Category: Weblogging

I had not looked at the negative consequences of Talkback, and appreciate those who have taken the time to point them out.

Geodog wrote:

 

But I think of comments as ephemeral, and strongly contextual. Plus, as Gibbon might say, some things are meant to remain veiled in the decent obscurity of a obscure format. The last thing I want when someone puts my name in Google is to have the first thing come up be some stupid late night comment I put on a popular (dare I say A-list?) weblog. So will this cut down on stupid late night comments? Or just increase the number of anonymous cowards?

(<quote> Burningbird is NOT A-List</quote>)

In Geodog’s comments, the question of identify was also raised: if there’s no sign on process, anyone can come in and write as anyone else.

Good points. Ones that John also discussed:

 

In order for this approach to be more fully developed we would need to implement a security model like PGP, which would allow me to “prove” who I am when posting a comment. While I applaud Shelley’s effort to expose a history of comments, it won’t take long before people start spoofing them. Which is a shame because I’m not sure that level of complex security model will be implemented for some time, and with a network of webloggers like Shelley providing scripts like this for their individual weblogs it wouldn’t take much to build a consolidating engine like Technorati to group them together and give me a global view of my comments across all participating blogs.

If people are uncomfortable about having their comments archived on Burningbird, how about for all sites, forever? Scary.

Dorothea also followed through on concerns about Talkback, but from a different perspective. She wrote:

 

Irrelevance, impermanence, mortality—these are my feeble defenses against a potentially crippling sense of worthlessness, futility. I cling to a false nihilism to save myself from the genuine article. Illogical, probably stupid, but that’s how I function.
…
Which brings me back to Shell (who, I feel compelled to say, is of course utterly innocent of any intent to harm, and who has not really harmed me at all in any case). Now my comments, even more ephemeral in intent and execution than my own blog, are becoming solid, persistent, potentially permanent records. I guess I can live with it; I have to. But I’ll still whimper.

About the last thing I want to do is make people uncomfortable with commenting here at Burningbird. Comments are an integral part of this weblog, and I’ve taken care to nurture an environment where everyone is comfortable speaking out. I am extremely hesitant about implementing any technology that impacts this in any way.

But then Monica wrote, in response to Talkback and the posting about spell-checking and writing formally:

 

To me, both the idea of anyone being able to read all the comments we posted on a site and the idea of spell-checking our writings and even elaborating them, in a way have to do with how we want – or don’t want – to be seen. Half-assed comments written in the heat of the moment are the ones on which we can be seen between the lines.

And Stavros writes:

 

This latest innovation from her is a really cool idea, and one that might help to combat that feeling of impermanence and evancescence of weblog comments.

Dorothea was right, and I intended no harm to come from Talkback. Another instance typical of so many applications of technology: the social impacts far of a new innovation far outweight the effort to actually create the innovation. However, my intent was to keep the comments — many of which are thoughtful, compelling, and more interesting than the posts themselves –from fading into obscurity.

More than that, though, I wanted a way to introduce people who might be new to this weblog to those others who have been kind enough to come around for some time. You can get a good idea of who I am from my archives, but who are all these strangers leaving all these comments, and what are all these obscure references about? I considered Talkback the digital equivalent of a block party to introduce a new neighbor to those who have lived on the block for a while.

But then, a block party isn’t the same as pulling a new neighbor into each house in the block and shoving their face into the closets to look at all the skeletons hanging there, either. Perhaps some things are best left to accidental discovery over time.

And this week’s award for best irony goes to…

…Me!

For being underjoyed about the Blogger + Google deal; for discussing some of the negative consequences of the deal; for demonstrating, visually, a sense of perspective regarding “world” and “world with blog” and…

…still managing to capture the top search position at Google for the terms Google Blogger. (screenshot)

I want to thank my readers, my linkers, and my headers. Without them, I wouldn’t be there today.

The excitement about Google and Blogger continues, though I wonder if we’re not drifting to the extreme goodness end of the spectrum in our view about what this will mean in the long term.

Ben Vierk wrote:

 

Noone can ignore the increasing space weblogs take in search results on Google. Weblogs are becoming Google’s primary content source. What if Blogger had built it’s own search engine? With direct access to the data it could have yielded search results on content as soon as the content was posted rather than waiting 1 to 2 days for a Google spider. Why wait for Google when you can get the information you want now from somewhere else? In the first 6 hours of any new story people can’t go to Google for relevant content. Google is too slow.

Tom Matrullo follows this same belief when he writes:

 

The linking of Google and Pyra fired a teensy synapse felt around the world: The advent of the blog as where events happen and are reported, and travel through the network nervous system that Bill Gates could never quite imagine but once dreamed he could own

Jeneane also continued this theme:

 

A one-stop-shop for voice? Maybe. Weighing search results in favor of the common-voice news and opinion and entertainment offered by us bloggers (as opposed to big media)? I hope so! Google already does this–they’ve been doing it for at least a year. God bless them.

