A spectre is haunting the Internet -- the spectre of Pleonast.

It is high time that Pleonasts should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Pleonast with a manifesto of their own.

To this end, I, the developer of Pleonast, have sketched the following manifesto.

(with apologies to Karl Marx.)

(This manifesto is important enough, that I am in the process of re-writing it for real, so you should check back here when you can.)

The history of all hitherto existing blogs is the history of really ugly websites.

Table and border, foreground and background, font and header stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now subtle, now open fight, a fight that each time ended in the common ruin of the page.

In the earlier epochs of the web, we find almost everywhere a complicated dichotomy of web sites into two camps: the usable and the visually appealing. From libraries to schools, from businesses to government ... in almost all of these web sites, a separation of the functional from the pretty. One site works well but is ugly, while another is very attractive but impossible to use.

The modern blog web sites that have sprouted from the ruins of the old epoch have not done away with this bad design. They have but established new ways of ugliness, new forms of functionality in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the Pleonast, posesses, however, this distinct feature: it is functional AND attractive.

Each step in the development of a web site is accompanied by the corresponding question: which features to add and which to leave out. An excited web developer, full of his own power, is anxious to add as much functionality as is possible. This inevitably leads to the artistic destruction of the site as a whole.

Functional minimalism is the answer to this question.

By functional minimalism I mean the addition of only the features that directly enable the site to function well; this prevents the evil of Feature Bloat.

When this functional minimalism is combined with a unified visual design scheme, it leads to the happy medium between the two opposing camps. It is this balance that we shall acheive.

(this entry has been re-written. it was originally a cheesy marx rip off, but this was important enough that i needed to make it absolutely clear).

Let me set a couple of things straight.

Pleonast is not a Christian site. I created Pleonast for everyone. I personally am a Christian, and I know the vast majority of the current users are Christians, but I do not now, or EVER want it to be an exclusive Christian club. If it ever became that, I would shut it down. If you are not a Christian, I very much want to welcome you and hope that you don't feel uncomfortable.

While your blog is your own and you can pretty much do what you want with it, where I draw the line is with explicit or strongly suggestive sexuality. My only other rule is that you cannot be malicious, which includes everything from trying to break the site to being evil to other users. This is subjectively decided by me, but I try to be pretty hands-off. You can say pretty much anything you want, but I would like to warn you that many people on the site are offended by strong language and might say something nasty to you (despite my own personal wishes to the contrary).

*Note to Christians: I am ASHAMED at some of the comments by Christians that I've read in regards to this ... most people do not have the same beliefs regarding language as you do. Of course someone who is not a Christian is not going to have the same standards. The LAST thing you should do is judge them and put nasty comments about what they should or shouldn't write. You don't have to read their blog. If they are writing offensive comments on your own blog, politely ask them to stop. If they begin to do it maliciously, then, and only then, will I step in.*

I would personally hope that the Christians would be the first to reach out and embrace people who aren't. Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen, but I'm still trying to encourage that as much as possible. If you are a Christian, you should seriously think about what your true goal in this life is.

Pleonasts fight for the attainment of their immediate aims: connection and communication in a functionally minimal yet attractive digital medium, but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of Pleonast. New features will be considered, new designs contemplated, and abuse prevention systems implemented.

Moving forward, Pleonast will continue to serve its current constituency, while still pushing boldy forward into new demographics.

Pleonasts of all countries, unite!