Talk:Blog/Archive 2

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This is an archive of Talk:Blog before Feb 2006.

Feeds

(I've never been to a discussion on a Wikipedia article before, so I hope I don't do anything wrong. Please let me know if I do) I have been under the impression that a blog, has to have some kind of feed (RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Atom 0.3, 1.0, etc.) for its posts in order to be a blog, and not just any website with information posted in reverse chronological order. In the same way that a podcast has be be included in some kind of feed that lets you subscribe to it in order for it to be a podcast and not just an mp3 file with people talking (or music for that matter). But nowhere in the article about blogs are feeds even mentioned, although it is beyond doubt that feeds are an important part of blogs. But are they as important as I've thought (that is, you have to include a feed to call your website a blog), or am I mistaken? The above unsigned comment was by User:Forteller at 21:06, 30 December 2005 -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 05:39, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I know a number of blogs that do not have feeds, and actually remember a couple years ago when feeds weren't common at all. Time was, one had to visit each blog's webpage manually to check to see if it had updates. So no, a feed is not necessary for a site to be a blog, and not all sites with feeds are blogs. However, I know little about podcasts, so you may be right there. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 05:39, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality

The statement "while The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other establishment media outlets formed a mass media cheering section for the revolution in telecommunications, Schreibman's News Columns and Special Reports conveyed a radically different story: of "telco feudalism" enacted by that revolution, in a legislative process that was rife with corrupt polticial influence peddling, by Congressional leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), and by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)." Seems to be partisian even with citation in place. Just becaule Dole and Gingrich may have done it, and from that paragraph it is hard to understand what is being claimed, it doesn't mean that people on both sides of the isle aren't guilty of simular things. Dark Nexus 16:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

   "Netrality" is not the point in enlightened journalism or blogging.  The whole idea 
   of political discussion is to participate in shaping our community or civilization 
   in some profound way toward betterment.  If "Dark Nexus" can think of other examples 
   of political corruption he should add them, rather than exercising the despicable 
   practice of unilateral censorship, which failed the test of legitimacy in the Dark Ages

Isn't stretching to distinguish the concept of a blog or blogging from something like "traditional websites" or "usenet forums" an admission of the inherent reality that in fact blogs are not distinguishable from these activities or concepts at all? It seems clear to me now that you can't compare blogging to web publishing because in fact what has happened is that web publishing has become blogging. We struggle to compare between this and that precisely because we cannot.

   This is an interesting point.  There certainly are similarities between all the forms of
   electronic communications, which are not limited by the inherent motives of political 
   discussion driven by commercial "news" vendors.  What is most interesting of all in this
   new media is the lack of constraint on volition that the civil society of yesterday 
   suffers.  Bloggers, and others, in this media say what is on their minds, which offers
   a better view of reality than political pundits spinning stories for politicians.

   [[User:Vigdor Schreibman] 23 December 2005

Medical blogs

The subsection on medical blogs mentions blogs "that deals with actual patient cases." Can we have a link (in the article or here) or explanation or something? Bondegezou 16:13, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Paras Shah ItsAllAboutLinks - Link Directory - Add URL - Submit Article www.itsallaboutlinks.com

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Blogorrhea - Alternate meaning

Blogorrhea -A portmanteau of "blog" and "logorrhea", meaning excessive and/or incoherent talkativeness in a weblog.

I always thought that this was a portmanteau of "blog" and "diarrhea" (also spelt as "diahorrhea")... Meaning pretty obvious... Even if that's not the origin, I think it's a commonly assumed definition.

