by Ryan Mathews

Important! Please Read

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January 1999

Wow, I can't believe it's 1999. 1999, the year all the bad stuff is scheduled to happen. You know, like the moon breaking free of the Earth's orbit? In anime too, all the alien invasions and disasters tend to happen in "199X". Yet, here we are. If we survive the next twelve months, it will officially be "the future".

If you'll remember, last month I mentioned that I occasionally have trouble finding a topic to rant about in the editorial section of this column. Well, this is not one of those months. This month's rant came screaming out of me while I was researching sites.

As I've said before, if there's one thing I hate, it's websites that blare MIDI files at you and don't give you any way to turn them off. No group of sites on the Web seems to be as much in love with the MIDI file as anime sites. It's a cheap and easy way to provide background music for a page. Annoying "dinkity dink" background music, but music nonetheless. Okay, fine. I understand that many people like these things (and there are some really nicely orchestrated files out there; I'm listening to one as I write this), but please, please put a control panel on the page!

It's gotten to the point where I often won't review a page that starts to bleep crappy music at me and won't let me turn it off, unless there's something on the home page that screams "Stay! It's worth the suffering!" If the music just being there wasn't bad enough, it starts over from the beginning each time you return to the page. I've muted my speakers just to shut it up, but that of course kills all the sounds from my computer.

So c'mon folks! Have a heart. Put the MIDI control panel on the page. Even that's not a perfect solution, as you have to keep turning it off over and over again as you return to the homepage (unless the author put the MIDI in a navigation frame), but at least it's something us poor web reviewers can deal with.

Oh, but that's not the rant.

It was the MIDI that was the final straw, you see. As I browsed this month's topic, I visited page after page playing a MIDI file with no control panel. But not different MIDIs. Oh, no. Each page was playing precisely the same music.

That's what drove the point home: there was nothing original about these pages. Each one played the same MIDI. Each one had the same information, basically a one-page overview of the series in question and "vital statistics" for the three main characters. You know, blood type, favorite food, all the trivia that, while fun, is considerably less useful than how they actually fit into the show. But then, that requires actually watching the show and reviewing it. "Vital stats" can be copied out of a book, or better yet, off someone else's page. Each page has links to pages just as pointless as itself and, of course, it belongs to a ring, sometimes several, so you can visit these pages in succession. Why anyone not a member themselves would want to bother is beyond me, but there you go.

Folks, when you make the decision to create a website, you need to ask yourself "What is my point?" Is there information you want to present that you cannot easily find elsewhere? If not, do you think you can present the existing information in a better way than has been done before? Or are you just planning to cut and paste a bunch of images and text from other sites and call it your own site? There is nothing wrong with creating a site just for fun and sharing it with friends. However, if your site doesn't do anything new, or at least do something old in a new and better way, then ask yourself if you really need to submit it to all the link sites.

Some people complain that the Turnpike, or at least some sections of it, is no longer as useful a resource because of all the links to sites that don't really offer anything. Jei is in a bind here. It's not his job to review submissions, other than to ensure that they have anime content, and he wouldn't have the time to do it if he wanted to. (Not to mention that he'd become the most hated man in fandom for deciding what "deserved" to be included on the busiest anime-related site on the web.) I try to help with this column, but I can only scan a tiny section of the 'Pike each month.

So to sum up, all I'm asking for is a little restraint. Before you start writing HTML, visit the 'Pike and see what's already been done. Ask yourself, "Do we really need another Sailor Moon site?" "Do we really need another Dragonball site?" "Would my site add anything new?" If the answer is no, then turn that creative energy elsewhere. There are plenty of anime out there begging for websites.

Okay, rant over! Time for the topic!!