BLOGGING: Purpose
Via Dennis Jerz, at Wired: Top 10 Tips for Blogging from Jorn Borger, and this one in particular:
2. You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere … but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility.
Man, I knew I was doing something wrong but I didn’t realize it was a personality flaw at its base.
Obviously yes, one of the main purposes of weblogging is to create an interconnection of links that relate and bring in new ideas and discovery.
But how, if no one is providing new material? What’s so great about access to all information without an increase in information that blossoms from it? I do enjoy the weblogs that keep us up to date by providing sort of a clearing house for linkage, doing the circuit and culling down to the best and posting these. Sure saves me a lot of time. On the other hand, one thing I’ve noticed lately is that even using Google, the search brings up a good amount of places that are merely more clearinghouses for the term. Links to links to links. Sounds good, but it’s merely frustrating when you’re looking for an answer instead of just more places to look for it.
Maybe I just see weblogs as more diverse in their potential and think that the freedom and voice it has given to millions shouldn’t come with somebody else’s rules applied. For me, weblogs provide long or short bursts of reading in a variety of topics and moods. Sort of the Reader’s Digest for the world outside the bathroom.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
December 17th, 2007 at 10:29 am
While I don’t agree with Barger’s formulation of the relationship between links and humility, I do agree with his contention that it’s a good thing to link to good content. Every time you link to something good, you make that good content more visible to search engines.
I do feel that the mainstream media and some scholarship has focused more on the personal essay component of blogs (often giving CCCC panels that described the author’s introduction of blogs to a composition class, in a structure that did not
encourage students to base their blog entries on ideas they have encountered while reading on the internet).
Barger is very clear that it’s not just the links that make his idea of a blog valuable — the best content is the descriptive and evaluative content that describes the links, and he has mastered the ultra-short blurb. So he is giving personal microcontent to go along with every external link.
Further, Barger does post original content on his site (his material on James Joyce is worth a read), but he just doesn’t deliver it in chunks via his blog.
He will post updates that describe changes in those off-blog resources, but because he also posts so many external links he feels that blogs that simply point to an author’s own works don’t meet his self-stated goals for his weblog — to chronicle interesting links that he discovers as he surfs the web. We don’t all need the same goals for the writing — and linking — we publish online.
I have thought of creating a sideblog that is simply links, so that I don’t feel like I have to apologize when I blog a link and maybe a quote, but I don’t have time to add any original commentary. I suppose that’s why many people use del.icio.us and similar services.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Excellent points, and this is a prime example of taking something out of context to add commentary. While I did provide links to both your post and Mr. Barger’s, it’s often questionable as to what percentage of readers do follow and read the complete original text. I did not disagree with Mr. Barger in general, and yet by picking out that one statement that you posted, it could have negated the rest if no one followed the links back.
I also understand your notion of being reluctant to post without comment, the go here, read this type of entry and yet even this is often the best way to get something noticed quickly. Often there’s nothing to add if the original post has all the impact it needs and the “linker” is in agreement.
We all use the weblogs differently and each serves a purpose. Even the small communal efforts of Yahoo groups or Live Journal, Vox Neighborhood, etc. which might seem in complete contradiction to expanding knowledge do indeed share like interests and do clearly aid in sharing linked information as well.
Obviously it all works; I found Mr. Barger’s efforts via your weblog link.