-- Lucanos 22:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

A common mistake, maybe. rodii 15:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Examples

Could we perhaps remove all external links to examples of blogs from this article? The few that are notable and worth linking have articles we can link, and the others are just non-notable blogs people wanted to promote and added in. What's more, we shouldn't be putting external links outside the external links section except for references, which these aren't. --fvw * 21:49, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

YES. We should remove all of the examples. Most of them are relatively unknown blogs. As long as we put up with some of them, people will continue to use this article as free advertising. Rhobite 06:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Nice timing, thanks. I've just done a major purge. Now if we all join in in keep this article clean this might not have to become a monthly chore. --fvw * 06:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Intro Formatting

The intro to this article is rather long, and pushes the table of contents down the page to the point where it is not immediately useful. Perhaps this should be reorganized? Thesquire 06:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Category Formatting

There are a large number of categories of blogs, with most categories having very little text. If there is no objection, I plan on consolidating a number of the categories to create tighter and easier to read article. Thesquire 06:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I support keeping blog and political blog split, as well as consolidating and removing some of the cruft from this article. Good work. Rhobite 01:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone give me some links to actual, working "FriendBlogs"? I can't find any English language examples via Google, and the only web engine for it that I could find, Funchain.com, is apparently down. Also, the vast majority of hits for that word are of mirrors of this article. If I'm not able to find multiple, working examples of one of these soon, and no one posts any examples here on the talk page, I will delete the category. Thesquire 06:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I finally managed to catch Funchain when it was up, and couldn't immediately see any difference between its blogs and a normal blog, so I'm removing FriendBlogs as a category. Thesquire 19:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

As the Partner Blog category seems read more as a proposal than as a description of something that already exists, I am removing its category. If anyone disagrees, they are more than welcome to revamp the text, possibly spinning the section (or the entire collaborative section) off into its own article. Thesquire 21:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Is there any reason for the etymology of the neologism "blawg" in the Topical:Legal section? I realize that it's an often-used term for that subset of blogs, but if anything it belongs in Wiktionary, if at all. Unless someone one squawks I'm deleting it in a few days. Thesquire 09:19, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

"Glogs"

According to the article: "Ham radio also had logs called "glogs" that were personal diaries made using wearable computers in the early 1980s."

Wearable computers in the 80's? "Glogs"? Via ham radio? Is any of this true?? Korny O'Near 18:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Checking the history of the CyberLog and "glog" entry shows it was posted anonymously by 24.103.60.117 on 1 January 2003. Since then it has been transmogrified by further anonymous editors, and it seems the original meaning has been lost. I've read through some of the hyperlinks in the last 24 hours, and much of it reads like an LSD trip, making one think it was all made up as a joke. However, it seems there's truth to the story, since Steve Mann, cofounder of the Wearable Computing Project at the MIT Media Lab, began experimenting with some crude homebrew equipment in the early 1980's while he was a student at MIT. That was a decade before the World Wide Web, 17 years before IEEE 802.11 WiFi became a published standard, and they were playing around with wireless networking using amateur radio equipment operating in the VHF and/or UHF bands. Wearable computers haven't been an interest of most radio amateurs; amateur radio was a means to an end for a few individuals interested in wearable computers. The paragraph probably needs to be revised by going back to the beginning and researching the sources of the story. Quicksilver 22:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

I posted the cleanup notice because this article is a mess and I don't have enough time to clean up all of it myself. If you want to help, you do some of the tasks mentioned above, or help out in any way possible, really. For example, the History section is much too long and merits its own article - if someone willing to massively edit that huge section were to split it off, that'd go a long way towards making this article shorter and more readable. Most text past the Formatting section needs to be substantially re-written, if not removed as dross, so feel free to do that as well. Thesquire 17:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

- Really, shouldn't all these damned subsets of blogging be on their own pages? I can't refer anyone to this article, it's rediculous! (comment by 24.22.34.238)

All these "damn subsets" are under consideration for consolidation, removal, or expansion into their own pages, as noted above. Even when categories are split off, though, a summary is left on the main page, so there's only so much that can be done with splitting off categories. Splitting off the history page, though, would cut down on the article size immensely. Thesquire 01:51, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Verb for reading blogs?

I was just wondering if anyone knows the word X in this sentence: "X is to blogging as reading is to writing"?

