Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
This week I’ll be posting writings that violate the concept of ‘proper weblog entry’ all to heck–either by the use of fiction or the length of the writing, or both.
As happens most times I do this, one or more people access the entry expecting to find a traditional weblog entry and, instead, find writing. Good writing, bad writing, doesn’t matter. It’s the form that disturbs them.
If the work is fictional, I almost invariably get someone who writes in comments, “This is b***s**t” or a variation on, “This is stupid.” If the work is longer, some of the commenters sound a bit tired when they leave notes, as if I’ve made them run through a marathon they weren’t expecting.
Now, the longer writings will give a me a chance to test out my new Wordform Fulltext feature, but that’s not the reason for the writing. The writing is the reason for the writing.
However, in fairness to those who are expecting traditional weblog entries, otherwise known as the Slam, Bam, thank you Ma’am posts, I’m working at adding a new meta item to my syndication feeds called “The Fair Warning Indicator”. This indicator will, hopefully, get picked up in the syndication feed aggregators, letting you know whether the post is a traditional weblog entry or not. I have the meta-data part, I just have to figure out which field in the existing feed infrastructures to subjugate to my evil ways.
With the Fair Warning Indicator, when I do publish these works online, if you want forgo a ‘non-weblogging reading experience’, you can. And, hopefully, the brave and intrepid (or bored or unknowing) souls who do venture in, will then feel free to comment purely on the writing, itself–not the fact that I’m not following the Blogging rules of etiquette.
Now, for any syndicators in the audience, suggestions on what would be the best modification to the feeds to incorporate the Indicator? By feed type?