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Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings?
athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."
I think there's an argument to be made about supporting a balanced blog ecosystem.
Obviously if everybody posts short blurbs, it just doesn't work, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if *everybody* posts long, well-thought-out articles, it'd be hard to find 1. What you're interested in, since often the shortposters serve the function of aggregating cool things, and 2. Where the 'blogosphere' action is. There'd be fewer conversations, and indeed, short posts are part of a conversation.
Luckily, there appears little danger of everybody posting well-thought-out articles.
Personally, I'm starting to reap the benefits of longer articles on my science/tech blog. Lots of repeat readers. But it's so hard to get exposure when you have fewer chances for 'hits'.
Yes.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
I complain to colleagues about this urban web-sprawl quite a bit, especially in relation to Microsoft. I used to have three sources of information: TechNet, MSDN, and the Knowledge Base. Now you have to look at product blogs, official product blogs, product feature blogs, and so on. It has become almost impossible to find information. While searching for information on Server 2003 SP2 versus Small Business Server 2003, I finally came across a newsgroup post which linked to a KBA which referenced a blog. Absolute crap!
This reminds me of a comment someone made on the introduction of the iPod Shuffle (bear with me, it's relevant). The idea was that, at the time, the iPod brand was perceived as signifying the high-end digital music player. By expanding into the low-end, Apple was trading a loss in the value of their brand (since it no longer meant "high-end" by default) in order to gain another segment of the market.
Similarly, Nielsen's article suggests that by tossing off random blog articles, even if you also post highly insightful material, you lower the average value of what you post. You effectively cede some of your reputation.
That's even more of an issue with topic-based blogs. If your focus is, say, US politics, or astronomy, etc. you have to stick close to your topic, or people will start complaining, "Why are you spending all this time talking about your cats!"
Blog posts are pretty much editorials or opinions.
In depth articles contain more research than a few links to wikipedia or other similar minded blogs.
That's the difference.
but I didn't read the article.
No
After having weathered years of blogs, newsgroups, and comments sections, all I can say is in-depth is better. I'd much rather read a well researched and cohesive article than slog through 10,000 comments by scattershot idiots who believe their shrill opinions are the only opinions. So there. And yes, I know I just made an off-the-cuff comment shrieking my opinions.....
"Obviously if everybody posts short blurbs, it just doesn't work, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if *everybody* posts long, well-thought-out articles, it'd be hard to find"
Thank God someone invented search engines.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
both.
If you are trying to glean some new information from the info you have then brainstorming, trains of thought, gut reactions, etc (the kinds of info you find on blogs) work great. If you are trying to learn something that is well established, then nothing beats well thought out in-depth research.
Just because something is old does not make it irrelevant.
And certainly, the case can be made that recent writings
are irrelevant from the moment they are written. See Fox.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
A lifetime of TV has made it impossible for me to concentrate on any one thing for too long, so blog posts are definitel
Honestly, this is like asking what is more useful - the Breaking News headline that you get from CNN, versus their CNN Presents or a similar feature length report. They each have their use, but obviously the more useful source is the one that is researched, well written and has some production value. What is going to appear next, Which is more useful to you - A Stub in Wikipedia or something that has some content on it?!? And what the hell is this doing on Slashdot!
My in depth analysis would be: possibily but not necessarily.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I think the best comparison would be informative versus insightful posts as a generality to the best of the article and blog world respectfully. While this of course isn't completely true in the Slashdot world, the informative posts are generally from someone who has done the research and knows some good links to read through while the insightful posts hint at a general truth that was said in fewer words but still gets a powerful point across. I know I don't have time to read through all of the informative posts as some can go on forever, however they tend to make very good and solid points. The insightful posts on the other hand make a powerful point to people who already know the standpoint you are taking but hold very little water to those who disagree. /. community though I could make a very quick quip about some detail and make a powerful point. Both have their place and are generally mutually exclusive.
To demonstrate, think about debating evolution to a creationist. The only way you would ever even have a chance is with very carefully constructed and researched arguments such as the article example. If I were to make a comment about evolution to the majority of the
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
There are huge advantages to popular blogs and social news sites. For instance Slashdot can:
- Provide commentary by famous people like Wil Wheaton and... well, just Wheaton, really.
- Melt unsuspecting servers into slag
- Ruin the ending to the next Harry Potter book (bastards.)