Its a well known fact that nobody actually READS blogs. Therefore, a word for READING them is unnecessary. --Timecop 01:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Haha. There is a List of blogging terms article, but half that list consists of portmaneau that are used by a very small subset of the blogging community, so I would put much stock in it. Even so, I think there isn't a term for reading a blog other than "reading a blog." Seems kinda useless to make one up, too. Thesquire 04:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Vigdor Schreibman

Who is Vigdor Schreibman? I removed several paragraphs about him (including an inappropriate section header). There were many early Internet journalists. If he started in 1993, he certainly wasn't the first person posting news to the Internet. I've never heard him referenced as the first blogger, actually I've never heard of him at all. This strikes me as vanity. Rhobite 20:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

   If you do not know who Vigdor Schreibman is you might enjoy browsing his website 
   at URL: http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS 141.156.141.205 06:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Who the hell keeps adding that tripe in. I'm AFDing Vigdor Schreibman article right now. --Timecop 00:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think that AfDing that article was the most appropriate response. However, the Vigdor Schreibman stuff that keeps being added is blatantly POV, has little root in fact, and is also poorly written. Wikipedia is not a place to post manifestos. Thesquire 02:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

AfDing the Vigdor Schreibman article may be right, but it's totally unproductive as a response to what's happening in this article. I propose that the Vigdor material, edited down, be included as yet another bullet point in the "Precursors" section (without the claim of being the first blog, since this begs the question of the definition of "blog"), and if the edited material is deemed notable on its own, another article be created specifically for it at Federal Information News Syndicate. Comments? Also, whoever keeps blanking or reverting the blanking or that section, knock it off and participate in the discussion here. rodii 20:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms?

This is not a POV question, but is there nothing criticizing blogs out there, not any negative voices? It seems everyone has good things to say, but does the medium have any inherent flaws? bodhidharma 01:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course it does. The problem is, all the jerks with blogs who have this article on their watchlist will immediately jump if anyone begins making any kind of negative edits. --Timecop 00:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Once the Vigdor stuff dies down, I'd be interested in hammering out a criticisms article, although perhaps couching it in terms such as "limitations of the medium" or some such would go far in keeping people happy with it. Thesquire 03:12, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I was just wondering if anyone has some good sources of criticism? I would like to add some sections, but I can't seem to find any sites with definite criticisms--it seems that the entire web and lots of the traditional media is enamoured with blogs, and I am looking for voices of dissent. bodhidharma 15:41, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure that if you asked your local reference librarian that he/she could point you to tons of criticisms of them. Most caveats about stuff one finds on the web (or, even, Wikipedia) transfers to the blogosphere, in that anyone can post anything, be it truth, lies, or somewhere inbetween. I also recall back in the 2004 US Presidential elections that many of the talking heads were complaining about blogs posting the early numbers that the talking heads had and were using to bend their commentary, but not actually reporting on. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 05:45, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Vigdor Schreibman's Involvement in Wikipedia

Most or all efforts to insert content on Vigdor Schreibman appear to be by Vigdor Schreibman. OmniCapital is part of Schreibman's OmniCapital.org. Whois shows 141.156.91.165 and 141.156.138.45 are registered to Verizon in Virginia. Schreibman appears to live in the D.C. area. Some of the edits are signed by Schreibman. The person keeps reverting to the same version, even though that removes work done by others. Schreibman needs his own article, but he does not deserve inclusion in the Blog article. If Schreibman is the persistent editor here, then perhaps his shunning by colleagues in the Press Gallery was merely due to his personal style. Someone who represents himself through a self portrait in the style of van Gogh is making a bold statement: "There is no such thing as bad press." User:Anthony717. 27 December 2005.

Dude, no personal attacks - as much as the repeated reversions are detrimental to the article. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 21:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this is a personal attack--well, OK, maybe the crack about the press corps was. But the bulk of User:Anthony717's comment is germane. It's impossible to come to consensus if all one side does is revert. rodii 21:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I fully agree - and if you actually read the text involved it's a bunch of barely-coherent rambling about a website that wasn't even a blog. I just don't want to hand Omnicaptial/Vigdor/whomever real ammo instead of his imagined slights. Thesquire (talk - contribs) 21:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you there. rodii

Okay, fair enough. It's just that others and myself have put a fair bit of work into the Blog article and that Mr. Schreibman seems to be provoking criticism. User:Anthony717. 27 December 2005.

