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Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Segregation and Inclusion
Sabremetrics is a niche topic. It appeals to a tiny group of baseball nuts. If I want to get my sabre slice of bread, I’ve got focused, dedicated sites for that, like this blog (of which the readers provide the bulk of the content). At the same time, there are some sites that like their sabremetrics as part of a larger baseball nut menu, like Fangraphs. Fangraphs includes sabermetric content, within their overall baseball nut content. Then you have a site like Baseball Primer, that has a limited focus on sabremetrics, but they tag such articles for an easy search. The sabremetrics postings are still part of the overall set of postings, but one could, very easily, just click the sabremetrics tag, and be presented with only the sabremetric content. That’s segregation and inclusion.
Kristi brings up espnW.com, which is a women-focused sports site (technically part of a site, since the actual site has as URL: http://espn.go.com/espnw/ ). From the looks of it, the site is a separate branch, as surely as the MLB, NHL, and NFL sites are all separate-but-equal. And, just looking at the layout, it’s also clear what they did: they used WordPress or some other blogging software, to further segregate the content as if it’s its own site. And the only way for ESPN readers to be alerted to content there would be… well, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem there’s an inclusion process in there, like Baseball Primer has it, that those articles and blog posts are seamlessly integrated with out similar non-gender based articles.
Basically, I applaud the effort to tag the articles and blog posts for their commonality. If I want to know about the female experience, I know exactly where to go, just as surely I know where to find sabremetric content on Primer. There’s a club out there for that. But that club would need to be part of a larger club, the sports club.
Giving the girls a VIP room is fantastic. But that VIP room should be surrounded by glass, not walls. Every blog post in there should somehow find itself to the other blogs under the ESPN banner, as well. Segregation and inclusion.
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