Navigating IC weblogs since demise of Off Topic (7)

wonderer's profile

wonderer
Posted by wonderer on Thu 13 Nov 08, 1:51 PM

I posted the text below as a thread on Website help, here http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/posts/215237/ , but Admin deemed it to be more appropriate as a weblog, so here goes.

How has or will the demise of Off Topic (and its earlier emasculation) affect people's ability to publish / post and to find and respond to other's publishing and posting? I tend to have 3 main routes to finding postings:
My Boards - I read what people have posted most recently on boards I'm interested in. This is helped by the bumpability of web boards (other than the emasculated version of Off Topic) - when someone responds, the thread is promoted to greater visibility. This doesn't apply to weblogs.
"Stalking" - looking at recent posting history of people who are either in my bookmarks or who I've become interested in through another route, e.g. their posting on another web board.
Checking back - I sometimes go back through my own recent posting history to see if anyone's responded on threads to which I've contributed.
I rarely if ever go to weblogs directly. Although they can contain some of the finest writing on IC, there's also a lot of postings of little or no interest to me, and as they lack the bumping feature, it's hard to guess based on what others have found interesting. (I get the impression that it's people with more online time than me who read lots of weblogs and find the good ones).
The recent loss of Off Topic and encouragement to use weblogs instead seems likely to exacerbate the workload required to find decent weblogs. It will also reduce the visibility of Off Topic discussions since they will not be bumped.
I tend to write few weblogs. Most are a sort of extension of my profile; some thoughts for people who might be interested in me and my history, rather than comments about what I'm feeling today. In fact I think I'll get rid of some of the more ephemeral stuff ("Does anyone else fancy Venus Williams" - that sort of stuff).
I think this is how I can see weblogs being most useful in future. Just like traditional blogging on blog sites. One starts with the person, and reads to see what they say, rather than scanning subjects people have written about recently.
Anyway that's how I think it will affect my usage. Other people have different viewing/posting patterns.
Any further views?

Edited Thu 13 Nov 08, 1:54 PM by wonderer

Replies

13 Nov 08, 2:42 PM
Scribbles
UK(RH), 16 mths
I'm glad blogs can't be bumped. I see very little correlation between quality of writing (to my taste) and number of replies.

13 Nov 08, 2:55 PM
mq1965
UK(DA), 5 yrs

Scribbles wrote:
I'm glad blogs can't be bumped. I see very little correlation between quality of writing (to my taste) and number of replies.
That is true to a degree, but the downside is that the really good, long, slow burning and often very intelligent debates that happened in the old days of Off Topic just can't happen any more. Once a thread is off the first page of any board it is virtually dead. Even the people who have posted on it tend to come back less and less, while virtually no one new will come to it at all.

13 Nov 08, 2:59 PM
Admin
UK, 11 yrs

wonderer wrote:
I rarely if ever go to weblogs directly. Although they can contain some of the finest writing on IC, there's also a lot of postings of little or no interest to me, and as they lack the bumping feature, it's hard to guess based on what others have found interesting.
With weblogs, you can see the number of replies. Also the blue bar indicates the length of the OP, and you can switch back and forth between bookmarked posters and all posters. This means you can check your regulars then trawl for anything else you've missed if you've time.
And they're full-text searchable: either as part of All Posts, or via the Weblogs only search.
Admin
Remember: it's only a website

13 Nov 08, 3:53 PM
wonderer
UK, 2 yrs

Ah thanks - wondered what the blue bar was.

13 Nov 08, 3:55 PM
CookieMonster
UK(RH), 3 yrs
so thats what the blue bar is for, thought it was for the number of blogs posted by the op.

13 Nov 08, 7:41 PM
MistressNikki
UK(SE), 6 yrs
These are exactly the same way as I use IC.
The only thing that will change for me is I feel the lack of quality and increase of personal attacks on the main boards...
*shrug*
Unfettered
Required: Very nearly no painkillers at all!

14 Nov 08, 12:46 AM
FaerieCatcher
UK(BN), 2 yrs

I imagine it would be dead easy to provide users with the options to list (as it currently does) the blogs in date-posted order - but also have a single click that allows users to sort blog entries by latest comment date. That would certainly aid ongoing conversations in here.
Catcher


	©1997-2009 Informed Consent