and the results arising from it must be described and fixed as a historical process. Documenting and explaining this process of creation in its complexity of historical, biographical or poetological components as comprehensively as possible is an important goal of the historical-critical edition.

Source: Plachta, Bodo: Editionswissenschaft, Eine Einführung in Methode und Praxis der Edition neuerer Texte, Reclam, Ditzingen 1997, Seite 13f

Did I see that? I saw it. Did I want it? Yes, I wanted it - but I was completely unaware of what I would have to face - both technically and organisationally; but I was also deluding myself about the amount of work involved.

1. in my new content format, one can follow the editing steps, the changes in the text.

But it was still completely unclear what that would look like. And it was unclear what I should call the format. I needed a name for a content format that I would edit, update and change again and again. What should I call it?

I went searching on my own website. 

Development potential

The Inner Garden - Jardin Intérieur

Since 2021, this format has existed in my website and for many things it has established itself for me. By writing in Markdown format, the content is ultra-fast to edit and put online. There is no hassle, no login, no CMS - the hurdles are minimal to work on content. At the moment, the Jardin is a playground for me, a repository, but also an ecosystem where, at best, new ideas are hatched or in the process of being hatched. 

But the Jardin Intérieur is not the place where I want to edit, write or publish long articles. Neither is the Markdown format suitable for more complex layouts, nor do I want to provide the responsive image formats in Markdown and write them all by hand in the code. 

I state: 

2. For complex, elaborate content or image-rich presentations, Jardin Intérieur is not the place.  

Maintain status quo

Simply choose a different blog layout

After all, the first version of the revised version of my essay on the misunderstood design maxim of the American architect and essayist Louis Henry Sullivan "Form follows function" had almost been online. There were already marginal notes on changed paragraphs, I had also already added more photos; now it should actually be possible to simply turn this template into a template for a state of play report, shouldn't it?

Yes and no.

Yes, because the basic layout, the grid, the elements, all that has proven itself over the past years. I am satisfied with it. On the other hand - many new templates have been created in the last few years because the old templates were no longer sufficient for the purpose of the content. So I developed a new one. In the beginning there was a template in which I could insert just one picture, then I built one in which I could insert two.

Then I really wanted to have marginalia, marginal notes. And finally, to be able to insert code, to use a template with a gallery function, or to insert a picture for each chapter. And like in medieval fortress construction, I also acted; nothing old was torn down for something new, it was always added to and adapted. Everyone can see where this leads, to a very inconsistent appearance (effect rather small) but to a highly complex structure that sometimes collapses because one no longer understands how it works. So it was quite clear that I wanted to set everything to zero and start anew. Use the latest standards, be technically state of the art when writing state of play. Proper captions, displaying sensible sources, automatically inserting a table of contents, because I would definitely need that. And of course, write lean and fast CSS and HTML 5 again.

Finally though, even if I were to use a blog template, never did I want my state of play reports to run along in the normal blogflow. How could anyone be interested in them if they appeared in the background? There was no way I could do that. 

So it turns out that way:

3. for technical reasons, the template for the state of play reports is being completely redeveloped.
4. the state of play reports will not be integrated into the flow of the blog, there will be a new format.

Everything is new in May March

State of play reports and blog relaunch

It was by no means a continuous process as described here. I didn't have the term "progress reports" at all when I made the decision to make visible a kind of processing status or before-and-after state.

I came up with it with my friend G., who is a municipal employee in a large metropolis in the Ruhr area. I discussed the whole thing with him and told him that I was looking for a name for something where I could tell my readers, the public, what state of knowledge I had at a certain point in time in a certain matter. And what he told me was that every three months he sent out a state of play report to the other departments about the state of his work. It was love at first sight. The term state of play report came into the world and I liked it.

The name: State of play report

State of play report, there is nothing fancy or somehow hip, modern or chic about it. It's just an old-fashioned way of writing something down. Or as my favourite professor in design history, Prof. Dr Sonja Günther at the University of Wuppertal used to say: "Just write down what is. The rest will come all by itself." I always liked that very much. 

Rudolf Augstein is credited with the quote: "Say what is" or in its longer variant, "Say what is, from my point of view"; Rosa Luxemburg is said to have said: "To say what is, remains the most revolutionary act." 

