Slashdot Mirror
Here Come The Weblogs
Electric Community Part Two:
Here Comes the Weblog
The members of electronic communities like Slashdot come together in the first place because of some shared interest - in this case a complex, sometimes highly technical range of acquired knowledge - Linux, open source, programming. An individualistic community with a common purpose, sites like this attract focused, like-minded participants, programmers and developers whose shared experience was mastery of a complex operating system, a willingness to endure technical hurdles, and an almost secret common language.
Newcomers, drawn to see what's going on or foraging for information themselves, often enrage the established dwellers of an e-community. They don't know as much, ask stupid questions, speak a different language. Intruders, they throw the ecological balance out of whack.
Mark Stefik of the Information Sciences and Technology Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, likens this resentment to the problem of assimilation when natural disasters or wars cause mass exodus to new lands. When the rate of immigration exceeds a certain level, the resulting chaos in the host country can evoke tremendous resentment and backlash.
Size is a factor, too. As an electric community grows, so do the maintenance costs - hardware, bandwidth, the pressure coherently present more and more information, the need for revenue to support all these functions. As more and more people move through the site, it's harder to recognize addresses, message styles, or individual personalities.
So an electronic community faces, from the beginning, a serious dilemma --- whether to stay small, but remain marginal, or to grow, and becoming more profitable and acquiring more bandwidth and software. In a sense, it suffers either way. If a community stays small, it starves. If it grows, it suffers in a different way. The WELL, one of the first and most important electronic communities (I've been a member for years) has survived by remaining small, smart and simple.
Many of its members have reasons for avoiding too much hostility. They have continuing, powerful, very personal ties to one another. Topics range from science and technology to culture, movies and parenting. And the WELL has been successful in part by providing strong, experienced moderators with authority who discourage eruptions of hostility and keep conversations on track without discouraging free speech.
E-communities without personal forums - jobs, parenting, family life - have a tougher time forming a sense of community, since there's no real way for members to get to know one another. People aren't attacking human beings they know, but disembodied voices and messages.
From the beginning, the Net and the Web have been about individuals creating their own media. This process evolves constantly as people online struggle to find communities where they can glean information, keep up with new technologies, receive help, make human contact.
Some online sociologists use the club analogy when it comes to differentiating large and public versus small and exclusive e-communities.
Exclusive discussion groups - those that limit membership and topics - are like private clubs in that they offer membership by invitation or even fees. In these smaller e-communities, people can speak more freely, perhaps say things they wouldn't say in public.
Stefik writes: "To take the private-club idea another step forward, consider the possibility of private clubs with exclusive memberships, rules about confidentiality with real bite, and limits on the ability of the excluded public to post'There might be private newsgroups for people who are generally inaccessible - for example, major financiers, philanthropists, leaders of powerful companies, or even scientists."
The recent surge in classy, well-designed, intensely-linked weblogs - almost all, essentially reflecting the interests and tastes of their creators and a small number of like-minded people -- suggests a non-commercial version on Stefik's idea.
The weblog isn't a new term on the Net, but it's being used in a new way. One previous definition of weblog is an archive of activity on a web server. Another is an online diary. But in the context of the e-community, the weblog is new, and evolving rapidly, despite the fact that specialized and idiosyncratic sites have been around for some years.
On Camworld.com, Cameron Barrett has written about and developing his notion of the weblog - he calls it a small, eclectic site, usually maintained by one person, with a high concentration of repeat visitors, plentiful WWW links, and a zero tolerance for flames.
Barrett, an interactive designer, writes on Camworld ("Anatomy Of A Weblog" ) that he heard the term "weblog" for the first time a few months ago, but isn't sure who coined it.
Weblogs are a perfect example of the biological evolution of electronic communities. Very personal foraging sites, they are limited in membership, their links continuously updated, and are often focused on a single subject or theme.
They seem to almost all be ideologically opposed to hostility, including essayish commentary and observations. Because the site creator limits and approves membership, they don't need to be defended as intensely as bigger sites, nor do they attract - or permit - posters who abuse others. One obvious payoff is that the flow of ideas is strong, uninterrupted and impressive.
Barrett calls weblogs "microportals. Some weblogs: Smug; Flutterby; Scripting News; ; Stating the Obvious -- I was startled to come upon a column by Rogers Cadenhead about why I don't belong on Slashdot (weblogs may be less hostile, but don't look for sweet, either); Obscure Store, and Joshua Eli Schachter's very smart memepool.
