Last week when I posted on a course web page a detailed explanation of how I plan to evaluate student blogs, I coined a phrase and googled it. Nobody seems to have used it before.
Now, thanks to the reach of KairosNews and a few popular bloggers who read it, several other edu-bloggers are thinking about and reflecting on the taxonomy I whipped together. The word I coined was “xenoblogging,” which means the work you do to help other people’s weblogs (commenting, suggesting links, following up on their ideas, giving them credit, etc.).
My main goal was to find something other than “blog three times a week, for 500 words” (or some other, equally artificial formula).
See the original post in which I introduced the subject on KairosNews: Guidelines for Evaluating Classroom Blogs.
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I don't think I understand your question, Sonia.
Could anyone inform me if the library is open for exchange students from abroad like me?
Oh, and the original Greek "xenos" could mean "guest" as well as "stranger." I don't think the connotation "alien" has to be foremost.
Hmm... "parablogging" is a good alternative. Maybe "symbiotic blogging" is a good description for what happens when a group of bloggers read and support each other's works.
No, I wouldn't call a comment spammer a blogger of any sort -- spam is a parasite on the meaningful exchanges that take place on the blogosphere.
I didn't want to compress all the activities I think of as xenoblogging under the umbrella of commenting, since blogrollinig and citing sources are things that can happen on blogs that don't permit readers to leave comments.
Thanks for your feedback!
I love the term "xenoblogging"! It's academese, sure, but it's also catchy...and it's probably what I'm doing at this precise moment. I read through your course assignment breakdown and I love the way you catagorized the different ways to use/invite comments. The definition needs a little clarification, though, Dennis. Does comment spamming qualify as "xenoblogging," for example? And don't we already have a word for "xenoblogging" to some degree -- called "commenting"? Is reading "xenowriting"? Is it really a form of "blogging" to be writing in the margins of someone else's blog? Isn't that just participating in the culture of the blog, or the blogosphere, rather than "blogging" per se. "Blog Politicking" or "hob-bloggin" might be a better term for using comments and links in some of the strategic manners you mentioned, even though "xenoblogging" has a cool ring.
The other issue for me is where the boundaries between familiar and strange lie. I suppose that since I return to your blog time and time again and leave my little comments that I'm officially "xenoblogging" (with the "Comment Grande" as we speak). But I'm no longer a stranger to this blog, am I? Or am I 'blogging' in your comments section the way I would if I had my own literacy weblog by consistently returning to the same site to comment?
Maybe "parablogging" is a better term, because it encompasses work that happens "outside" the blog?
Just contemplating out loud. Like all new terms and essential definitions, you've raised something really worth talking about. Good job.
According to my big fat (offline) dictionary, The Greek "xenos" originally meant "stranger" or "guest". It's fair to translate that as "alien," but not to assume it is the same as "dangerous bug-eyed monster that must be destroyed before it destroys you".
Xeno-blogging - wouldn't that be "blogging about aliens"?
(from dictionary.com) - xenophobia A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples.
xeno - Strange; foreign; different
Evan, that article is behind a registration firewall. Can you post a brief quote from it?
Read this article published by the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Look for "True or False: Blogs Tell it Straight"