Blog Updates and Roadmap 2/11/2024
Hello everyone!
The year 2024 is well underway, and I thought I’d take a moment to write up a short update on things to come this year! If you’re still here from Inkvent (which is awesome by the way), I’m sure you’ve noticed that the regular reviews are definitely not coming out on the same daily schedule. As much as I would love to be able to do that, there’s sadly no way that I would be able to keep that up, and I hope that everyone will understand (but I will do it again next December!). Still, I would like to be able to produce them more regularly, and hopefully, I can iron out a more consistent release schedule in the future. With that in mind, I want to talk about a few upcoming changes and announce a few updates!
I’ll start with some upcoming changes to the ink review format:
Pricing per ml – I originally set up a reliable formula to rank an ink based on its price per ml. In concept, it worked well, but in practice, there are too many variables that are unaccounted for: regions outside of the United States, inflation, different bottle size options, etc. Not only is the information irrelevant to anyone outside of the United States, but this also has the potential to quickly date any review I do on an ink. In short, I will remove the ranks based on pricing in my ink reviews.
The bottle – Much like price per ml, the bottles that inks come in change, or vary for numerous reasons. Once again, this has the potential to date reviews with information that could become irrelevant (e.g. recent changes to the Aurora bottles make my current stock irrelevant for review in their current format). This also makes it difficult (and slower) to introduce new reviews for ink makers I haven’t touched upon, especially when they have numerous ink lines (Sailor comes to mind). While I’ll still include the photos of the bottle that I used in the ‘More images/info’ portion of the reviews, I will be removing the bottle as a section of the review itself to tidy up the review format further. Keep in mind that I will still be using the available retail bottles for all of my reviews and not samples.
The score – This has been a problem from the beginning. I’ve spent far too many hours attempting to properly balance the review score. It was originally meant to be a more objective final view of a product’s overall values, and while it’s seen its share of improvements over the last 50+ ink reviews, it still doesn’t work well enough. While I’ll still give ratings out of 10 to individual properties an ink might have, I’ve decided to discontinue the overall score in my future ink reviews.
I hope these changes will streamline the review process, and make them easier to manage. These changes will be retroactive to provide the most consistent and user-friendly experience.
With that out of the way, I have a few more updates and announcements:
Inkswatch – We’ve collaborated with Inkswatch.com! If you haven’t heard of them, Inkswatch is an excellent resource that has curated a vast collection of swatch tiles that can be easily searched, viewed, and compared. Each swatch tile provides brief data on any ink in question and directs to contributed reviews, and I’m proud to say that thewritersarmory.com will now be among them!
Non-ink review-related content – That’s right! It was always my intention to do more than just ink reviews. I already have a few fine-writing-related projects in the works, and some will be here sooner than later. They can be expected (periodically) alongside my regular ink reviews.
The Baltimore Pen Show – It’s almost here! I will be attending, which unfortunately means that I will have to be away from my normal review station for a while. I’ve been working to hopefully have some review content ready to release while I’m away.
That's all I have for today. If you have any thoughts or questions about any of this, let me know! Feedback is always welcome. Until next time!