Re-Thinking Zenzibar

Re-Thinking Zenzibar
By Royce Carlson

A lot has happened since Zenzibar Alternative Culture first started in July of 1999. The site has grown to over 400 pages. The directory contains nearly 5,000 alternative web sites. There are over 100 articles in our archive and over 1,300 links to alternative news have accumulated at ZNN (Zenzibar News Network). We get e-mails every week from visitors who are excited about what Zenzibar has to offer to those interested in alternative culture. From the feedback I get, and in own personal opinion, Zenzibar is a good thing. It is a resource that would be missed by a lot of people if it was gone. That’s a very real possibility, however.

All of the money received from donors and advertisers has gone into paying the web hosting company, for Internet service, software, and, for the first two years, into promoting the site. We are not paying for any advertising or promotion of the site at this time. There is now only one person running Zenzibar - me. It currently takes 15 to 20 hours per week to maintain it. I have been doing this for three years without a penny of pay. This is not a complaint, just a fact. It has been a lot of fun and I love the site, but, due changes in my circumstances, I can no longer afford to donate that much time to keeping it going. I will keep it online as long as I can but I need to reduce the amount if time I put into it.

Because of this the Zenzibar web site will undergo a re-design that will make it easier to maintain, load faster and with less errors. That’s the positive side. I will also be eliminating some features that have only had marginal popularity or take a considerable amount of time to administer. That’s the down side. I apologize for this but I really have no choice.

Here are the features that will be continued or expanded:

The Zenzibar Alternative Culture directory – this is the mainstay of the site and, by far, the most popular feature. It gets to stay and grow.

ZNN – The Zenzibar News Network is the second most popular feature and is also growing in popularity. More energy will be put into ZNN.

Articles & Commentary – I will continue to post interesting articles on alternative subjects but probably not as frequently as before.

Alternative Events Calendar – I will continue to post links to upcoming alternative events just as I am doing now.

Here are the features that will be discontinued:

The reader poll – usually only 50 to 90 people take the poll each week. With 13,000 plus visitors per week to the site, it is obvious that the poll is not a very popular feature.

The forum – The Zenzibar Salon has never been widely used. There have been a little over 100 posts to the Salon in the two years it has been online. Obviously not a very popular feature.

The Sites of the Week – this is actually a popular feature but it take a surprising amount of time to update it each week so it’s gotta go. I may resurrect it in some form at a later date.

The above changes will keep Zenzibar viable. I know it looks to some of you like a sell out or something. I apologize. I will be working on the site changes for the next several weeks. During this time the site will probably not be updated on a regular schedule and the newsletter might not go out weekly. I hope to have the changes completed by mid-May but it might take until the beginning of June.

In the meantime, we are also interested in exploring other options to keep Zenzibar viable. We are open to selling it to someone who will keep its spirit alive. We would consider partnering with another like-minded web site that would help share the workload and create a better site, and we would also consider offering the site to a non-profit organization that would keep it alive. If you have ideas that can help, or you know someone who would be interested in buying, partnering or becoming materially involved in Zenzibar, please let me know.

Thanks,

Royce Carlson – First Wizard Deluxe at Zenzibar

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