- Display your news in borders of your favorite color or pink
- Make you laugh at cooking/AIDS jokes
- Determine whether something could, in fact, run Linux
Because, as we are all painfully aware of, if the online in-depth article is split into 60 pages, each page containing a riot of banners surrounding a lonely paragraph in the middle... well we just skip to "conclusions".
"For commercial blogs, if you don't update daily (or more!), how will you get those oh-so-precious ad impressions?"
How many commercial blogs do you know of that serve ads?*
*and if you says "theirs". They're not getting any money for those.
"Not only that, but lengthy articles are boring! "
So far you haven't made an argument against them.
"Worse, lengthy, well-researched blog posts take a lot of time and energy to produce even once a week, let alone every half-hour!"
What? Time plus effort equals value. It works for tangiables and intangiables.
"Sound-bites, that's what we want to read, and that's what we want to write, and that's how you get ad impressions..."
No. What we want is people who get to the point, and don't beat around the bush.
Both have their place. I admit to hitting up the blogs when I just want to find out what is going on, but if something hold my interest I will normally dig and find real articles about the story. I can see why Journalists are concerned though, many times I will find a story with the amount of detail I need and then see it on the more "reputable" sites days later. There has to be a happy medium, unfortunately many of the more traditional outlets havent figured out a good way to do that.
Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value.
;-)
I guess by that standard, Slashdot is just about useless.
No, but seriously. I write both blog-style pieces and article-style pieces for my website, and and traffic-wise, and there are some blog entries I wrote a while back that do great (and still bring in a bunch of visitors every day and several new links in every week despite having been written months ago), and there are some article-style items that do the same. Of course from a user's perspective, I suppose things are substantially different, and I know exactly how the author of the article linked to feels when they suggest "Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."
I usually like software/IT blogs, sometimes from corporate employees... Blogs like the one from the Opera desktop team about the latest news on the Opera browser and the tech previews. One think I *really* believe blogs suffer from is the generalizations that they're random AOL'er BS done MySpace-style. Blogs can be so much more and different. Another software blog I enjoy reading is about the inner workings and software API's of Windows, that I'd be *very* hard pressed to even find a book for.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Too long, didn't read
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Google Search: What I am looking for -blog
Ahh, much better.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
There is something hilarious about the fact that this was posted to Slashdot.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
Reading blogs over in depth articles is just like you reading the posts here and not reading TFA. You have all the information you need right here. Why would you RTFA and wade through some twits attempt at being informative and "in depth" or some such. I think not.
Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant
..."
If you want recent materials and not articles created years ago, you hit the "News" link in Google.
Talking about outdated content, this page was linked straight from Jacob's index page. I'll quote:
"Why This Site Has Almost No Graphics:
Download times rule the Web, and since most users have access speeds on the order of 28.8 kbps, Web pages can be no more than 3 KB
Posted by DoofusOfDeath, 6:24 a.m:
Today I woke up and had some coffee. It was gross - they used that artificial creamer that they get cheap from SysCo.
Took a shower. Nothing eventful. I'm getting back hair in new places. Yuck.
Decided that in depth articles SUCK!
OK, time for breakfast - I think I'll have a bagel.
Comments:
1) By HoosierFan2006, 6:40 a.m.:
I just wish my hair would come back! LOL!
2) By Canonball25532, 6:51 a.m.:
No, in depth articles rock. You're an idiot.
3) By CatLover, 6:53 a.m.:
Anyone know where I can get a discount air conditioner? It's *hot* this week!
In the real world, things cost money. You need to pay a printer to print your magazine/newspaper/newsletter, and you need to pay postage to have it delivered. Online, you pay a VERY small monthly fee for hosting (if that), and a once every couple years fee for DNS registration (if that).
Online, there is no natural selection to weed out the crappy worthless blogs that don't really contain any information or generate any traffic/revenue.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I didn't read your post, but "sound-bite society" is a catchy sound-bite.
The enemies of Democracy are
Somebody links to a blog article, which just links to another blog article, which in turn links to the actual story that everyone is talking about. Quit trying to drive visitors to your Blogspot account and just show me what you really wanted me to see.
News has differing time constants and levels of abstraction. A blog entry can communicate things with less detail far more quickly than an in depth article. Secondly, the comments within a blog can provide useful insight on the topic. But even this varies considerably from blog to blog. While Atrios provides quick snippets, Digby and the late Steve Gilliard provided extended essays that often exceeded in-depth articles in both size and sophistication.