It helps a lot for understanding to simply describe something, as factually as possible. From that, the interpretation usually follows by itself, if you are precise enough. And that's what I want to continue to be, meticulous, precise and getting to the bottom of every detail, no matter what effort it takes.

But what is a state of play report?

On the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Wikipedia writes that it is "a systematic review of the state of climate research". Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/

5. A state of play report is a systematic review of the state of research.

I would like to leave that at this point.

The end of the line?

Not at all - the blog relaunch came on top

But that was not all for the upheavals within the website. At the same time, my son L. said how great he thought my blog posts were, but how little the start page of Cronhill.de reflected all my writing, my research, my efforts and my expense. Had I ever thought of moving the site to a subdomain?

I hadn't yet, but his arguments sounded sensible and convincing. A site that represents my blog, all on its own. So I managed that too - to develop a new home page for my blog. 

How much work that was, how much effort that took, I hope you can see. There are so many elaborate, loving details to discover in this, my website. 

I have added a changelog, which keeps track of what's new within the website and I try to keep it up to date. 

The home page is now roughly divided into three sections, the blog and its posts, a column for the state of play reports and a column for a blogroll and the changelog. I hope you find the page clear enough, it doesn't conform to normal conventions, but I personally like that, there is too much conformism in web design in my opinion. 

Currently, there is a "Form follows function" state of play report, which I am already working on in terms of content. The first change was to bring the whole essay up to date in terms of spelling, because I finished this term paper before the first big spelling reform.

Then I became seriously ill and it didn't go on at all.

On 9 April 2022, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes and was in hospital for a week. Since then I've been on a diet, but thanks to an excellent gastroenterologist and a very good dietician and nutritionist, I'm coping excellently and don't feel I have to do without anything.

1. Juli 2022

Neustart

Wieder genesen wartete die nächste Herausforderung auf mich, ich habe zum 1. Mai 2022 eine Teilzeitstelle bei der Uni Wuppertal angetreten. Und so zogen sich die Arbeiten nicht hin, ich schaffte es nicht irgendetwas in Causa Website oder Sachstandsbericht zu unternehmen.

Erst Anfang Juli verspürte ich wieder ausreichend Kraft für eine Wiederaufnahme. 

Und wenn ich die 5 Punkte zusammenfasse, dann ist völlig klar, dass ich für die Sachstandsberichte ein neues inhaltliches Format benötige, auf einer neuen technischen Basis, ausgereifter, variabler und weiterhin so schnell und übersichtlich der Rest meiner Website.

  1. In meinem neuen inhaltlichen Format kann man die Bearbeitungsschritte, die Veränderung des Textes nachvollziehen.
  2. Für komplexe, aufwändige Inhalte oder bildreiche Präsentationen ist der Jardin Intérieur nicht der geeignete Ort.  
  3. Aus technischen Gründen wird das Template für die Sachstandsberichte völlig neu entwickelt.
  4. Die Sachstandsberichte werden nicht in den Flow des Blogs integriert, es wird ein neues Format geben.
  5. Ein Sachstandsbericht ist eine systematische Übersichtsarbeit zum Forschungsstand.

Und während die Startseite bereits so gut wie fertig war, stellte das Template für den Sachstandsbericht eine besondere Herausforderung dar. Und es gab noch keine Hauptseite für einen Überblick über die existierenden Sachstandsberichte. 

Dazu mehr in Teil II in Kürze.

1 July 2022

Reboot

After recovering, the next challenge awaited me: I took up a part-time position at the University of Wuppertal on 1 May 2022. And so the work didn't drag on, I didn't manage to do anything about the website or the state of play report.

It wasn't until the beginning of July that I felt enough strength to resume. 

And if I summarise the 5 points, it is quite clear that I need a new content format for the state of play reports, on a new technical basis, more mature, more variable and still as fast and clear as the rest of my website.

  • In my new content format, one can follow the editing steps, the changes in the text.
  • The Jardin Intérieur is not the place for complex, elaborate content or image-rich presentations.  
  • For technical reasons, the template for the state of play reports is being completely redeveloped.
  • The state of play reports will not be integrated into the flow of the blog, there will be a new format.
  • A state of play report is a systematic review of the state of research.

And while the front page was almost ready, the template for the state of play report was a particular challenge. And there was still no main page for an overview of the existing state of play reports. 

More on this in Part II shortly.

tl, dr;

How did the new format of the progress report come about and what are the considerations behind it?

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