Hello, everyone! I’m making this post to address several important points that concern this site, it’s future, and how I’ll be working on it in the near and long-term future.
My first reason to write this: To show I’m alive and kicking. Yes, I still check the site daily, and I also keep researching new content, cultures, folklore, mythology and the like. As a matter of fact, I can tell you I deliberated a lot and decided my next actual article will be the fifth Selk’nam entry, you’ll see what it covers when I release it, hopefully without another unfortunate hiatus. Crodur will keep releasing articles, it’s not a dead site and I expect to keep maintaining it for as long as I can.
The second reason, probably the most important one: Crodur is, regardless of my willingness to keep writing, reaching a frustrating bottleneck, and it’s starting to become a genuine obstacle in some of the articles, all related to the lawful use of imagery and widespread copyright.
In Crodur interest has been shown towards somewhat ”niche” or, in more general terms, ”not-so-researched” topics. That includes, for example, archaeological evidence, afterlifes of indigenous groups, folklore trivia, etc. Most of this topics, due to this context they’re in, tend to have far less visual support. Less photos, footage, public showings of art, and the like. Sometimes a fair chunk of visual representations can be found on search browsers, but that leads to the second problem: most of those are copyrighted.
The vast majority of usable images have no free use at all, even those that depict cultural groups and which were took decades ago. Researching a topic becomes increasingly frustrating when there’s no genuine way to support it visually, despite being tenths of actual examples that pop up whenever they are searched on in the images tab of any browser.
Long story short, this is starting to make certain topics increasingly difficult to depict in an engaging and interesting way, and risks future articles becoming unappealing walls of text. Several of the already started series are already facing a severe scarcity on visual content, and making future articles while having to circle around the issue seems to make it worse and makes for poor research. With all of this in mind, there’s several solutions that could be tried:
Possible solutions (and how likely Crodur is to implement them):
1. Using AI as a substitute (Not going to happen):
AI can be a very useful tool in very different areas of knowledge, and a likely technology to stay in the short and long term future. But in the topics this web touches I am vehemently against using it. Generative AI is dull and poorly nuanced, tending to hallucinate things and lack severe self awareness. When it doesn’t know a detail, it entirely makes it up. With topics like ours, it becomes even worse, as with even less images to take content from, the final prompts will look even more erratic and detached from reality. All of that aside of ethical concerns, of course, but that’s another different issue that would be worth it’s own article on itself! All in all it’s a tool that would fare poorly, both writing and depicting anything in there. Crodur plans to be human-driven for the time being in all it’s aspects.
2. Ignoring copyright altogether (Most likely not going to happen)
The vast majority of personal websites and blogs already ignore copyright and just post the images. I personally dislike current copyright laws; I find them draconian and outdated (at best), specially so in the age of information we live in. However, there’s a small, yet genuine risk of retaliation for those who keep doing that. Mindlessly ignoring copyrighted works and piling up images over time like can spell trouble long term, as it just takes one serious, determined copyright holder to turn the whole site upside down. Not worth the hassle and potential issues Crodur could face. I’d consider doing it in very specific scenarios, but even then I’d rather exhaust other options before.
3. Ditching images completely. From now on Crodur only does text (I’d rather not)
The safest option is this one, but it’s also really boring. It would set the web free from any problems or copious hours looking for free to use images, articles would come quickly… zero trouble! It would, however, make the articles a tad duller and tiresome to read, harder to visualize, and generally would make the entire thing difficult to engage. How can someone read about a culture not knowing how their idols, peoples, buildings, etc. looked like? I’d argue that aspect is as important -if not more- than the writing itself! It’s a style I would not like to put in, specially so now that I have a trend of adding images to my articles. Ditching images just cripples any experience or opportunity of learning (for me, too, as I learn as I research). Out of all the options, this is the more doable, so it’s more possible to go this route by the sheer fact that it would be easier to do this, would not tamper with other cultures art, and would not cost Crodur any authenticity. Again, not something I really want to apply.
4. Trying to keep it the same way it has been until now (Likely)
I can just try to scrap for images that are free to use under certain circumstances. That’s what I have been doing for almost a year at this point. But as I said, this is starting to become difficult. The vast majority of sources are copyrighted, and that leaves a very small pool of pictures, oftentimes none at all. I can keep making articles, but on longer running series (or just those that have by default less available content), the visual support will naturally be stretched thin, or just reduce dramatically as I keep at it.
This is more or less the current situation. I must add it has not been the reason behind the recent inactivity, not at all! That was mostly related to real life difficulties and a certain procrastination I’m not entirely proud of. I just felt like writing this to force myself back to the habit, and also because I think it’s better to address this now, in case I eventually start to considerably reduce the image input. However, don’t panic: this could pose a real trouble in the near future or, if I manage to research well enough and choose the right topics, I could hang on for a long while. One way or another, I plan for Crodur to stay active for a long while. As long as there’s interesting content to write about!
Needless to say, we’re open to new ideas and suggestions, any constructive criticism or proposal is always welcome! Whatever makes the site better all around.
That’s all I wanted to say. See you in the next entry, hopefully soon!
Crodur - Glimpses of our world 
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