Schreibman is making a lot of trouble. What can be done to defeat him? Should the article be locked down? User:Anthony717. 28 December 2005.

Vigdor text straw poll

To actually determine the consensus on the issue, I propose a straw poll. This is the text involved:

Vigdor Schreibman and Internet news

Main article: Vigdor Schreibman

The Federal Information News Syndicate (FINS), Vigdor Schreibman] Editor & Publisher, was from its inauguration on Jan 11, 1993, an Internet-based news organ; its web-based archive -- the first "blog" -- was located, first, on Jan 9, 1994 at the University of Maryland, as FINS InfoAge Lib. Three years later this archive became, on Aug 20, 1997, Fins Global Information Age Library, at SunSITE (Sun Software, Information, and Technology Exchange) located at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where it has operated continuously during the past eight years. This archive was designed as an experimental "digital library" containing back issues of Fins News Columns and Special Reports, as well as pivotal public policy papers "communicating the emerging philosophy of the Information Age." Vigdor Schreibman was also "the first Internet-based writer to seek accreditation from the Congressional press gallery," according to Michael Wines, writing in his "Media" column at The New York Times, Feb. 26, 1996, at D7. The threat of Internet-based news reporting alarmed the establishment press. Wines sought to disparage internet-based reporters in his story. He compared them with "throngs of Lilliputians" like the editor of FINS, who inhabit the virtual world of cyberspace while reporters of the established press were depicted as "Gullivers," "a colossus of a creature" drawing upon the imagry of the story of " Man-Mountain, told by the great eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift in his book Gulliver's Travels. However, the fiercely independent, Internet-based news reporting set in motion by Vigdor Schreibman quickly established a new mode of reporting that did not conform to the elitest imagry Mr. Wines sought to convey. Nor were these internet-based reporters -- the first bloggers -- likely to become merely acquiescent tools of the Big Money controlled Congress and its compliant news media. While The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other establishment media outlets formed a mass media cheering section for the revolution in telecommunications, Schreibman's News Columns and Special Reports conveyed a radically different story: of "telco feudalism" enacted by that revolution, in a legislative process that was rife with corrupt polticial influence peddling, by Congressional leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), and by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA). Those stories were to pave the way for a new class of media politics with an "unforgiving toughness and a mastery of new means of communications" that within a decade exploded into a serious challenge between " The Beltway versus The Blogosphere, as reported by Howard Fineman in Newsweek-MSNBC, September 14, 2005. In the early days of the 21st-century the politics of Internet Bloggers has become a powerful new instrument of Countervailing Power moving toward an overthrow of the governing class. The next crucial generation of bloggers will be compelled to democratize communications with the facilitation of technology that can manage A Technique of Democracy which is needed to "form a more perfect Union" as the First Americans envisioned in the Constitution of the United States. In the absence of a genuine Union the governing system will be guided by the coercive phenomenon of "Groupthink" responsive to raw power alone, which is what has been occuring for some time.

