a_question_for_blatherskites raze long ago and far away, there was talk of a *third* blather being made. it never came to fruition, but green was a popular choice for a potential colour scheme, among other suggestions. if such a thing were to be born at this late stage, what colour(s) would you want it to be? and would you want it to behave the same way blather does now, or are there new features you'd like it to have? (for the record, i'm perfectly content with the way things are. but i'm curious what everyone else thinks. and there may or may not be something in the offing. or maybe i just always wanted an excuse to use the expression "something in the offing".) 251117 ... ovenbird I can't see myself using anything new. There's only so much time and energy in a day and I want to give it to Red. I can't see something new having any appeal. The joy of Red is its quirky strangeness, its archaic nature, its history and depth and haunted houses. I love everything that's weird and old and creaky about it. I love blather BECAUSE it's not modern, not in spite of its lack of modernity. It has to be one of the most antique things on the internet and I hope it lives a long time in exactly its current incarnation. If something like Green popped up, I'd probably have a look, but I can't imagine there being any draw to stay or to sink my voice into it. 251119 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I'm partial to purple, but I don't know if that would be different enough from the colour here. Features? Hmm. Not nested replies. There are enough sites with those. ("This is red, not reddit!" my inner dad_joke generator comments, even though you're talking about a hypothetical non-red.) Maybe the ability to attach pictures. I mean, there are plenty of sites for that too, but sometimes I've wished I could upload a photo, e.g. of a plant or a map, and not just link or verbally describe it. 251119 ... nr i don't know why, but i have an image in my head of a silvery blather with stars and maybe a disco ball of sorts. maybe i just want a magical place for my words to party. 251119 ... raze (you know, i had an unnerving dream once in which we had avatars. paste!'s was a prayer card. which was both surprising and somehow not surprising at all.) 251120 ... ovenbird One thing that occurs to me is that blather is defined just as much by what it isn't as what it is. The home page provides the only real definition of blather that exists: "blather is words. bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web of pontification, insight and nonsensical delight." And it is an experiment based on the words users weave. It is words. Period. And if we could use something other than words it would become something else. I'm thinking of the way Instagram was ruined for me by reels. Instagram was originally about still pictures, but now it's about slick videos. The algorithm pushes reels which means that anyone who wants their posts to get any reach at all has to spend a huge amount of time and money building the capacity to produce high quality video content. (Meta has certainly done a great job of extracting an unbelievable amount of free labour from its users in that capacity, and I vehemently hate it.) Blather keeps the barrier to entry low: Do you have words? If so, you're in. This is probably one of the only places on the entire internet that is driven exclusively by words. That’s what makes it magical. I will concede that the silver star flecked colour scheme DOES appeal to me! And I’ve also thought that adding a picture might enhance my blathes sometimes, but the inability to do so forces me to hone my own descriptive powers. I appreciate that challenge. A new blather couldn’t help but be something else entirely, if it was anything other than a carbon copy of blue and red’s functionality, and I’m not here for “something else.” I came for the words, I’ll stay for the words, I love everyone’s words and the collective world they build. 251121 ... e_o_i ovenbird, that's an excellent point. The web of words doesn't need bells and whistles. I'll be silly and say not even 🔔s or 🎺s (pretend the trumpet is a whistle). But yes, you put it into words better than I could: something I like about blather is its minimalism, the centricity (is that a word?) of words. My speculation about pictures was more of a fancy than a Let's Do That. Though...me being me, I hesitate to draw definite lines about the drawing of lines. One person might say emoji and emoticons and ASCII art are too picturesque, while another would say they're all word-adjacent. Fact (I think): letters started as pictures. Hm. Egyptian hieroglyphs...I wonder if 𓅓 shows up? (It should be a very small owl that makes the sound "m" and is a place-related preposition - all eminently owl-like things.) But whichever letters and symbols blather will and won't show, I *do* think the centrality (there we go) of words is the heart of blather. Or at least one of several hearts. 251122 what's it to you? who go blather from