In depth articles, on the other hand, have the luxury of time and editing but are often obsoleted by blogging. Secondly articles often lack an effective feedback mechanism such as the comments within blogs.
Wiki's can straddle the two mediums, with a body of written and reviewed content allowing for in depth content while providing up to the minute content as well.
Reviewed scholarly articles are on the far end of this spectrum. Slow to come out, but often authoritative.
As a result, my position is that blogs and RSS feeds of blogs allow for one to get a handle on large amounts of breaking news. Wikis provide background. In-depth articles provide analysis. I.E. Blogs alert me to things, i then check Wikis for background and context, and if I deem the issue important enough, or the author credible enough I'll read the article.
He said: maybe
In depth articles contain more research than a few links to wikipedia or other similar minded blogs.
That's the difference. I don't think their briefness makes blog posts less valuable since while they are limited in scope they tend to be very focused on one or two issues. I have found the answers/fixes to some really vexing programming questions/problems/bugs in blog posts that would never have been addressed in an in-depth article. Both blogs and in-depth articles have their uses and comparing the two is IMHO rather futile.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Just to make a counterpoint, in-depth does not mean "long." A concise, well researched, and well referenced blog posting is better than a typical full length fluff piece by many a so-called science journalist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
For in-depth coverage of this issue, read "The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture", by Andrew Keen. That covers the subject much better than the usual blogodreck.
One of Keen's points is that blogs and Craigslist are killing newspaper reporting. There are fewer people whose day job it is to go out and find out what's going on. Most blogs rehash information collected by others; true reportage is rare. Pick up a newspaper and see how few stories were initiated by reporters, as opposed to starting from some form of publicity. This is a long-term trend; it's taken decades to reach this point. Compare newspapers from 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, and 2000.
blogs are essentually peripheral articles that give insight to individual takes on different topics. In that respect many do have historical value.
A short comment on a full article talking about how full articles are better than short comments on full articles...
I CANT TAKE IT!! ITS TOO META!!
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
That's the difference between Digg and /. I've always considered digg to have a somewhat adhd interface, and it is the incredibly self serving diggs of various "geektechblog-o-matic" fourteen sentence blogs that turns me off. On slashdot the slashvertisements and blog submissions usually will get an editor flamed, and I think that it cuts down on the noise a lot. I love this poll... I pick "Cowboy Neals Blog of Artilces Blogged by Article Writers"
load "$",8,1
Hey! That's just good mathematical practice. Once you're reduced a problem to a previously solved equation, you quit. :)
No, I'm just kidding.
There's an old quote about being sorry for writing such a long letter, but not having the time to shorten it. And it works the other way, too. Having too little content because it's easier to link to something else than write it up yourself.
So we end up with what should be authoritative site referencing other comments. When (and this is particularly true of a commercial product) the person maintaining the authoritative site should be writing up the material (and correcting the errors) that are referred to in the other sites.
You KB example. It's the "Knowledge Base" for that. If you aren't going to spend the time and keep it updated, at least release all the material under a license that allows someone else to maintain it. After all, isn't it about getting the correct information out?
One assumption in this analysis is that if you write an in-depth article the standard error of its quality will be very low, whereas if you write a blog, the postings will have a high standard deviation. This will in turn lead to a reduction in your perceived value as a source of information if you blog. This argument isn't at all obvious and it depends on assumptions about the quality of your different writings as well as what attracts readers and customers. It also depends on your business model: are you selling writing or services?
:-) that help separate wheat from chaff.
Let's say that the long piece you write has a standard deviation that's 1/3 that of the blog posting. (In other words, there's a chance you could write a single piece that damages your brand equity -- Nielsen assumes away this possibility.) If you then write 10 blog pieces, you'll have the same standard deviation for the average as a single long piece. Moreover, the maximum quality of your blog postings will on average be greater than that of your single pieces (because you're drawing from a distribution with a higher standard error). The basic point is that lots of observations may permit folks to infer your quality more accurately. It's not necessary that customers plow through all postings to figure this out --- there are content aggregators (like Slashdot
So what do people evaluate? Your best work? Your average work? The mean quality divided by the standard deviation?
I think Nielsen is correct that you need to think about the impact you're having with what you write, and he may have been correct regarding the advice he gave his world expert, but if you're writing only a few big pieces, you better get them right, or else!
Is in in depth article by an 8th grader better than a short posting by a Nobel prize winner in his or her area of expertise ?
