Blogging elsewhere on the 'Net.
Part of Society.
29 July 2009
Chris Heilmann unveils an online book that explains how to be a developer evangelist. Tons of good advice here. Read it if you're eager to talk about the stuff you're doing and want to convince other developers to use it.
Blogging, Business, Conferences, Education, Professionalism, Public speaking, Skillset | Permalink
17 April 2008
Jason Ryan of the New Zealand State Services Commission has posted an interesting ten-principle approach to blogging by public servants.
(Via Web Directions Blog.)
Blogging | Permalink
11 February 2008
Jonathan shares his tips and tricks for building a good comment spam blocker. Some are obvious, others less so.
Blogging | Permalink
14 September 2007
Alastair Campbell on blog comments. He acknowledges the problem, but would like to continue allowing comments. Therefore he proposes a comment policy:
This site is my own, it is not a democracy. If you want freedom of expression get your own site. Having said that, comments are welcome provided that they are:
- On topic, i.e. you have read the post and are commenting on the same topic.
- Adding something to the post, i.e. “you suck” and “you rock” are equally useless.
- Polite, or at least professional.
- Not overly promotional or outright spam.
Any comment that does not fulfil these criteria will be removed at my discretion.
If a comment is largely good with a mistake or two, I may correct it.
If you provide a valid email address, I will try to inform you of a removal or correction.
Sounds interesting. I may apply it to my own site, except for the last line.
Blogging | Permalink
29 August 2007
Interesting meta-survey of blogging.
Quoted quote (2004):
Indeed, a survey of taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers ("often seen as barometers of popular trends" according to Reuters, though God alone knows when hairdressers became barometers of anything), by ad outfit DDB London showed that 90 per cent of barometers have not the foggiest idea what a podcast is, and an impressive 70 per cent live in blissful ignorance of blogging.
(Via Paul Boag.)
Blogging | Permalink
21 July 2007
Joel Spolsky explains what's wrong with the current commenting system on blogs.
When a blog allows comments right below the writer's post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody ... nobody ... would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.
I agree passionately. See also the follow-up by Clay Shirky:
I have long thought that the freedom of speech argument is dumb on blogs — it is the blogger’s space, and he or she should feel free to delete, disemvowel, or otherwise dispose of material, for any reason, or no reason.
Even though Clay Shirky doesn't quite believe that any more, I do. I'm the absolute dictator of my own blog, and I can do whatever I like.
Blogging | Permalink
21 April 2007
Dustin lands at Google, and I wish him good luck.
In his entry he mentions one important thing:
Don’t bloggers go there to die?
That’s a stereotype. A stereotype, however, that I once believed as well. I believe blogging is good for my soul, and I always love sharing what I learn. I will continue to blog, but of course under restrictions of not sharing private company information [...]
I noted the problem of Google employees not blogging any more a while ago, when Erik Arvidsson and Douglas Bowman entered Google and basically stopped writing on their blogs, both of which I read with interest.
Now this may of course be a coincidence; both Erik and Douglas may have decided independently of each other and of Google that they wanted to take a break. Nonetheless I worried a bit. Now that Dustin's going to Google, too, I again worry a bit, because his is one other blog I don't like to lose.
Nonetheless Dustin is very clear: he will continue blogging. For me, this is a sort of test case. If Dustin, too, falls off my radar, I'm afraid I'll be forced to conclude that there's something about working for Google that doesn't mix well with independent blogging. Let's hope I'm worrying about nothing.
Blogging | Permalink
19 April 2007
20 tips for writing a better blog. Tip 2: Encourage comments. For a starting blog, possibly. For a mature blog, who knows? Maybe 'discourage comments' would be a better tip for them.
(Via Paul Boag.)
Blogging | Permalink
Zeldman on blog comments. He, too, focuses on spam, but does not say much about quality.
Blogging | Permalink
Jonathan Snook expects spam commenting to become an even greater problem than it is today. Although that's quite possible, I feel that he almost ignores the second possible cause of death for comments: quality (or rather, lack thereof).
Blogging | Permalink
2 April 2007
Tim O'Reilly calls for a Blogger Code of Conduct. His proposals are:
I find 1 interesting; I never thought of responsibility for comments, but it makes excellent sense. To me, 2 is something I decide in private, because I find it hard to articulate my exact tolerance, and it depends on my mood anyway. I implement 4 by deleting trolls.
(Via Tim Bray.)
Blogging | Permalink
19 October 2006
John Allsopp feels that blogging will change fundamentally in the next year or so. Where previously people followed several popular blogs, which as a result became even more popular, they'll increasingly pick the entries that interest them; and never mind which blog they appeared on.
I'm not sure I agree; before finding a good entry, someone first has to find the blog that contains that entry. But if everyone only reads the blogs that everyone else reads, it's hard to find a good entry on a less well known blog.
I'm afraid the blogosphere has reached a state of equilibrium that's hard to upset. People have to start looking outside the well known blogs, but the problem is that there's so much boring and outright bad stuff out there that most people will hurriedly return to the well known blogs.
I mean, there's a reasons some blogs are well known and others aren't: constant quality. Not just one good article, but a whole series of them stretching over months; sometimes years.
Although there will certainly be at least one high-quality blog that isn't as well known as it deserves to be, there are also millions of blogs that deserve to remain unknown. Conversely, how many of the well known blogs have seen a marked decline in quality?
I don't think we'll see a significant change, although I'd welcome a few more voices in web development land. Setting up a popular blog, however, is (and should be) more demanding than just publishing one good article.
Blogging | Permalink
17 September 2006
26 June 2006
The danger of the blogosphere revealed: we tend to forget there's an entire world out there, a world where Flickr is not the largest photo sharing site.
Blogging | Permalink
15 March 2006
To allow comments or not to allow comments. Jeremy ponders the question. 'Comments should be disabled 90% of the time.'
Blogging | Permalink
20 December 2005
Spot on.
'a powerful incentive for hosting and running an awards competition is to help make the host a center of power in the community. By creating the forum, inciting the inevitable drama, setting the rules, and (likely) helping to entrench one's friends and supporters as powers within the new community hierarchy, those who create awards are likely to reap significant benefits from doing so.'
Blogging | Permalink
This is the linklog of Peter-Paul Koch, mobile platform strategist, consultant, and trainer. You can also visit his QuirksBlog, or you can follow him on Twitter.
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