Weblogs: December 2003 Archive Page

--WebWord Returning Soon! (WebWord)

John S. Rhodes, whose WebWord.com has been down for several months, is planning to bring it back early in 2004. Hurrah!

--Blogging Changing Journalism (New Media Journalism @ Seton Hill University)

A small number of my students noted in their end-of-term reflection that they weren't all that comfortable with blogging because they expected a course in traditional journalism, not all this cyberspace stuff...

While many of my students are getting the hang of this, just as many aren't. I'm sure it's that some are simply more motivated than others, some feel more comfortable writing for an audience, others are more passionate about their topics, and some are just more confident in their abilities in general. But what those of us using Web logs are trying to articulate now are the strategies that will help students make the most of their blogging efforts while at the same time envision the ways in which they might be included in the curriculum. --Will R. --More Thinking on Student Blogging (Weblogg-Ed)

Dennis Jerz tiene un excelente Literacy Weblog, hoy navegando su sitio, he encontrado un link a un super artículo, sobre Memes, Memex y Vannebar Bush... Aquí transcribiré solo algunos fragmentos. Pero lo más importante es que, dado que El Tao de Internet ya ha llegado a Vannebar Bush, Memes y Memex por caminos alternativos, es bueno leer a un especialista en el tema. --Laura Mansilla --Meme, Memex y Dennis Jerz  (El Tao de Internet)

Yo no habla Espanol, but using the on-site link to the Babelfish translator really opens up a world of scholarship and ideas.

This morning, while my son was at choir practice, I spent an hour reading through the paperback "Canterbury Tales" that I first read as an undergraduate. It's taking a while to get back my reading knowledge of middle English -- long enough to remind me how difficult even my own language can be.

This is not passive news consumption. Neither is it broadcasting. The average blogger has time to surf the web, but no resources to report stories. Some bloggers will follow a news story to the end, some may lose interest after a few days. Commentary will range from the fully-formed to the random blurt and can freely mix the public and the personal.

All this represents something new: participatory media. And it matters. Not because of its resemblance to familiar institutions, but because of its differences from them. -- Rebecca Blood --The revolution should not be eulogised  (Guardian)

A good article, in which a committed blogger speaks intelligently to the wider world of non-bloggers. I do, however, question her estimate that an "average weblog" will be updated "perhaps a dozen times a day". Blogs that show that much activity are very rare, indeed.

From a Guardian special report on weblogs, which I found on Scott Rettberg's site.

Weblog TweakingJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I've made a few very minor tweaks to the blog, as I re-familiarize myself with JSP. Will is planning on making some changes to the site soon, and I want to be up to speed so I can more fully understand what he's accomplished for me.

The underlying code that he created for me is beyond my fathoming at this point, but Will has very wisely separated the guts of the program from the display, which is what I'm fiddling with.

Now the comments display the date. (That info had always been collected, I just didn't get around to figuring out how to display it until now.) I've also changed a few things about the editing screen that I use, mostly to reduce the amount of scrolling I have to do when creating a new blog entry.

My next project will be creating an RSS feed.

Early, link-heavy blogs were, for the most part, a method of sharing links. They usually contained entries that consisted of one or two hyperlinks, the blogger's commentary on the link's content, and a place for other bloggers to make comments about the entry. These early blogs often focused on what Blood calls "the dissemination and interpretation of the news." By linking to news articles from "lesser-known sources" that might be otherwise overlooked by the "typical web user," weblog authors supply "additional facts, alternative views, and thoughtful commentary" that is often unavailable from large news sources (10/01/03). See Appendix A.

As blogging became more popular, many weblogs shifted from the original, link-heavy forms that dominated early blogs, to a free-form on-line journal where authors have begun to write more freely and frequently. Many blog entries now contain no links at all, as the new generation of bloggers share "notes about the weekend, [or] a quick reflection on some subject or another" (Blood 10/01/03). Many bloggers write bi-daily in these journals, which serve as more of an ?Update-in-the-life-of?,? than a source for news. See Appendix B.

