As many of you know, on June 12 we launched this website of ours -- a website devoted to the study of the uniforms worn by professional football teams, centered around our database of images of all of the uniforms worn in the NFL since 1933. The images created by our Bill Schaefer, which were based on research by Tim Brulia, have been displayed on this website, maintained by Rob Holecko, for a full month as of today. We launched with an article on Uni Watch (right) and we were off and running.We have experienced some technical issues in the past week, and also with other time commitments, we have decided to make a few changes to insure the long term viability of this site. Last month when we launched, we felt it would be feasible to have a daily blog, in the style of the Uni Watch website. For the most part we have held to this, however with much of our audience being the Uni Watch community, we have consciously made a decision to not try to "be another Uni Watch." The nature of the main purpose of the blog, which was to be a vehicle to announce changes to the database, has become, over the first month, redundant and superfluous. The database changes themselves have generally already been discussed in the forum, and to continue to try to keep coming up with different ways of saying, "we have changed this to this" was becoming ponderous, even only in the first month of existence.
So tomorrow we will be launching a minor redesign and a re-focusing of our efforts. Instead of trying to continually announce database changes, the blog will now focus on bringing you articles that tell the stories behind the database changes and about professional football uniforms in general. Articles like the ones that we have brought you in our first month such as Tim's piece of the 1941 Philadelphia Eagles or Bill's piece on another theory of the 1962 Denver Broncos helmet, plus features such as the Best NFL Uniform of All Time Tournament Contest (which will be returning tomorrow) will now be the focus of this blog, while the database changes themselves, which will continue to be debated and discussed in our forum, will be simply updated in the database as they are made. A list will be maintained somewhere on the site, and updated as changes are made.
Therefore join us tomorrow as we begin our second month on the internet, hopefully the second of many months to come.
While we cannot promise to have new content every single day, we will strive to continue to bring fresh new football uniform content on a regular basis. For daily content about athletic aesthetics of all sorts, we urge you to do what we do, and continue to read Uni Watch every morning.
Speaking of Uni Watch, we'd be remiss if we here at The Gridiron Uniform Database did not pass along our condolences as well, to Phil Hecken and the entire Uni Watch family on the passing of Phil's father.
You know, there's really not much of a reason to publicly track all of the changes. You're essentially an NFL uniform encyclopedia - a reference site. Mistakes should be fixed and forgotten, not logged for everyone to see. I mean, ultimately no one cares if you had a bad number font depicted for one team for a few weeks, as long as it's accurate now.
ReplyDelete/just sayin...
I appreciate that thought, The Jeff. Not speaking for my colleagues here, but I do think it's a bit important to reference the changes that we make. It keeps us (well, me anyway) humble and also ensures that we are doing everything possible to live up to our unofficial motto, "Just Get It Right!" It also gives our contributors a sense of well-earned satisfaction to know that they spotted something not quite right and had the evidence to prove that a correction was necessary.
ReplyDeleteTo live up to our status as the reference site for pro football uniforms, we must strive for 100% accuracy.
Semi-quoting Vince Lombardi, "Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we (hope to) catch excellence."
Please DON'T become another Uni Watch. I gave up on that site months ago when the anger, hatred and vitriol out-numbered the occasional useful item 3-1.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty good.:)
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