git ssb

title: "It's Still Not A Tree" date: 2004-02-10 00:15 modified: 2007-03-22 04:24 status: published description: > The website formerly known as This Wasn't A Tree

tags: Moo­quack­woof­tweet­meow, The Twaddle

links:

• url: /thetwaddle title: "The Twaddle" description: "It's still not a tree" rel: related type: text/html

<p>
Mooquackwooftweetmeow's been a bit dead recently, but with good reason. I've been working on <a href="/thetwaddle" title="Visit The Twaddle!">The Twaddle</a>, a magazine-style thing I and my most esteemed colleague, Matthew Gardner, set up a couple of months ago. </p>
<p>
The site first came about in mid-December, in response to our college (Hartlepool Sixth Form College)'s new newspaper, entitled “I Was Once a Tree”, or “I.W.O.T.”. To put it mildly, we thought it was a bit rubbish, and set about creating an alternative, better, web-based college magazine. The site's original title was “This Wasn't A Tree”, and we used the acronym, too. </p>
<p>
The college paper having been released on a Monday, we were rather pleased to have the site going, and our first visitors, on Wednesday night. Then came the Christmas holidays and, for a while, the site was dormant; but in January, we embarked upon a monumental, unauthorised postering spree. (i.e. we printed off some posters and stuck them up about the college.) </p>
<p>
Now, it turns out one requires permission to put posters up in the college; we'd assumed one didn't, given the proliferation of “Happy 18th!” posters. And I don't think the fact that our name was written acrostic-style helped. </p>
<p>
That Friday, the head of the English Department “had a chat” with us, and it was agreed that our parodytastic name would be changed; and that our (few, passing) references to I.W.O.T. would be removed, on account of their having demoralised the I.W.O.T. writers. </p>
<p>
That evening, I decided upon the new name, and relaunched the site, as “The Twaddle”. As a result of the “chat”, we could no longer claim to be the “unofficial” college magazine; evidently “unofficial” wasn't unofficial enough. This actually worked in our favour, as participation in the site was no longer restricted to <abbr title="Hartlepool Sixth Form College">HSFC</abbr>'s students, as it'd felt before. </p>
<p>
Soon after, we launched The Twaddle Forums, which currently comprise over 3800 posts (most non-Twaddle related, it must be said); and we recently launched an RSS feed and klip. Just yesterday I received an email from the organisers of the unofficial college parties (we'll be starting an unofficial college soon), asking us to announce the parties on our site; this has only reaffirmed our ties to the college. </p>
<p>
Yet one of the regulars on the forums lives in America, and we're getting page views from all over the world - Israel, Germany, Australia, Canada... OK, so I suppose none of them stayed very long. </p>
<p>
I won't bother with a conclusion - just visit <a href="/thetwaddle">The Twaddle</a>. </p>