Although weblog journals have gained immense popularity over the past four years, the original link-heavy style is still respected by many current weblogs. --Kirsten Schubert, a former student of mine, in her senior capstone paper at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. --Blurring the Borders of Rhetoric and Hypertextuality in Weblogs (The Hypertext Project)

Kirsten's blog truncated my (long) comment, so I'll post my reaction to her paper below.

Works Cited

"Susan" (smgct1@comcast.net). "Oddly enough..." [Weblog comment.] N.d. "More Questionable Use of My Work." Dennis G. Jerz. Jerz's Literacy Weblog. Seton Hill University. 10 Dec 2003. (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=1998)

Poster's Lastname, Firstname, I. (or screen ID) "Title of comment, or first few words." [Weblog comment.] Date comment was posted. Title of blog entry. Author of blog entry. Name of Weblog. Sponsoring organization -- if any. Date blog entry was posted. (URL that displays the comments in context, if possible.) Date you accessed the comment.

Note: See also "Citing a Weblog Entry in MLA Style".Citing a Weblog Comment in MLA StyleJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I couldn't immediately find Susan's full name when I looked at her website, so for the above example I treated "Susan" like a nickname; the quotation marks indicate that I haven't simply forgotten to type her last name.

I think the bracketed label "[Weblog comment]" is probably necessary for clarification.

The URL for the citation should display the comments in context, rather than a link that opens a pop-up window with the comments inside (and no easy way to see the entry that prompted the comments).

As with any MLA citation, if the information is lacking, keep a placeholder there. Thus, since my system doesn't at the moment display the date when a comment was posted, I added "N.d." (for "no date") in the slot where the date should be.

Works Cited

Jerz, Dennis G. "Citing a Weblog in MLA Style." [Weblog entry.] Jerz's Literacy Weblog. Seton Hill University. 11 Dec 2003. (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=2000). 11 Dec 2003.

Lastname, Firstname, I. "Title of individual blog entry." [Weblog entry.] Name of Weblog. Sponsoring organization -- if any. Date posted. (URL to permalink.) Date accessed.

Note: See also "Citing a Weblog Comment in MLA Style".Citing a Weblog Entry in MLA StyleJerz's Literacy Weblog)

The MLA handbook doesn't, in my opinion, do a very good job differentiating between a static personal home page and other kinds of self-published websites (such as an annotated bibliography or an anthology of short autobiographical essays). Citing a weblog isn't much different from citing any web page, but students may appreciate a clear example.

I would prefer to put angle brackets around the URL, but my blogging software chokes when I try that. And I was working on a hanging indent, but couldn't get my stylesheet to display it properly. Some other day. I think I've got it now.

I thought it was necessary to put the "[Curricular weblog.]" statement there because, while my blog has the word "Weblog" in it, not all do. Possible values to fill this slot could include "Group weblog," "Professional weblog," "Personal weblog," etc. [I've actually changed that around a bit now...] Should it simply be "Weblog," and should it be there only if the blog doesn't include "blog" or "weblog" in the title? I can see particular value in "Group weblog," so that citing a post that I make to Kairosnews or New Media Journalism @ Seton Hill University does not make me look like I own the blog (since many people can and do post on these sites.)

Comments or suggestions?

In response to a request by Susan. Which makes me realize I ought to do a separate blog entry for citing comments...

Often, while sifting through the mountain of daily Gothamist correspondence, we come across emails asking for advice about starting a blog. Why anyone would consider Gothamist an authority on the sweet, intricate science of blogging is beyond us ? but we are loathe to sidestep our obligation to respond. Here then, based on our blog-exploration and the evolution that is Gothamist, the first in a series of Gothamist Notes On Blogging, entitled "What not to do when you blog." --What Not to Do When You Blog (Gothamist)

While this is a good overview of current blogging trends, I find it offputting to see any definition of blogging used in such prescriptive terms.

I'd particularly disagree with Gothamist's invective against writing about yourself. Good writing is good writing, regardless of the subject. Please don't stop blogging just because the subject of your blog doesn't interest The Gothamist. Maybe you won't get many outside links if you only blog about yourself and the people you already know, but if you start linking to pages you find elsewhere online, you may develop a network of personal blogs written by other people whose personal interests intersect with yours.

