ZFT is Seven Years Old! Annual “State of The Site” Post

In the words of Borat, “wowie wow wow!”

We’ve come a long way from this (2003), this (2004) or even this (2006). For the functionality of the site, the fact that it works and doesn’t look like a complete mess, I extend my gratitude and thanks to Chris Roussel, who has done epically more for this site then the pittance of an storage fee he charges me.

But yes, this site is radically different then what we started with in 2003. My friend Matt Smucker (now in his fourth year of missionary work in Taiwan) and I were chatting around in our first couple of years of college about starting an apologetics site. We just threw together the name and put a couple of bits of info online.

Now, thanks to the ideas and contributions of many, we’ve got a blog that is still regularly updated, a forum and a decent readership.

For the most part, I generally treat this site as I would any site online – that is, I don’t think of it as my site. I’m not sure how to qualify that. I consume this site. Occasionally I remember that I am actually a “founder”here and that its technically mine, and then I get freaked out and have a little identity crises: “why in the world do I still run this site?”

I have this identity crisis because I really don’t have an answer. Sometimes, I’m off the site for weeks, sometimes I am interacting with it often. But I realise that I like the site because it is. That may be circular – but there may be something to that. I like the idea that I can communicate or listen to a certain group of people if I want to. It’s like a little web-cache which people report back to every once in a while (or more often).

I’ve realised that other then that, I have no ambitions for the site. I am not pushing towards anything anymore. I think at one point – I had this idea that maybe this was a vehicle which would really “be something” for God or libertarianism or whatever. But now I am not sure what the point of that would be.

There are plenty of places much better then this site where people can go to get their Christian and/or libertarian fix. I go to plenty of them. But I just like that this place is here – it feels a little like home to me. Perhaps that change is reflected in the fact that I have voluntarily moved 5,000 miles from my geographical “home.” Part of that means alienation – I am effectively cut off from my home in Oregon but never fully integrated into my new home in England. Alienation is an incredible experience of solitude, but it’s also a powerful reminder of the reality of the Christian worldview – where we are sojourners in Christ, foreigners and aliens in this world.

Despite the fact that ZFT is a nice cozy place, and not really an object of ambition, I hope it has been noticed that I am personally still very dedicated to this site and the ideal of seeking out rational, reliable truth. In fact, probably much, much more then when I started this site at age twenty.

Normally, I like to also talk about plans for the future. I have a few, albeit, loosly held.

It is still my intention to divide this frontpage up into a featured, longer, less time-sensitive article (one per week or so) and then a rolling blog of links, light commentary and little bits and pieces. If that happens, I’ll probably think about permanently archiving the forum (unless by way of divine intervention it begins to be useful again). But until then, I think the forum serves a purpose (albeit, a diminished one) so it will stay around in it’s current form.

I have also given a little thought to the idea of diversity of content. I am trying to figure out how, in a thematic sense, to tie together the very different kinds of posts we have. Some are almost entirely political – some are exclusively Christian/theological. Is this working? How might it work better? Can it work at all?

And also, there are the incentives. For example, some here have written some really intelligent, detailed proposals, analyses or investigations – yet these don’t have a lot of buzzwords or keywords which get people to read them. However, write a one paragraph blog about Ron Paul and suddenly three hundred people read it (<— see how I did that there). I want these articles and series which explore deep, fundamental issues to get the billing/readership they deserve, but I am not sure how to go about it. We made some headway with Digg for a time, but I wonder if there are new ways to promote articles that can stand on their own feet without referencing whatever is currently in the news/church. One thing I have noticed is that we are getting some airplay on some of the grassroots/activists sites like the Daily Paul- and that not self-promoted. People on those sites are reading the blog and then posting to those sites.

I also like the idea of these videos. I did one. It was pretty crap, but I think it can be done and with relatively little input time. Others of course are welcome to do similar things. Contact me and I’ll figure out how to prove the intro and outro.

Also, I hope contributors can all post to the blog. Some have already taken advantage of being able to just post articles, but I want to encourage more do do this – even with short blurbs. For example, sometimes people give little commentary on their weekly links posts – perhaps next time give a try writing it up as a paragraph-long blog and just posting it.

But most of all I just want to express my gratitude for all that people have written, said and shared here. It’s been a great seven years – here’s to the next!

You may also be interested in:

1. A Note on Site Limbo
2. Links: Does the U.S. now resemble a Post-Communist Eastern European Country?
3. Zeal For Truth Has Been Updated