2008 was the year we finally switched formats… from the text-heavy web page, more-or-less built with simple HTML code, to the more graphical and tool-assisted format you find now at…

https://brigada.org/

(If you haven’t stopped by lately, please do check it out. We think you’ll like what we’ve done to the place.) Never mind that our experiment was unsuccessful — Brigada subscribers didn’t want graphics and links inside the *email* version. We learned the hard way they just wanted the facts, thank you. :-) Along about the May 18th edition…

https://brigada.org/2008_05_18_archive.html

we evidently hit the sweet spot… so that the email version served as a wake-up call that the web-page version was posted. Many users began looking at Brigada via the web site at that time, due to the fact that they could finally…
*** Access Brigada items by topic rather than just by date
*** Click on links in items and immediately go to the referred sites
*** Comment directly on items in real-time rather than wait 2 weeks
*** Make completely *anonymous* comments
*** See comments immediately, rather than wait 2 weeks for compilations
*** Visualize items like book covers, pictures of resources, maps, etc.

So was it a pleasant switch? To some, “not so much.” (To some, change is never pleasant anyway.) Was it needed? Definitely. Are we glad we shifted, even though it’s actually *more* work now rather than less? By all means. We had been asked for tagging for just too many years.