She also writes in my comments in the Cut the Ribbon post:

 

I will be busy fighting the anti-greed war over in my neck of the woods for the near future. I figure it’s the least I can do to help change the world. With the Google/Prya deal, we have a real opportunity–if they enable us, and I believe that’s the whole point–to flip the power structure globally. Dislodge the greed model and be surprised what else follows. I’m not insane. I think it could work.

Others have also spoken eloquently about the impact Blogger can have on ensuring that the news Google News reports is more timely; Through Blogger, Google will now have direct access to the data in the weblog posts of a couple of hundred thousand webloggers, as soon as they are published. Heady stuff.

Ignoring the fact that this still precludes the majority of webloggers, now is a good time to remember the incident between Google and the Church of Scientology before we become so sanguine about Google buying Blogger and other centralized weblogging tools. Rather than censorship at the server, after material has been posted, there is the potential of censorship at the source. Rather than wait for content to be published and ask for it to be pulled, don’t allow it’s publication in the first place. And if you control the tool, then it doesn’t matter where the content will be published — the source is controlled, not the destination.

I can’t help thinking the Scientologist are already preparing briefs to force Google into searching for so-called copyrighted material about the church in weblog posts before they’re published, and preventing such posts. And before you call me alarmist, look in the news at what’s happening to the country, to the US. Anything’s possible now.

This is, of course, the view at the extreme badness end of the spectrum, and this vulnerability exists for all centralized tools; however, it’s important to be aware that centralization can close doors as much as it can open them.

Reality check time: Perhaps we webloggers also need to remember that though it seems crowded out here on the boards, we are but a speck in the world. We are growing, our numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds, and we are having an impact, but we’re still a speck. Or, for a more visual demonstration:

This is your world

And this is your world, on weblogs

Any questions?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m keeping my neighborhood links but will be moving them to a separate page. However, the blogroll won’t just sit there, passively. A couple of tweaks:

First, I was thinking about accessing changes.xml from weblog.com and checking for recent updates; however, blogrolling.com does this for me and has a PHP service, so why am I giving myself grief? When I incorporate blogrolling.com, I’ll do like so many others and order the links by most recent updated. However, a little extra code will skim the top five most recent blogs and put them on the front page.

But wait! That’s not all.

Originally, I was going to look for favorite posts from the weblogger, list in a separate page, and then link to this page in addition to the person’s weblog link. I still may do this but it is labor intensive. To be honest, I’d rather to let you speak for yourselves. And so you are.

Next to the weblog link in the new neighborhood page will be a second link opening a page listing the complete text of all the comments you’ve ever made, in descending order, to my posts. Above the comment is the author’s name, and a link to the original comment in the posting page.

We’ll be able to see, at a glance, everything you’ve ever said here at the Burningbird since the day I started using MT comments. I call it this new sticky strand, “Talkback”.

Now when people read my comments and ask themselves “Who is this guy?”, Talkback will tell them. By your own words shall you be known.

The Talkback page is up and running at this time. You can try it yourself with any URL that’s associated with at least one comment. Type the following into the browser address/url field, changing the yoururl to the URL:

 

http://weblog.burningbird.net/speakback.php?url=http://yoururl

Provde the exact same URL you use in comments now, and all your comments should show.

To demonstrate more fully, comments from some weblogging neighbors who have ‘talked back’:

 

Dorothea Salo (BTW, Happy Birthday David!!)
Stavros the Wonder Chicken
Jonathon Delacour
Ruzz
Gary Turner
Mark Pilgrim
Dave Winer

Unfortunately, if you haven’t used your weblog url with your comments, Talkback doesn’t work. However, I’ll be quite happy to add your url to your comments in the database if you ask. Nothing more than a simple database update.

I have a few other things I want to do with the Neighborhood page, but they’ll keep for another day.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Being the shy, retiring person that I am, I rarely bring up my membership in Blog U. However, when the man who holds the purse strings at Blog U, The Happy Tutor issues a call to action, who am I not to respond?

Tutor writes, in alarm, about the possibility of censorship with the budding new Crimson Blog Brigade, otherwise known as the Weblogs of Harvard. In particular he’s concerned about the following paragraph:

 

We want to be sure that all activities on Harvard-hosted weblogs are respectful of Harvard, and don’t exist for the purpose of promoting a product, or political cause or candidate.

 

Not promote a product, political cause, or candidate. This would ban about half of weblogging material, leaving only cats and sex as safe topics.

In defense of product endorsement, Tutor addresses another Blog U member, Jonathon Delacour, and Jonathon’s promotion of that erstwhile cleaning utensil, Dishmatique. Tutor writes:

 

Is Harvard Weblogs saying that, in the unlikely event the half-witted A-list Blogging Aussie were to attend Harvard that his weblog would be in violation of the rules against promoting products on a Harvard Weblog?

Not having ever used a Dishmatique since this is tool wielded only by males at Blog U, I wasn’t as alarmed by the possibility of Dishmatique becoming a banned topic. However, since I’m in the midst of writing a flogging post about Jonathon’s most recent post, I felt it only prudent to join with AKMA in support of my sudsy comrade at this time, even to the point of saying that Jonathon is more than a half-wit. He’s at least a three-quarter wit, and a little change to spare.