Some webpools are designed by their creators simply to revolve around what they find interesting. Writer Keith Dawson describes webpools as "filtered news," but as with anything having to do with the Net and the Web, there are lots of different points of view.
The Christian Science Monitor newspaper, e-mails Christine Booker, was "weblogging" their own publication earlier this week. That is, an editor provided synapses of articles of interest, with links and particularly notable quotes. The editor was providing pre-digested highlights of his paper, only without commentary. Thus "weblogging" has even come to journalism, not usually an institution on the forefront of digital change.
The point is, Booker wrote, instead of asking readers to scan headlines to decide what to read, they have a section at the top of their World report that says, in effect: our international editor puts foreign news coverage in perspective so that you can go straight to the meat. In a different way, that's what weblogs do - interesting stories for pre-selected communities.
Booker, who designs and manages websites for the University of Washington Department of Surgery, and is an avid reader of weblogs, says it's important to convey their personal nature. "Even sites that don't contain any original content or much commentary give me a glimpse into the mind of the weblogger. What someone chooses to link tells me what they're interested in, what they think is funny, what they find absurd. Some webloggers offer links embedded in one or two lines of more or less oblique commentar" (jjg.net) Booker says that as far as she can tell, many, if not most of these sites started very informally and then, one way or another, the URL got passed around soon these "hobby sites" developted devoted audiences, readers who visit them at least daily, sometimes more.
Jesse James Garrett, content editor for Ingram Micro's Web site and editor of the weblog jjg.net says that "weblogs are the pirate radio stations of the Web, personal platforms through which individuals broadcast their perspectives on current events, the media, our culture, and basically anything else that strikes their fancy from the vast sea of raw material available out there on the Web. Some are more topic-focused than others, but all are really built around someone's personal interests. Neither a faceless news-gathering organization nor an impersonal clipping service, a quality weblog is distinguished by the voice of its editor, and that editor's connection with his or her audience."
One of the best weblogs I found was Peter Merholz's peterme.com. "How freakin? cool is this?" he asks in the lead item for May 12, writing about tracking satellites live and real-time using a 3D Java applet. The site mixes the best of web design and technology - interface, design, web development - with pop culture: movie reviews, an essay on the late cartoonist Shel Silverstein.
Merholz has decided, "for what it's worth," to pronounce "weblog" as "we? - blog."
While weblogs don't have the reach and influence - thus, the commercial potential -- of larger, more inter-active and open sites, it's easy to imagine them as powerful supplements to the major foraging sites. And, depending on their members, could be influential at sharing memes, essays and ideas.
Cameron Barrett's thoughts on weblogs can be found here, along with his list of favorites. Keith Dawson, who runs the Tasty Bits of Technology Front site - in some ways a pioneer, classic weblog, also has written about weblogs at here.
To me, weblogs may embody personalized media on the Net - enterprising geeks creating interesting new sites that set out to define news in different ways, to be both interesting, coherent, and more civil. This is the complete opposite structure of conventional media, which is top-down, boring and inherently arrogant.
They may be among the first e-communities to successfully overcome online hostility and abuse as well. That alone could make them highly popular.
Weblogs, however personal, are foraging sites in the classic sense of the term.
But Weblogs aside, the idea of electronic communities as encompassing distinct biological types is irresistible. And it makes sense. I'd identify these species of electric villagers. Add your own:
FORAGERS ( Stefik would call them Wolves): the people running sites or submitting and linking to discovered information.
LURKERS (Stefik's Spiders): The largest group, professionals, academics, researchers and others whose needs for information is practical, and who wait for it, usually in silence.
FISHERMEN: People who trawl selected sub-topics or discussions for specific data, such as information about a kind of information or software.
HELPERS: Electronic communities often have a compliment of knowledgeable veterans who welcome newcomers, and are happy to counsel them in the ways of the site. The helpers don't see newcomers as a threat, but an opportunity for the village to grow and prosper.
IDEOLOGISTS (as in priests and theologists): Vigilant for deviations from what they perceive as the site's purpose, they disagree and criticize, sometimes sharply, but rarely with venom or cruelty.
DEFENDERS (as in warrior bees or ants): Ideologically- driven flamers who seek to keep their communities pure, free from intrusive outsiders, whom they see as threatening and de-stabilizing.
ANONYMOUS COWARDS (Spies, informers, information bringers and Braying Hyenas): Two types, people with legitimate information that they can't share under their own names, and exhibitionists who get to express hostility without consequence. The single biggest cause of the destruction of communities, they are the most frequently cited reason newcomers flee, veterans tire and advertisers move on to more hospitable environments.