Maybe, but that's not the way to bet.
How about a registry operated by the search engines that allows authoritive sources to be digitally signed? Such signed content could be indicated to the user, improving both the quality of search results and user experience. Perhaps it should be restricted to trademark holders or it may be possible to reuse DKIM and allow signing against domain?
For example the developers on a trademarked project/product could have their relevant blog posts marked authoritive by a web service or feed aggregator.
Any thoughts?
That's almost the exact difference between slashdot and digg... Anyone here already know's which is better.
Yeah, blogs are fucking terrible.
Blogs are about the author, not the content. Just like kids with emo bands, you can compare how witty or clever you were, and socialize (something you couldn't do otherwise) in awkward ways disgused by your agenda. You can wage drama upon all others, screaming out that you need attention, because your lives lack direction or real satisfaction. You are the parasite of the human soul, bloggers.
This doesn't apply to all of you. A few write real articles or interesting news coverage. But the rest of you are jerking off in front of us, drama queens and sycophants, and you've made the word "blog" conflatable with "airborne AIDS" in the modern lexicon.
Anti-Globalism
As far as I can tell, Keen's more interested in sell books by stirring up controversy than actually covering the situation in an evenhanded way.
Take, for example, the claim that Craigslist is killing newspaper reporting. Craiglist is in no way shape or form a substitute for news. It has nothing to do with "amateurs." It's a freaking classified ads site. It's been the land of amateur advertising for decades. It is killing the classified ads section of the newspaper, and that may make running a newspaper harder, but it has nothing to do with "amateurs" and everything to do with a changing market. Expecting one particular revenue source to last forever, or complaining that you've lost a revenue source because technology has moved on it selfish and short sighted. Should we instead prefer a more expensive and less efficient advertising route just to support journalism? At that point it's charity work, and I'd rather have them be honest about.
As you note, the decline of newspapers has taken decades. The internet is shaking things up, but newspapers have already suffered hits from radio and television. To drive up profits newspapers were consolidating and cutting down on the number of reporters long before the web existed. In an effort to increase readership, all too many newspapers are pandering to masses, dumbing themselves down. With newspapers generally sucking more, is it any surprise that people look elsewhere for content. And it doesn't mean that nothing will replace the newspaper. There are several self-sufficient online news sources that do original reporting (Salon.com and Slate.com immediately leap to mind).
Finally, how is this related to Nielson's article? Indeed, his entire point is: specialize, be knowledgeable, earn a reputation as being an expert in your area, and write solid in depth articles. He believes this will directly or indirectly turn into money for the author (in the form of selling related products or services, or advertising, or whatever. His core assumption is that you have a web site that you want visitors to. What you do with them is your problem.). This suggests that the situation will self correct, directly conflicting with Keen's fundamental premise.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Which is more valuable, a Brahms symphony which took twenty years to write and lasts an hour... ...a carefully crafted pop tune (Cole Porter... Paul McCartney... Lieber and Stoller), which nevertheless takes at most months to write, lasts a few minutes... ...or a jazz improvisation created in the heat of the moment?
It's a silly question. They're all valuable.
Blog postings should not be compared to "in-depth articles." They're not the same thing. They are more comparable to transcripts of bull sessions. A good online exchange is something like sitting in on a lunchtime conversations between a prof and his grad students.
Quite likely if you could listen on a tape recording of Socrates gabbing with his students in the groves of Academe, before Plato selected and polished and smoothed and delete expletives, it would read like blog postings.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I enjoy ACM Portal and AI journal articles - I am not knocking peer reviewed articles.
:-) standards will evolve from things that are simple and that work.
That said, I find useful "how to" information on web blogs very frequently.
I write what I call "web books" (a lot of care taken, some peer review and corrections), and I also blog a lot. I just looked at my own web logs to see which are accessed more often: it looks like the web books are accessed more than individual blog entries, but the 'home page' for the 2 blogs are hit much more.
I access web blog content in a way that I can't for papers: I have about 5 blogs that I read everyday because I know the other bloggers both have similar interests and I trust their opinions. It is rare that I run across someone's web site and enjoy it so much I download all their papers, etc.
Even more off topic, but: the important thing is that blogs and papers on the web "stick around" forever, hopefully with non-changing URIs. It seems like most search engines apply some reasonable bias towards new material (from trusted sites) so old material does not "get in the way". Web blogs have inherent time stamps - for regular web pages, papers, etc. RDF meta data would suffice for maintaining the time line of digital assets on the web.
