BlogsMalaysia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BlogsMalaysia [1]is a Malaysian metablog dedicated to 'scouring Sharp Bytes from Bolehland'. It is modelled after the hugely popular BoingBoing[2] and emulates the multi-editor team adopted by its Singaporean counterpart, Tomorrow.sg[3].
The CMS platform on which BlogsMalaysia runs is written from scratch by Ivan Fong[4], also known as as Stanch. Entries, in the form of blog-post-snippets and reasons for recommendation, are submitted by BlogsMalaysia members. Each entry goes through the standard voting system of three positive votes from the editors before it appears on the front page.
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[edit] History
BlogsMalaysia was formerly launched as an alternative to the established Malaysia's English blog aggregator, Project Petaling Street, by blogger Paul Tan[5]. Later, several invitations were sent out to "prominent" Malaysian bloggers. An invitation was also sent to Cowboy Caleb[6], a Malaysian working in Singapore who is more synonymous with Tomorrow.sg, the metablog for Singapore bloggers. Thus BlogsMalaysia made the transition from blog aggregator to metablog within a few months.
[edit] Editors
The Editors of BlogsMalaysia are wrongly regarded as some of the better known figures in the minority elite Malaysian blogging scene. They come from various ethnic groups and each maintain blogs with different underlying themes.
[edit] BlogsMalaysia Team Members
- Chan Lilian
- Cowboy Caleb
- Kenny Sia
- Lainie
- Mack Zulkifli
- Michael Ooi
- Minishorts
- Paul Tan
- Peter Tan
- Sixthseal
- Suanie
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Elitism
Some are quick to criticize Blogsmalaysia for its hierarchical editorial system, and that Blogsmalaysia is merely a vanity project for the editors to further expand their control over the Malayian blogosphere since they are the self-appointed gatekeepers of this site. This is most apparent in a well-known Malaysian blogger Kimberlycun's blog entry on the 17th of January, 2006. The following is an excerpt of that entry:
"I browse the net at least 3 times a day, everyday. I seriously don’t have the patience to wait for a bunch of people to discuss numerous submissions, vote them and then publish. Heck, I don’t even want to begin on the self-serving, ego-inflated, no-post-is-ever-good-enough-for-me kind of editors (not all, just a few). Here’s a suggestion, you’re still new, don’t be a chooser, don’t be an elitist, just publish every remotely interesting post to build up the fanbase."
[edit] One-sided relationship with visitors
As Blogsmalaysia does not have a trackback feature nor any other methods for interactivity besides a comments feature, Edmund Yeo aka Swifty, a Malaysian filmmaker and vlogger, accused the site of adopting a classical-capitalism model of creative ownership in a January 2006 blog entry, and that instead of encouraging social creation and collaborative interaction like all Web 2.0 sites, Blogsmalaysia has remained with the old 'mass audience and mass media' system by maintaining a one-sided relationship between the editors and visitors.
