New direction in Tie Dye Wiki

[pburch]

I just noticed that the main page of the Tie Dye Wiki has recently been edited to have a heavy emphasis on Thai mudmee tie-dyeing, along with a large picture:

During the last few years a different form of tie-dye has been introduces in the Southern California area, called mudmee tie-dye. This is the more traditional way of tie-dying and requires much greater skills and time. Mudmee tie-dye has its origin mostly in Thailand and parts of Laos. It is characterized by more delicate pattern and often more subdued colors and, for the most part, is missing big spirals on chest and back.

A blog exists concerning itself mostly with tie-dye in general and mudmee tie-dye in particular. It's name is ThaiTieDye. More information about mudmee tie-dye can also be found at the Mudmee Tie-Dye page.

I am interested in mudmee tie-dyeing, but this seems to me to be too much to be suitable for the Wiki, and too one-sided. I also don't much care for that crack about how mudmee lacks big spirals on the chest and back, given that there are so many other non-spiral designs that are popular in tie-dye. What do you think?

Paula

[ecilA]

Wasn't this just recently an issue?  Paula I thought you had just done some work on it.  It is pretty blatant advertising.  My suggestion would be that we go with a styles of dyeing section and shuffle things around a bit.  Not sure if it's a good suggestion, just mulling this over. 

Tie-dye isn't just any one thing, it's an approach that can be applied in a multitude of ways and while there are plenty of people making spirals there are plenty of people doing other things as well and they aren't just mudmee.  This is really one of the beautiful things about tie-dye, each person has their own little twists that make their work uniquely their own.  As for the oft dissed spiral, people like them!  (One of the funny things about vending, you'll head out with a mixed bag, you have to have spirals--rainbow spirals and you have all of your creative work along as well.  Invariably someone comes running to your booth, they gleefully proclaim, "oh my gosh look at that *insert unique design* shirt" and then?  They purchase a rainbow spiral.)

Anyway, I must apologize, I am interested in the wiki but really haven't had time to work on it but I do think that maybe it should be reverted for now.

[mustdye]

I think it should be removed.
If they are so interested in keeping that style alive then they should put in instructions for that process and remove all commercial links.

[steve]

YOU can edit this out--that's what a wiki is about!

It's gone and the user banned.

[merlinsilk]

Hello Everybody,

I am the bad guy who blatantly advertised on the wiki a few weeks back and got instantly - OK, 2 days later - banned 

So, for all I offended by doing this - I apologize!

When I added the info about mudmee tie-dye to the front page I remember that I had problem with the size of the image I added. I certainly did not want to have it bigger than the initial image, but - don't remember what it was - I did not manage to get it displayed smaller.

Then, in order to reduce the commercial impact, I actually created a special page on www.ThaiDye.com that was just talking about mudmee. Sure, from that page you could get to the offered products, but then again, do a google search for mudmee tie-dye and you can't really miss us - so the damage of blatant advertisement is probably not that severe - I think I just saved somebody, who would be interested, a google search.

The second link I had in my contribution was actually to a  blog acting as the non-commercial companion to the money making site - www.ThaiTiedye.com, where - beside other ranting - we also talk about our own experience with mudmee making.

Now, Steve, you are very hard to find and contact. When I learned that I had been banned from the wiki, I tried to follow the instructions and contact you - that did not work, as you don't accept email as the user:steveoc. I could not log in to edit anything in a talk page because I was banned and I had kept my IP address for a long time, so I was also banned to log in as somebody else - would be the same IP address.

Then I tried to look for the admin contact for the domain registration - that is a private registration, so I could not send you an email there either. The only way I could get a message to you was to get to the wiki through a proxy server, create a different account and de-face the mainpage with my message to you. Sorry for that, and I'm sure you can revert that quickly.

So, here I stand before you - the bad guy in the tie-dye world - guilty of spamming - - but maybe there still is a way for peaceful co-existence because not all tie-dye fans dye themselves and not all people interested in tie-dye buy finished pieces. I actually have plans for our site to add info about do-it-yourself tie-dye because I know that I serve my visitor better when I also have something to offer to the person who did not come to buy something.

Cheers
Merlin

[mustdye]

Could you please remove what you added to the Wiki.

[merlinsilk]

Hi MustDye,

it's much easier for you to just get rid of it - as I mentioned, I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this stuff on there in the first place - so, when you look at the page, just get rid of it.

Merlin

[ecilA]

ahaha, welcome to the tiedye forum Merlin the Melodramatic 

I would guess that the banning would be reconsidered if you expressed an understanding and willingness to cooperate with the spirit of the wiki as it has been presented.  I can't speak for Steve but do find him to be quite a reasonable guy.  I am also only guessing but think that the community prefers for the wiki to not be a platform for advertising dyers and or dye houses.  I guess we could clarify that if there were people who disagreed.

[steve]

Apology accepted.

