Is there a way to unsubscribe from this mail list? If so, can you please remove me?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl D Cravens (Mod)" To: Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 2:25 PM Subject: Re: GAMERS: Blogging GAMERS
Tim Hall wrote:
(2) Have to think about feeding back the other way. Could possibly be done by pingbacks, which is native functionality in some blogging platforms (MT, and Wordpress, but not LJ or Blogger). My own blog uses Wordpress, and does accept pingbacks, which will then appear in the comment threads.
I'd be reluctant to build a new technology mashup based on a technology that already has trouble combating spam.
I think blogs are an odd critter, and I find myself wondering why we have them... and specifically why _I_ have, at any given time, two or three active ones. And what's funny is that it doesn't always matter if anybody reads them... it seems that I talk to record and work through my thoughts as much as anything, and whether others find them worth reading seems to be secondary.
But there's another side to it... sometimes, I don't want to have a conversation among equals, but I want to make statements where I'm the center of attention. (There's the #1 reason for most blogs, I think.) I don't want someone hauling the discussion off in a direction that has little to do with my intended topic. Often, I want to know that people are reading, but I don't want them to offer advice (though they do anyway, even when I tell them not to), or even get into a debate.
In short, I have thoughts about certain things, but _I don't have time_ to discuss them with a crowd of people.
So I find this idea of Karen's kind of odd... if I want to participate in a forum (that is, a discussion group, whether it be a web-forum, mailing list, or Usenet), I don't make blog posts, I make forum posts. Granted, there are times that I cross-post from my blog to GAMERS or the Fudge List, but they aren't often. (And I'll give you this... if GAMERS were a healthy, active list, I might not have a roleplaying blog, but GAMERS has lived past its prime.) Hm... here's an important distinction. I'm not looking to create a "community" around my blog, but I think forums should and (if successful as a forum) inevitably do form communities.
The place where I see blogs and forums intersecting isn't at the same level as Karen does... she wants to maintain the integrity of the individual's blog, and I don't really care about that, on the assumption that if you have a blog, it's because you don't want a forum.
(But on the flip-side, a lot of indie gamers view their blogs as platforms from which they talk to each other. I think that view is possibly broken, because it requires you to have a blog to be part of the conversation, and it doesn't build a coherent community... if I read blog A and not B, I don't get the whole picture when A and B are arguing with about other. And that word "about" is chosen deliberately, because they often aren't talking _to_ each other. It has its benefits... the posts tend to be more coherent essays instead of one-liners, and I think they are less prone to lose track of the main point. But that may be a function of the quality of the posters more than the format.)
So I guess the thing I'm struggling with in Karen's idea is, I don't see the benefit. When I blog, I assume I'm addressing a group of people who are specifically interested in what I have to say. When I post to a forum, that's slightly different... I don't write in my blog the way I'd write on RPG.net. Readers who don't like what I say on my blog can stop reading what I write, but readers on a forum who don't like what I say have to put up with me or leave a community. I'm sure there are those who don't write differently in both cases, but those tend to be the kinds of writers that make me want to leave a community.
I think mashing up blogs and forums confuses personal soap box with community discussion, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
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Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Talk is cheap because supply inevitably exceeds demand.