TECHS (worker bees and ants): The people in any community for whom the construction of the site is its own reward. They are constantly working to offer options and services, improve software and access.
Some questions: What does an electric community need to work? Are there other identifiable types of e-community members? Are new kinds of sites like weblogs the future, or a minor step on the evolutionary chain?
I find the notion of a closed community, enforced
technologically or socially, somewhat scarey. It
seems less a utopia than a retreat from the kind
of vibrant intellectual life that might
characterise the internet in a less privatised
society. One of the intriguing things about
slashdot is the heterogenous range of views and
topics, more like a cafe (of the Left bank sort,
if a bit too near the CS department for comfort)
than the university common room.
That's my term for the same idea. One billionth part of the collective running a medio source. /.'s a perfect example. Some of the live webcasts (using shoutcast or icecast) also fit under the same umbrella, altough at present their reach is much less. I wrote a paper on it, e-mail me if curious. Basically it's a shift in the role of gatekeepers from those with the money and power, to those who build the media (from Rupert Murdoch and Scott Sassa to Rob Malda and the like) User submissions and self-moderation are also part of the model. There is a catch-22 in getting one started, but they seem to be very self-sustaining and can be applied to any demo, psycho - graphic group, from hobbyists to professional. Computer gaming also has a number of them, although in all my surfing /. seems to be the overall tightest.
+&x
These days I get most of my web reading from links on weblogs of one kind or another - I'd personally count Slashdot as a weblog. I read Ars Technica, Scripting News, Robot Wisdom and Tomalak's Realm, and I'm on Haddock which has several great links every day.
NTK is often listed as a weblog, innaccurately - it's a weekly mag. But it's completely brilliant. Subscribe.
Also, h2g2.com (The HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy, online) has, amongst its many fab features, the ability for users to create their own weblogs on their homepages, with forums hanging off each entry. Worth a look, and I'm not just saying that 'cos I work there.
From the eye-have-a-spelling-chequer department: "an editor provided synapses of articles." That'd be synopses, surely.
So, how is something like Slashdot different from, say, a newsgroup? Why is this worth talking about?
I'd suggest that it's the topics (articles) provided by the maintainer of the site that provide a focus for discussion. Sure, things diverge, but people aren't compelled (or, rather, don't feel compelled) to make their own entertainment. Consider the quality of discourse on a newsgroup devoted to a TV show during (a) the regular season, and (b) the summer hiatus. When there isn't a new episode to discuss every week, things can get a bit strange.
Then there are the impenitrably tiresome interpersonal disputes that crop up on newsgroups. Here, since threads of comments are collected in bunches under different articles, last week's deathless flamefest is buried deep in the old articles. On a newsgroup, threads go on for months, sometimes...
That said, I prefer trn's interface to this one. But it's still the best of the Web discussion forum designs that I've seen, especially with the nested display (though it doesn't quite work in Lynx...).
One further nit: Mr. Katz is still using question marks for apostrophes. At least, that's how it turns out on my screen. Surely there's a filter that could be run?
Mind the Gap
Don't get the two confused. /. readers, you'd find that a good deal of them depend more on these "weblogs" for computer based news that they need or have an intrest in far more than in most of the mainstream channels of communication, such as magazines, TV, radio, C|Net websites, where "Vanilla" content (edible, but not really rich in taste or geared for people with specific tastes) is the norm. :)
Weblogs (which is really a crappy crappy name, btw) are, more than anything, constantly updated sites with news and links of interest, centered around a topic, maintined by people who know what good information. that pertains to the topic, is. If you took a poll of
To say that they are really about personal information, that is different. Most of those would be construed as diaries. Very few people have real interest or concern about the details of other peoples lives, not enough to make a "community" around it. though personal info does sometimes hit weblogs, that's not really a major part of content.
And like it or not, "communities" do not develop through web sites. Period. They develop through newsgroups, e-mail, internet chat, etc., interactive forums, and other places means by which direct communication AMONG members may take place, many of which are based on or around websites &weblogs. However, websites & weblogs have audiences, as do TV stations, newspapers, magazines, etc. Websites and Weblogs deliver information TO an audience, commmunication really isn't AMONG an audince. In that aspect, audience size really does not have a direct bearing on weblogs. There is no requirement where weblogs must interact with their audience.
Web forums are really the only place where Web-Anything can have a community.
Of course, this just my point of view
"Weblog" is a pretty damn common term for a web server's access log. I'd assume anyone running a website has seen it used in that sense, so why was it co-opted to describe this phenomena?
--
#19845
Portals, weblogs, top50 sites.....