Some blogs wear pinstripes, others wear tie-dye and sandals, and others just wear comfy sweats. Whether a blog is professional, creative, or simply a place for your own thoughts, good writing is good reading for whoever finds it.

The increased adoption of blogging, citizen journalism, Flash presentations and the like portend a different season of political coverage than what we've seen in the past. These aren't new developments, but they've been used more frequently in the last year by the online-news industry, and will likely be incorporated into upcoming electoral coverage. --Steve Outing --Prepare Now for Better Online Election Coverage (Editor and Publisher)

I'll be teaching "Writing for the Internet" next fall, during the presidential election. Plenty of my students have professed their utter boredom with politics (outside of their particular hobbyhorse, if any). So I'm reluctant to tie a major online project to political current events; still, there will be a lot happening in cyberspace, particularly on the Thursday before election day, when scandals are strategically the most damaging to candidates. I'll have to think about this one.

Anyway, here's a great suggestion from the article: "Candidates were asked to give their stands on a variety of issues. In the print edition, candidate responses were sorted into grids, so readers could see who thinks what with a quick glance. But online, the approach was different: Web readers decided what their own stands are, then discovered who agreed with them the most at the end of the quiz."

One only needs to have had a weblog for about five minutes to see the relevance to blogging of Cialdini?s ideas about how we are persuaded and how we reach decisions?particularly concerning whom one links to or adds to one?s blogroll. If you?re honest, you?ll recognize that at least some of Cialdini?s principles have determined your linking/blogrolling preferences:

• Reciprocity (If I put you on my blogroll, you?ll feel obliged to put me on yours.)
• Commitment/Consistency (Now that you?re on my blogroll I?m unlikely to remove you.)
• Social Proof (If all those other people have X on their blogrolls, then he definitely should be on my blogroll.)
• Liking (The people I link to and have on my blogroll are similar to me, have praised me, are associated with events or projects I?d like to be a part of? at the very least, since I?m never going to reach the A-list, I can bask in the A-lister?s reflected glory.)
• Authority (Anyone on the Technorati Top 100 must automatically be knowledgeable, wise, and powerful.)
• Scarcity (Since the A-list has so few members relative to the total blogging population, what A-listers write must necessarily be of high quality. Similarly, a link from an A-lister is enormously valuable?regardless of the quality of the item at the end of that link.)

--Jonathan Delacour --I'll Link to Whoever He's Linking To (The Heart of Things)

This is a much more thorough examination of an issue I was muddling through a few days ago. Dammit, I wish I had time to pursue this further, but my plate is already full. I'll just have to read what others write (which is a heck of a lot easier than trying to figure it all out myself).

Update, 10 Dec: I don't think Delacour's assessment of "scarcity" is right. Because the A-list bloggers have so many inbound links, their opinions online are anything but scarce. But I agree with him in his application of scarcity to an outbound link from an A-lister. Even if the Alpha blogger has pages and pages out outbound links, each outbound link can be very valuable to the recipient (if, that is, the recipient cares about the currency of the blogosphere).

I'm marking blogging portfolios for my Writing for the Internet course. Here are a few gems:

• "I don't get any leftovers at school, and I miss that twice-heated home cooked goodness." -- Amy Slade
• "I'm willing to wager that writing for an online medium is letting me take the easy way out." -- Julie Young
• "The clothes are donated to the YWCA. The owners help dress you from head to toe and even does make-up and hair if needed." -- Tiffany Graham
• "I hate this feeling of stress and nothing getting done." -- Lindsay Dzurko
• "It seems that when something goes wrong here at SHU the baseball team is the first to blame." -- Brandon Whitfield
• "It is all so funny that people are still relying on these 'journalists' to report sex news, when, in actuality they are creating it." -- Amanda Cochran
• "Many cases in the news recently have exhibited the lack of consequences faced by those who commit murder." -- Jess Prokop

Student Blogging Gems (EL 230: Writing for the Internet)

Note to self... next time, have student bloggers blog at least part of their reflection paper on blogging. I'm reading some really excellent observations that I'd like to link to, but I can't because the students have submitted them the old-fashioned way, on paper.