I have been using the web since 1991 (and the Internet since the early 1980s), and my take is: we have "not seen nothing yet". I believe that we will see more progress of moving towards a shared knowledge commons on the web in the next ten years than we have seen in the last 15 years of the web. I have some skepticism about the Semantic Web, but I am optimistic that grass roots semantic web (notice the lower case
Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional lawyer who writes a well-researched "column" for Slate.com. He was a former blogger who wrote excellent and substantial posts every day and who has been picked up by an official publication and given a larger audience. He is proof that if a blogger continually writes insightful and in-depth articles that people will notice them and elevate them.
Frankly I think that mainstream media is just jealous that some 'amateur' reports do a better job then they do. Mainstream journalism has become a joke in recent years - it is nothing but "shocking scandals" without much real substance. When 41 percent of the country still believes a flat-out falsehood (Iraq was partially or fully responsible for 9/11) that helped propel this country into an unpopular and expensive pre-emptive war, the media has absolutely failed us.
Ooh. All rss feeds in the one place.
Hmm. I must patent that.
Deleted
There exist in-depth well researched blogs.
There exist crappy, shallow articles.
What are we linking to here, again?
A lot of lengthy articles are boring, but that's just because constructing a detailed, compelling argument or giving a clear, informative explanation of a complex subject is hard.
Anyone can write a couple of sound-bites without losing a reader. Crafting a decent article, however, requires both an excellent understanding the subject matter, and the style, creativity and command of the written word to convey your meaning effectively to others. Most people have neither, and that is why most long articles suck. A talented writer will hold your attention for the length of an article without your even noticing where the time went as you read it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
NEWSFLASH! Most blogs are crap. I'm not just talking about crap posted to livejournal, or myspace, or heaven forbid twitter. I'm talking about prominent blogs. Most posts are just a few lines. Sure, aggrigation blogs like slashdot have their place. They're a filter, but they don't generate content. At their best, they drive traffic to sites with higher quality content, thus ensuring their own place as a popular filter. At their worst, they think they actually contribute something on their own and drive the discussion in a very self-absorbed manner (*cough* DailyKos *cough*).
;)
The thing I've found about my favorite sites are the fact that they don't have a user comment section. Heresy! Perhaps, but less face it. Most people, myself included, don't have anything interesting to say. Look at any popular blog and you'll see the discussion dominated by one sentence posts, and depending on the the community, barely coherent rants moderated up because they reinforce the group's biases rather than actually providing anything useful. That doesn't mean that comments are welcome, but they have to be pretty damn good to get posted. See BoingBoing for an example.
The best blogs not only build on other sites, but also generate their own content. One of the strongest sites in this regard is talkingpointsmemo. Josh Marhsal, not only links to other stories, but actually does his own reporting on certain issues. Most notably The Abramoff corruption scandal, especially with resepect to Duke Cunningham's bribe taking, and the Valerie Plame Affair. Other sites meanwhile tended to just say, "Those fucking bastards", and that's pretty much it.
The thing that many in the blogosphere don't like is that the newspapers are right when they say that thhe blogs aren't generating content, but rather just reposting content from others. Dan Gilmore had his dream of "citizen journalism," but most people don't want to take the time to do that. They just want to sit in the peanut gallery and comment.
Thus ends my hypocritical post.
The article was a good demonstration on how much crap can be in an article. He makes up statistics, links to himself as an authority, and generally ignores a decent academic style of thought and reference. Did I mention he generally just makes up shit? Jeez, it's worse than TV commercials, at least there you expect fluff. In an article, you expect better.
g eID=1842567� being a classic example).
There have been discussions in the Oracle space about why there aren't any good Oracle blogs. Well, there are a few. They generally have useful examples of how to actually do stuff, rather than blowhard opinions. (google Jonathan Lewis blog for an example of how to do a technical blog right).
Personally, I think there are uses for usenet, BBS style fora, blogs, wikis, in-depth articles, and the traditional modes of communication. Stupidity ensues when people try to inappropriately enforce the rules for one communication medium in another. (And sometimes the converse, http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messa
Oracle and unix guy.
This is a great snippet "Andrew Keen is a brilliant, witty, classically-educated technoscold--and thank goodness. The world needs an intellectual Goliath to slay Web 2.0's army of Davids."
Spoiler, David wins!