Votes shall be Keep or Remove, with arguments supporting the vote following. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 23:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Upon further thought, I think it wise to also have a Modify category, with such a vote being followed by either a brief synopsis of the proposed modification, or a wikilink to a user subpage of the proposed modified text. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 23:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Remove: the text is blatantly POV and is not germane to the article, since the website involved is not a blog at all. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a compilation of personal manifestos. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 23:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: after looking through WP:NOT, I found Wikipedia is not a soapbox. I think it safe to say that this, by itself, justifies removing the Vigdor text from the article. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 12:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Remove: "Groupthink" is not always a bad thing. If people didn't form consensus on things, we couldn't have common knowledge and we wouldn't have common sense. If Mr. Schreibman's only champion is himself, then he cannot be recognized for an accomplishment. There is clearly no single inventor of blogging, but there are popular contributors to the art, and they are recognized. If Mr. Schreibman had inserted into the article a brief, specific and factual claim about his contributions to blogging, then he might have got his mention without all this fuss. As it is, he should be afforded a link in the "See also" section or the "External links" section. User:Anthony717. 27 December 2005.
- Comment. There is a difference between groupthink, which is a bad thing, and consensus, which is a good process. Vigdor/Omnicapital is blurring the distinction so he can tar this process with the groupthink brush. Don't fall for this ploy. rodii 02:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Remove: For the same reasons the main Vigor article is on AFD right now - blatant self-promotion/vanity of a subject nobody has heard of about before. Definitely does not deserve several paragraphs in the article. --Timecop 02:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Remove: The depth of discussion on this fairly minor issue is out of proportion to the rest of the article, and the relevance to blogs has not been established (and, I would argue, is mainly a post-facto fabrication of the author). The self-promotion is inappropriate, the facts unverified (unverifiable), and the author's editing tactics have undermined the good will that would be necessary to work out a compromise. rodii 02:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Remove for all the reasons given above. If Mr. Schreibman's accomplishments are truly notable, then the history of technology community will eventually take notice of them. Otherwise, there is no reason to mention him on Wikipedia. He should also be blocked permanently from editing Wiipedia. --Coolcaesar 19:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Keep removed. It is a wordy and self-aggrandizing section. I'm not convinced that Schreibman has ever been recognized as a pioneering blogger by anyone in the press. Rhobite 13:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Keep removed Agree with sentiments above: self-publicist etc--BozMo talk 15:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Merge

a moblog is just another blog genre; I propose merging. - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] RfA! 10:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. This article is already big enough. Rhobite 15:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I also disagree - we recently went through a period of culling stuff out of this article and either setting up other articles (see Political blog, Online Diary, and List of blogging terms) or deleting it outright. Merging that article into blog would reverse that progress. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 19:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Types of blogs versus topical blogs (topics of blogs)

Recent section additions of "moblog" and "cultural blog" have started to show a pattern. When is a topical area a whole type? It could be worrying if we are just making this stuff up. Do bloggers in the music industry consider themselves "cultural bloggers"? It is okay to accept convention, but here convention is sort-of being made out of whole cloth. And who will follow it? It would be great for this article to be the origin of new terms, although that might not be proper. It would be sad if a student referenced the article, only to be admonished by his or her teacher for using a term that does not exist. Anthony717 23:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

There are distinguishable subtypes of blogs - mainly that there are those which discuss politics or other substantial subject matter, and others which are nearly incoherent personal ramblings, categories for which have already been created. I'm not sure if "moblogs" are significantly different for how they're created, and I'm also not sure whether we need subtypes of more than a few of the topical blogs. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 23:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

What about trendy blog elements such as HNT which has mass participation across different types of blogs? They exist in different blogs, and are therefore elements, rather than types of blogs, for they do not themselves characterise the blog. At what point do fads become rituals? Presses above question about "new terms." Since it is widely participated in (perhaps a form of blog "slang"?), can something like it be considered to have evolved from blogs? Is it the "fennel salad" of the noble blog, or the "buffalo wing night", and should both be considered blog cuisine? —the preceding unsigned comment is by Coloneldoctor (talk • contribs) 00:39, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that made no sense at all -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 07:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Multiblog

redirects here but the word doesn't appear in the text. (Or at least, Ctrl+F doesn't find it.) Could anybody who knows about multiblogs please add a few words about them to the article? Thanks --147.122.2.211 16:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

What is a Multiblog, and does such things really exist? I've never heard of the term myself. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 19:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I fixed the redirect to go to List of blogging terms, where its briefly described. Its exactly what you think it is.

Grammar

Since I've had to revert this twice, I'm going to talk about it. This is not a sentence:

Therefore, allowing full user manipulation of the situation to their specifications.

If you eliminate the clause "allowing full user manipulation of the situation to their specifications", you are left with "Therefore". "Therefore", by itself, is not a sentence.

The previous sentence is fine. Daniel Quinlan 02:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

We the Media

This book, available online under a CC license, could probably be used as a reference somewhere. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.113.100.70 (talk • contribs) 22:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

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