Of course, some students are being honestly self-critical in a way that might be squelched if they were forced to blog their reflections online.

One recurring thread in their reflections is time -- they either don't have enough time to blog as they feel they should, or they are conscious that blogging is a great way to fritter away time while managing to convince one's self that one is being productive. One student reported that blogging feels like an extracurricular activity, like it is nothing at all in the same realm as reading a chapter of math. I say hurrah to that statement, though unfortuantely I can't link to it because the student didn't blog it.

Two more blog portfolios to go from this class.... but it's time for me to head home.

A solid agreement has been reached between BlogShares founder Seyed Razavi and technologist Jay Campbell -- the site is coming back! --Blogshares: Coming Back Soon

I figured that a good idea wouldn't lay dormant for very long.

I'm not sure I'm artciulating anything new here, but for me, reading some of the "high-profile" blogs feels a little bit like listening to talk radio: a charismatic figure stirs up people's frustrations and fears by linking to a news article or bit of information. Then a feeding frenzy takes place, with dozens of other bloggers quickly linking to this story or adding their comments, creating the noise effect I was talking about yesterday. --Chuck Tyron --Ten Blogs that Shook the World (The Chutry Experiment)

I confess that I probably feel too much validation when I happen to blog something that I later see climbing the charts on Popdex or Blogdex. Often, of course, I have seen the link on Slashdot, Wired, Metafilter, A & L Daily, or some other well-read site, so there is little wonder that other bloggers will pick up an interesting link. It's really far more satisfying when I find a gracious link on thinking with my fingers or MGK; these are people I've met in person (Torill was recently in Greensburg, and although Matthew probaby doesn't remember me, long before I started blogging I met him briefly at a conference -- probably the MLA, though I can't honestly remember).

This blog entry is a bit more of a hodgepodge than usual, but just now as I was scanning the blog entry I wrote for Torill's visit, I was reminded of Torill's reasons for not permitting comments on her blog. My sister Rosemary (whose eagle eye often catches typos in my blog entries -- thanks sis) told me that a comment spammer had struck my pointless Rainbow Hector Weblog. My journalism students are turning in blog portfolios, and one of the components asks them to reflect upon an entry that they wrote that generated good comments. Some students who haven't been blogging regularly probably won't get many comments on the blog entries they are feverishly writing the day before their portfolios are due. The artificiality of expecting students to write entries that generate comments leads to the following well-written, poignant plea from my student Shannon Gerstel, who uses images of nudity and shame to describe the way she feels about her blog in the hours before it is due.

I'll be very interested to see how many of my student bloggers continue to blog over the break, and what they write about when they are no longer thinking about fulfilling the requirements of an assignment.

The story you are about to read is true. It involves a fugitive heiress, guns, money, and layers of Internet intimacy and deception. It is a mystery that takes place at the edge of technology. And it is unlike anything you've ever read before. --John H. Richardson --The Search for Isabella V (Esquire)

A fascinating additional layer in the "Flight Risk" story (see the abbreviated back story or the abbrv bk stry) . The site itself has lain dormant since October, and none of the entries since mid-September have attracted any comments.

Jorn Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, is missing. He resides in Socorro, New Mexico, and was last seen there by his housemate in very early October. Most if not all of his possessions, including his ID card, are still at his residence. --Eric Wagoner

Update: According to poster "cedar" on Metafilter: "I called the Sorocco PD at (505)835-1883 requesting any information they might have. Officer Richard Lopez returned my call immediately and let me know that Mr. Barger was not considered missing or in danger." Glad to hear it.

Update, 5 Dec: In "Jorn Barger has Left the Building," Wired offers a wrap-up that includes reaction from Barger's sister, but otherwise depends heavily on links to Metafilter. --Where is Jorn Barger?EricWagoner.com)

I've been on the receiving end of some of Jorn's scorn (though I'm sure I was only a momentary blip on his radar). I'm also aware that because of the pro-Palestine angle of his linkage he has been accused of anti-Semitism. Still, I only reluctantly removed Robot Wisdom from my blogroll when he stopped updating it regularly. His contributions to cyberspace are significant (he coined the term "weblog," for instance). Certainly any private citizen has the right to disappear from public view if he or she so chooses, but this sounds very strange.

