> Okay, what did I miss?

Whenever I release something new, there's always a reaction -- be it that of a large group, small group, or just one person -- that I never anticipated. It's not so much that it's unexpected, just that I never thought about it. (To wax long on a philosophical tangent, this is because the content I develop is for me first and the community second, almost invariably. It sounds selfish, but it's the only viable way to maintain both quality and quantity over the long run.) Your reaction, which is not alone, is the one I never saw coming, but only because I never looked.

Someone in RinkChat expressed what I thought was an interesting perspective: she liked the feature but was confused that it exists, as it seemed out of step with the more formal, professional presentation of the other humor features. Maybe this is at least some of your own confusion, but if not, perhaps some light can be shed by the same comments I made in reply.

Namely, that this is NOT a "humor feature" or "featurette" in the vein of those areas of RinkWorks that I've formally classified as such. On the sidebar on the main page, it is listed under "Reader Areas." I think of it more as a communal part of the site, definitely more personal than professional in comparison to the official humor features.

Truth be told, I've had the idea for this for months now and never quite got the drive to see it through, largely because I was concerned about its fit with such things as Book-A-Minute and the How To series as peers. Once I struck upon the realization that this rightfully belonged with the other Reader Areas and that Book-A-Minute et al were NOT its peers, it all fell into place in my head, and I went and did it, despite the fact that at that moment I was in the passenger's seat of our car, which was sailing down an Interstate in Pennsylvania. I pulled out the laptop and wrote the script to manage the thing, designed the logos, and then let it sit until we got back from our trip to Kentucky and I could actually debug and install it. (The first two images had already been created as one-off gags.)

But I admit it's not very clear from RinkWorks' main page how the Graffiti feature is classified in *my* head, so if you're mistaking it as "the next humor feature," this is understandable. But wrong. So maybe now that I'm explaining this, it will be clearer in your own head what I'm trying to do and where I'm going with this. Or maybe not. Certainly it has always been the case that some people, even those unusually aligned with the way I think, don't connect with certain features. I mean there are twentysomething of them now; surely I am the only person in the whole world that likes them all. But you probably have a much better chance if you know where I'm trying to go.

More about it: You're right, this is a SHORT feature, but the initial opening was only meant to prod the creativity of others. It did the trick; I've got a backlog of submissions now, but I'm only going to release one a day. (After the novelty wears off, I'm sure the submissions will drop off -- just hopefully not to zero.) In other words, this is a feature in progress, the ultimate shape of which will largely be defined by those who participate in it. We'll see how it goes.