That book sucked, btw.
Digg readers aren't gonna like this one bit. They live off shallow blog entries.
I can see another riot up ahead!
Are books better than book reviews?
A-Bomb
This is sad, but true, I agree. Right now, the best way to get funding for relatively minor sites is by hosting advertising, and generating the page hits by writing little more than sound-bite cover articles that link to someone else's material. I don't think this will last, for two reasons.
The first is that I don't think purely ad-supported sites have a great future. You can't force people to see your ads on the web, and a significant number of people will actively avoid it by installing ad-blocking software. Right now, the number of people doing that isn't a huge proportion, but imagine if IE9 came with ad blocking enabled by default.
The other thing is that I think the web will involve a scheme for simple micropayments before too long, providing an alternative means of funding but only to those sites good enough to get people to read their material. Things like PayPal have started us down that road. In due course, I expect browsers to support a routine "Do you wish to pay 0.1 cents to view the linked page?" sort of concept. If and when that happens, I would expect people who write worthwhile content to start structuring their sites with introductions on the public site, and charging micropayments to read the rest. No-one is going to pay micropayments very often to sites that mostly just link to someone else's work, so there will cease to be much market for such sites. Meanwhile, those who produce genuinely interesting or entertaining material will carry on, funded by the large numbers of small payments they receive from their large readership.
None of this means that the good writers will only write long articles, of course. It's just that the short ones will still have to be worth reading and not vapour built on someone else's material, or they won't earn any money.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Heh.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Both in-depth articles and short blog posts have their place in the world, as they exist for different purposes. A long-standing example of this can be found in scientific publications. Journals such as Nature often comprise of cursory papers that are essentially nothing more than extended abstracts, sometimes called Letters, Rapid Communications, Notes, or such, depending on the field and the journal. Typically, a second paper detailing the nuts-and-bolts of the very same work is published elsewhere in another journal with a narrower, more focused readership. This is because some of the people that want to read about the latest ground-breaking cancer drug, for example, wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of the technical paper that appears in a pharmacology journal, or whatever. In short, it's a case of tayloring your material to your audience. As there are a variety of viable audiences, there needs to be a variety of media to suit them.
At least 99% of people out in the World Wild West seek nothing more than clicks on their ads. Being easy to write is a big plus for them. They are not interested in sustainable value, and certainly they don't seek to build value for the users; they only want to make themselves richer, and only in the short-term.
The Internet began as a community of a few worthy people of heroic standards. Being an Internet/ARPANET/USENET/BBS user in the good old days was quite a personal achievement. The barrier of entry was so high that only people above a certain intelligence level could get it. Then, as more users came in, the companies discovered it and people from anywhere in the intelligence curve surged in. The barrier of entry was lowered, but there was no facility to help newbies elevate themselves. Soon, stupid questions and flamebaits appeared in mailing lists and the newsgroups. Lunatics took over the Web, a service of the Internet originally designed by scientists for scientists. Then the Web surpassed all other services, and the Internet officially died; it was dumped down just like education. Another network replaced it, and I call this The StupidNet.
You have to search a lot in order to find the fragments of the original Internet scattered around in the present StupidNet. It's like SETI scanning for the ET signal. We know it must be somewhere out there, but the noise is so much we can't find it in reasonable time. That's what searching for intelligent people on StupidNet is like today.
Almost all personal blog posts are a combination of pointless drivel and endless linkfests.
The zenith of this vapid idiocy is "live blogging", where someone unfamous and unconnected goes somewhere significant (that's usually open to the general public) and does a chatlog play-by-play of everything that happens (not just the significant events).
This I think is only a logical extension of the cell-phone generation, where nobody has to suffer plumbing the depths of their uselessness alone.
As the song goes--lots of people wanna be heard, but they don't got nuthin to say.
~
Are books better than book reviews?
Are apples better than oranges?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Are PowerPoint presentations better than detailed reports?
It depends upon the attention span and desire for entertainment of the reader.
On another note, one of the minor reasons I stopped blogging years ago was that I realized I was tempted to break up stories into multiple posts just to increase traffic. It is was getting to be one fact per blog post -- completely incoherent.
Beetle B.
This never happens to me, and to think it would seems to betray a misunderstanding of how google's page-rank algorithm works. If something is irrelevant, nobody will link to it, and if nobody links to it, it's not gonna show up in the top search results.
Or maybe me and this guy just aren't googling for the same things.