About a week ago, I thought about writing a rather sad blog entry about the sad state of some excellent blogs, such as John S. Rhodes's Webword (hasn't been updated in since September), and Elwyn Jenkins's Microdoc News (activity across all of Microdoc's blogs has dropped drastically) and, of course, Barger's Robot Wisdom. For some reason I never got around to writing that entry, but let me try a bit now.

Rhodes and Jenkins had hopes of using their blogs to elevate their profile and thus attract business.

Rhodes worked hard to create Webword as a community focused around usability issues, and though I seem to remember his site being ranked #2 in Google searches on usability, it may have been chilly in the long shadow of Jakob Nielsen. During the dot-com boom, when so much money was being spent on poor web designs, I really enjoyed the usability evangelization (and commiseration) that went on in the comments fields. Rhodes deputized some loyal community members to help run Webword. With my recent job change from technical writing to new media journalism, I'm not spending as much time on usability issues, which makes sense because the journalism majors that I educate will probably not be expected to design the websites for which they write. (I do still teach usability in "Writing for the Internet," but since I no longer require students to design web pages for real-world clients, usability is less central to my pedagogy nowadays. Had I stayed in technical writing, or moved to a different school as a technical writer, I would have felt Webword's absence more acutely.)

Jenkins created maybe a dozen or more weblogs with slightly different themes; his aggressive appearance on the blogosphere generated some flak:

"In short, Mr. Jenkins' vaporous content is well on its way to earning him a place on most of the A-list blogrolls. From there he'll be able to make a lot of money from blogging. And Google, no doubt, will make a lot of money by inserting ads on the bloggers' pages. The only people who suffer will be those who try to use Google to find meaningful content." -- from How Bloggers Game Google, from Google-Watch (a site that is as critical of Google as Elwyn is laudatory; one of Jenkins's several content clusters includes the study of Google)

The basic principle of starting a whole bunch of blogs in order to learn what kind of an audience you attract and then figuring out how to make a living serving that audience sounds like a perfectly reasonable strategy; yet I always found it hard to glimpse the "real" Elwyn in his blog (even Elwyn's personal blog is sparse). Now, the spam comments collect on the otherwise inactive ProBlog, a group blog that he and others started as a reaction to Andrew Orlowski's periodic and vitriolic attacks on the blogosphere.

I wouldn't put my own online efforts in the same entrepreneurial categories as Rhodes or Jenkins... personally, I'm delighted that my position as a new media journalism faculty member gives me the excuse to continue blogging, while also permitting me to teach the occasional literature course, in an environment that seems willing to encourage my own creative new media efforts (chiefly in interactive fiction, but blogging is becoming more and more of a creative outlet for me).

As I contemplate grading weblog portfolios, I am once again buoyed by my own enthusiasm about weblogs as vehicles for personal expression, to help students trace their intellectual development, and to get them to experience the pleasures and responsibilities of publishing their ideas in a public forum, where real people can contact them and disagree or agree (as the case may be). Of course, there is always a certain percentage of students who simply can't get intellectually involved in the subject matter, and for whom any assignment is tedious and unrewarding. I don't see weblogs magically helping the disinterested and uninvolved students, but I do see the brightest students and the students in the solid center responding positively to their blogging experience.

It's been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I'd like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those who could be found on the forums and IRC channel. You turned a silly fun idea of a mad monkey coder in London into something worthy of the attention by thousands of bloggers and the press. --Seyed Razavi --Blogshares -- Closed Down (Blogshares.com)

That's too bad. Blogshares was a fantasy stock market that used incoming links as its form of currency. I also found it a good tool for tracking people who had linked to me, and (even better) a simple way to gauge the relative importance of blogs. But obviously the site required too much maintenance and brought in too little reveune. Thanks for the fun, Seyed!