I had heard about the redesign of the site and knew it would come, but it was a surprise to see it last Thursday. While I thought that it was too white and bright, by now I have gotten used to it. The big problems have been with the submissions and the blogs. I had a submission that was put in before the redesign was launched, and when it was, I could not accept or deny it for almost a week. These problems have been, and are being, fixed as fast as possible by the technical staff. With all the problems, there have been the inevitable complaints and whining from users like:

The site is too white!

I can't submit!

Bring back the old design!

Etcetera, etcetera. On several blogs and forum posts, I have heard of a potential boycott on Thursday, September 30. The purpose of this is to let the people running the site know that it is the users that make it popular and that if they don't come, then it would send a message that we don't like the way you are running things and that it would be better to go back to the old way. Well, my friends, I can tell you that I will not be participating in this boycott. There are several reasons for this:

1. A boycott of something usually never accomplishes what it wants. There are usually never enough people participating and it seems like a waste of time.

2. This boycott is under the assumption that all these things were done on purpose just so that the people running the site could get their jollies or some such reason. I may be naive, but I do not believe that. Most of the mods here began as contributors like us, so I don't think that they wanted to screw up the site for themselves.

3. This seems like more of a protest over CBS buying CNET, the parent of TV.com. I personally don't care either way, just as long as CBS lets it alone and lets CNET run it. (Although I haven't seen any ads for other network shows since the redesign.)

4. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if everything(or most everything) gets fixed by the time the boycott date comes up.

Personally, I'd rather they fix Movietome. As the editor of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I'd like to make submissions to the movies seen on that show, but submissions are turned off and they don't know when they could be turned back on. In any event, I won't be participating. I do wish you all luck and hope that everything gets fixed soon, if it isn't already.

Well, it has been quite a time for me in the TV.com Community Spotlight. Let me go back in time....

I had been a TC for M*A*S*H for about a month when I logged in on the 13th of June. I usually log in once a day to check my editors queue so I can get the submissions taken care of as quickly as possible. This was before I went to work. Anyway, I noticed on in my queue, but it was for M*A*S*H. At first, I wondered how it got there, but then I noticed a new email in my box. It was from the moderators saying I had just been made the editor. I appproved the submission and went on my way. Two days later, one of my friends wrote in her blog that it was her anniversary here. Then I noticed that it was also my anniversary, so I wrote about that and the new editorship in my blog. The next day, I saw several comments to it, including one that said I had been in the Community Spotlight. I had wondered in the past what you had to do to get that, but I didn't want to seem like I was only doing this to get an emblem on my profile. I was very surprised and pleased.

Over the next week, I received new friend requests because of my apperance in the Spotlight. It was very nice to see my nickname on the front page and on the community page. In all, I added 15 new friends(including one I can tell I won't agree with politically). It has been a very nice experience to have people reading my profile and seeing what shows I like. One thing I would like to see is an archive of former members listed so that we can see who has been and maybe we could add them also.

EDIT: I forgot one other thing, in the midst of the new editorship, I also achieved level 60, the Grape Ape emblem. For those who don't know, the Grape Ape was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon about a huge purple gorilla and a beagle who traveled around in a VW bus-type car helping people. He was called Grape Ape because every time he said something, he would end it by saying 'Grape Ape! Grape Ape!' I'm sure that it could be seen on the Boomerang channel if you have that.

I was perusing one of my friend's blogs(IndianaMom) and she said it was her third anniversary here. I looked at my profile page and I just noticed that it is also my third anniversary too. I'm sure there are a lot of us TVTome visitors haning around since CNET bought the website and made it TV.com. We have sure been through a lot--both good and bad--since we started here. I haven't done one of these in a while, but it seemed like a good time to do one. One thing that has happened to me since the last one is that I became the editor for M*A*S*H. I had started contributing to that guide. Then the editor made me a TC and just this weekend retired, so I inherited it. I also became a TC for Hogan's Heroes. I have all the DVD's of both series, so I hope to get as much info as I can to both. Hopefully, it won't be more than a year until the next post.