I am extremely busy. I also host this forum and wiki out of my own pocket with very little if any expectation of commercial gain. I rarely dye anymore, but I maintain the community because I like what it does, and I have known many of the people here a long time. I don't even have advertisements for my own store other than my signature at the bottom of my posts and none on the wiki. Admittedly that may change, but it's my nickel. Nonetheless, it shows where I am coming from.

I wish I had time to police the sites with finer granularity, but I don't. Despite reasonable precautions, both this forum and the wiki have been spammed. This is also on my server and I don't take security lightly. Therefore, I tend to be draconian.

Surely you must know that in both instances your posting the material that you did on the front page of the wiki were inappropriate! Surely, you noticed the absence of commercial content on the wiki. Surely, you are not so naive.

Your use of the wiki to contact me making a loud public message communicates a strange sense of entitlement. I never gave a second thought to contact info because this started as a branch of this community. Of course, you did find me here. Why didn't you send me a personal message?

There are many people here with fiber-arts businesses. What would this forum and the wiki be if everyone here took that approach?

You are welcome here, and I will remove your ban from the wiki if you want to contribute.

We'd love to hear about your techniques. If you are here to make a contribution, feel free to put a link in your sig. Post a message in the business area. Put a link to your informational pages containing links to your store.

Honestly, this community has a forum and wiki having been operating smoothly for a long time without any big deal. Let's just keep it that way.

BTW---thanks to the community for dealing with this!

Steve

[merlinsilk]

Hi Alice,

LOL - I love the attribute you gave me - Merlin the Melodramatic - sounds like Attila the Hun, or something - hope that catches on.

Hi Steve,

thank you! And, yes, I know how annoying spam can be, I am doing something similar to what you do for the dyeing community for the CMM community with a forum at www.YourCMM.com and for a while I actually had to shut it down because there was the spam drowning everything else.

Now, yes, I would appreciate if you would remove the block.

There is something strange about money, isn't it? Somehow it feels like double talk - everybody want to have plenty of it but on the other hand it feels like a dirty thing to make some. I am very open in that I am in this tie-dyeing business to make money and I try to make it with an honest product. I believe that there is a difference between telling others about what you have to offer on the one hand and spam on the other. I can certainly see that this community consisting mostly of do it yourself'ers can consider the simple mention of a commercial site as spam - as an intrusion.

Had I known that it is this community behind the wiki I would have probably not tried to tell about thaidye.com - because I know there is no market for me. Years ago Paula and I had set up a private pay per click campaign on her site and I got a bit of traffic from that but no sales, so I know that this community is not interested in my products - intellectually maybe, but not in the sense I am after - because, obviously and bluntly, I want to sell my products.

Maybe there is a way for hobby and commerce to peacefully co-exist, just like I fly little planes for fun, but don't mind at all that there are pilots that do this for money. Going back to the title of this post, maybe there could be an area of the wiki, where commercial dyers can be invited to tell about their products. I am thinking here about the internet public that we want to serve with what we publish - there are those that look for something to buy and those that are looking for something to learn. With the domain name of tie-dyewiki the site can attract both groups and we have a satisfied visitor when he finds what he is looking for - and that in turn makes for a more popular web site.

If this is something this community would be comfortable with then I would be very willing to help with the wiki to make this clear, and also invite other commercial tie-dyers to participate to make this a really universal site for all things tie-dye. I don't want to do this when I get edited out the next day and just waste my time though 

Cheers
Merlin the Melodramatic

[steve]

You are unbanned. Just realize I have no time for drama--I don't care to come back to my sites after a few days away and find surprises (hence the initial response!)

I invite the community, many of whom I have been with for nearly 5 years, to comment on your proposals.

Please consider that resources are finite and not free to me.

I have also considered ways to have the sites pay their way without changing the character. As you must know by now, I am leery of advertising and commercialization.

Steve

[merlinsilk]

Thanks, Steve!

so, let's ask the community then - do you want tie-dyewiki.com be a purely non-commercial site or do you want to reserve a corner for commercial tie-dyers to contribute by showing what they can offer to those visitors who don't want to dye themselves?

Merlin (totally un-melodramtic now)

[Jaja]

FYI, Merlin, I was considering buying a t-shirt from you, but there were many restrictions on the way: style I liked was sold out and there were only chance to pay for people from US.
So to tell the reasons why you had only network traffic from me!

[merlinsilk]

Hi Jaja,

yes, I remember you! You are in the Czech Republic, aren't you.
There was quite some problem with our payment processor to
process a credit card for your neck of the world, even though
you had no problems with other vendors, right?

So, how is your book coming along? Any progress?

Cheers,
Merlin

PS: Next week we shall have a new batch of the Henley shirts
you were interested in. And they are even better - this time we
used all natural cotton - we did not want to jump through all the
government hoop to be able to call it organic cotton, but de-facto
it is - here in the US we just can't say that

[steve]

This kind of communication should occur via PM.