Well, more on the question is algae better than switchgrass http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html and it's one of my most popular pages. Apples are less orange than oranges.
This posting is good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and was definitely easy to write. But it doesn't build sustainable value.
he's asking the internet to act like a quarterly - some things simply date quickly and lose informational/contextual value, that doesn't make them not worth doing. we're consuming vast amounts of crappy information. this is preferable to small amounts of good information.
Are books better than book reviews?
Are movie trailers better than the movies? Oh wait..
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
... and I don't know know much about no fancy "content". But I gotta say, I like all the blog entries because they give me more headlines to skim and respond to instinctively.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
That is to say necessarily, but not sufficiently so.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
add a meta tag to original content.
/. and engadget and the register. and linuxtoday.
all rss/atom readers should incorporate meta tags for original content vs blogged content.
I really find blogs completely pointless.
I find it a terrible waste of time to get stuck reading a 6th degree blog about an article whose source eludes me.
I don't subscribe to any blogs at all. except
They're using their grammar skills there.
A derivation from the words "Web Log". Fine. But why not, "User Comments"? (Ucom's, Ucomer) or, "Internet Journal" (IJ's, IJ writer.) Or heck, "Internet Log", (Ilog's, I-logger.) They sound sharper and more upbeat. "Blogger"? sounds like a low IQ fella who lumbers into things and doesn't know when to quit.
But despite all of that. . , the idea of people expressing their thoughts on an instantly accessible world-wide forum is so cool! -And inevitable, given the medium.
Because often, it's not the data itself which is valuable, but the connections a person can make within the data. Throw a pile of data at everybody on the planet who has an internet connection, and see what comes back. Now, that's exciting! Connections are the light which guides human creativity. If one guy sees an illuminating connection, then heck yeah, I'm all for his or her being able to share it with the globe.
In depth articles are fine, and indeed, necessary, but they are like the data which enters the brain. The rest of internet is the brain. You want to accept an article at face value or do you want to think about it first? What's more important? The eyes or the brain?
What a silly question. Both, please.
-FL
It's really not about blogs vs. "web sites" but about the quality of the content and the expertise of the author. The signal-to-noise ratio in the blogosphere may be high, but that's increasingly true of "mainstream media" as well.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Okay, I came across this video while surfing:
http://www.fraize.com/blog/?p=88
I'm an engineer, but I didn't understand every 2nd word that this guy said.
I think I'd rather have had some reviewer explain it to me, because I'm still scratching my head over it. He might as well have been speaking Trek-babble.
Linkback for 2007-07-09 by zolaar[...]Re:Are in depth articl[...]
(tags: forlater, to_read, for_later, readme, README, news, insightful)
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Are book reviews better than blurbs?
TV is worse than any and all of the above. Blogs may fail to inform you (usually by the selectivity of their outrage--Drudge is great for that), but TV actually makes you more dumb than when you started. I may deplore an argument I see on Redstate (or Daily Kos, for that matter), but at least an argument, however specious, was made, whereas TV news actually undermines the very existence of coherent argument.
You can recognize people who rely completely on TV to inform them because they can't formulate a logical idea at all, much less respond to yours. They rely on slogans and ad hominem attacks, and get tripped up by even the most obvious questions. By comparison, the most vacuous blogs are vastly superior. Even a deceptive, simplistic article must follow a chain of logic and facts that can, at least in principle, be addressed and refuted.
No, but book reviews help you decide if you want to spend the time/effort reading the book. So, blogs can help pique interest in a story that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Compare groklaw.net to the obvious msft shills like Rob Enderle, Dan Lyons, Laura Didio, or Maureen O'Gara.
Groklaw analyzes actual court filings. Those other bozos just rant like idiots, and make one unsubstantiated claim after the next. Groklaw has also proven itself to be *much* more moral than those other smear-campaign stalkers.
IMO: so called "professional journalists" are getting in a wad about being debunked, and out-classed by a bunch of amature bloggers. And that is why we see so many anti-blog articles these days.
>That's what searching for intelligent people on StupidNet is like today.
Posting this rant (with which I happen to agree in large part as I remember the world before the 'net, before BBS'...) on Slashdot is fruitless - most of the real nerds left long ago.
Now all that's left are the fanboys, copyright infringers, trolls and flamebaiters.
Oh, and the few eternally optimistic, aging nerds that keep hoping that it will return to its former glory.
What is the factor that differentiates a blog and an article ?