/_@/\/\3"
I guese its time for another episode of "Name that fuzzy warm feeling"
Watching as the users of the net name, rename, invent, reinvent, rereinvent and then rename the reinvention is almost, almost mind you, fun to watch.
I understand the need to name things, people spend years of thier life in school to learn the names of things, to learn the nature of the names meanings, and maybe sometimes even interact with the things they name.
You name something, you make an attachment to it. It becomes something not otherly, but something of you. You can lay an easy hand on the worn handles.
The country was there before Lewis and Clark took to yelling out names from a cannoe ("Hey Lewis, what do you want to call this wet stuff we are drowning in?""What about ITSFUCKINGCOLD River?" "I doubt if Mr Jefferson is gonna go for that." "OK call it the Columbia for all I care.")Once named the country was not the great unkown, it was the North West passage, it was Oregon and Washington.
Look also to the old Mark Twain tale of the name game in Extracts from Adam's Diary
Knowing this we can clearly see the zeitgiest of the web clawing at any chance for worth, and in this attempt to name a thing that is.
Remeber back to the begining of the web, when the content was sparse but everyone had to put up a page. These pages were often personal insites scattered with lists of links (remeber well lynx and its grandfather gopher, links of links with the content under it all). One of the critism of early web sites were that they were too personal, that no one would want to read someones list of interests, likes/dislikes (think playboy centerfold material) and quipy witisms .
But some of those sites flourished. Blues News and Daves Classics to name but two. Very much the creation and mindset of a person and in some cases a group of people.
Weblogs is a horrible name. There is already something called a web log. This is another ding in paint of the web users creativity, not only are they renaming something that has pretty much always been on the web, but they are renaming it to something that already names a thing.
Instead of WebLog I can thnk of a few more usefull and vastly more enjoyable names.
PageWithLinks
ContentKiosks
Soapboxes
Curiosity Cabinets
Steamertrunks Of Ripe Underwear
RatPackers
Things That Make Your Modem Go Hmmmmmmmm
A rose by any other name etc etc (or to update the steinesque wordage "a lamer in any other syntax would still be as
So here we are, another name for what already is. Its not that I dont dig the meme and procedures for creation of great sites spreading to wider minds, but can we please rework the Gee Wizz Press Blurbs stage of its evolution more often? Please, for me?
Call me Ishmiel. better yet, Call me a taxi.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
As an active weblogger (I'm behind GeneHack ), here's my two centavos on the issues that are being raised.
First, the name. It's done, people. We (the people doing the weblogging) call them weblogs. There might be a temporary confusion with web server logs, but that will pass. Soon, people will realize that weblog != web server log.
Second, the point. I weblog (it's a noun! it's a verb!) mostly for myself. I comment on biological issues and anything else I find interesting; the key word being comment. Some weblogs just post pointers to interesting sites; personally I find those less interesting than those that post commentary, either on events or content elsewhere on the web. Additionally, sometimes I'll put an item up on GeneHack so that I remember to look at it again; my archives serve as a log of what I thought was worth saving. On a weblogger-heavy mailing list I frequent, weblogs were described as "bookmarks in time" by Brigitte Eaton, who runs the eatonweb weblog . That's a good capsule summary of what I'm trying to do.
Third, the community issue. I agree that weblogs aren't a good way to generate a community, at least not a large or tightly-knit one. That's not the point. Filtering content is the point; commenting on that content is the point; being active on the web instead of passively grazing is the point. I don't participate in much of the web-based community stuff, like /., for example, because (despite recent innovations) the signal:noise ratio is still way too low. People who email me because of something on GeneHack are much more reasonable to deal with. People who I mail because of items on their weblogs are much more reasonable to deal with. That's much, much more rare on /. and other such sites.
Fourth, and finally, why I read weblogs. The filtering by different people with different tastes and different backgrounds. By checking 10 or 15 sites daily, I'm able to assimilate way more information than I would be able to all on my own, with a good slice of commentary thrown in. After visiting different sites for a short while, I have a fairly good idea of the viewpoints and interests of the authors; I have an idea of how they filter information. Weblogs allow me to get the point of view of smart people in varied fields; more people than I could reasonably meet and interact with in meat space. I find that valuable.
Whew! If you made it to the end of this ramble, congradulations. If you haven't yet, check out some of the sites mentioned in the article. Visit for a few days; find the sites you like. We're a varied lot, and there's something for everyone. If you can't find a site with your point of view, start your own...that's the point.
john.
GeneHack {--(bioinfo*linux*opinion)