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Why listen to a man whose site looks like this:
http://www.useit.com/
I'm a consultant and I can say with absolute certainty that "it depends."
Considering how many /.ers don't bother to RTFA, I think this crowd may be biased...
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
You have an equal chance of reading an article that is poorly written. Chances for either being lamer then a 1 legged dog are pretty high. Problem is, there are infinitely more Bloggers then legitimate writers.
The article is based on an incorrect and/or outdated idea of what a blog is. Specifically, "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments," which implies that a blog posting is necessarily that "short comment on somebody else's comments." There's no reason why a blog can't contain exclusively postings that meet the "in-depth content."
Also the article was too long can someone give me a link to a blog that has a summary
I could argue both sides of the issue, but this is a stupid question as it's currently stated.
... because we all know that nothing said more than a day or two ago is worthwhile. That may be true if you're trying to keep up with the latest Brittney [SP?] or Paris drama, but it sounds like an argument for the `sound-bite society' rather than against it. In fact, I would say that the vast majority of useful information I've found online has come in the form of discussions that happened months or years ago, those otherwise undocumented gems in the middle of a usenet post. No, I'm not saying that all Internet content is worthwhile --- indeed, the vast majority is less than worthless --- but I'm not the one complaining that I can't use Google as a serious research tool. There are currently much better ways --- and even better ways using a tool like Google --- to target that kind of information.
First, it asks if blogs are better than in-depth articles. Better for what? It's nonsense to make a comparison where there is no standard. Better at giving me a complete and well-considered analysis of the topic? I'll have to go with the article. Better at giving me a quick, high-level glance at the topic along with some links to more information? I might have to go with the blogs on this one. Why does it matter that all the blogs in the world won't give me a complete treatment of a topic? Who's asking them to? They're like Wikipedia: insufficient for serious work, but often an excellent starting place, depending largely on the type of information you're seeking.
Second, the quote complains that sometimes discussions are from some time ago, and are `thus irrelevant'
I am all for raising the intellectual bar in our society, and I despise dumbed-down `fast food' news and information. I don't disagree with many of the author's observations. However, this article seems to be an incomplete answer to a poorly-stated question, hardly living up to the intellectual standard it would set for the Internet. Histograms, statistics, and lots of words do not make for a cogent argument.
ScaryTall
It completely depends on the published information itself.
JN's style is a lot like my own, except for the FUgly white background. Oh yeah sure it is the highest contrast to black text. It is also a pain in the eyes.
I change the default background of my Win apps to be light gray and this greatly eases eye strain. I run a black background on my 1920x1200 to save energy, wear and sanity. I guess I need to change the default background color in Opera -- not sure if it will help me read his pages though.
Maybe JN has no color sense whatsoever -- I mean his only page color is pungent yellow. Yellow and white?! Who on this planet uses yellow + white + black text? Ok, he is unique, I'll give him that.
Well said, and I believe that is the point of many blogs.
[T]he blogosphere has (for the most part) taken up the sound-bite model instead of the reasoned-discourse model of media. Again, I suspect this is more due to the present internet advertisement model than to anything else.
Call me cynical, but I suspect it also has a lot to do with the inability or disinterest of people in engaging in reasoned discourse. That would require them to think logically about things, rather than reacting in knee-jerk fashion about something which has affected them emotionally.
And before I get flamed for my short response without any supporting evidence, I'll concede that it's an emotional response. Oh, and this is Slashdot. Were you expecting reasoned discourse? You must be new here.
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
I often get more out of Blog posts than I do articles and I will tell you why...
Posters are kind of like the "Random Access" memory in our brains -- the dreams and perceptions that come up with creative problem solving. 99% of Blog posts just say basically; "this suxor" or "it's the bomb" and subsequent comments like "your bomb comment SuxOr and I'm in UR Base Killin yur robots." But, occasionally you get a gem where someone tips you off to something you didn't know. A lot of eyes means everyone has a bit of experience to bring -- and occasionally, you get an article enhanced by that trivia.
If there were a better filter to get rid of the noise -- that might be a good thing.
It's also useful to get the "Zeitgeist" of how people collectively feel. Unless it's about Apple, Windows, or generally fascists who support subverting the constitution -- then you are just going to get lots of people flooding the channel trying to control opinion.
Perhaps if blogging entries were all done unconsciously, they'd be of more use.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Is being Catholic better than shitting in the woods?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199