De-lurking

42 thoughts on De-lurking

1. Yeah, it’s called Usenet.

   Really, from my POV, blogs are (de)volving towards the Usenet model, think moderated newsgroups.

   Cocomment lets an individual store up all her comments in one spot (although it’s in severe beta); one idea for it is probably to open up to social aggregation.

2. piny–
   those are excellent points you put forth. i realy like the idea of encouraging people to hold long term conversations from the orignal blog post and on other sites. i think thats what a lot of us were getting at and you hit the nail right on the head.

3. What gets you to stick around? When do you become engaged? When do you tune out?

   Beyond the theme/purpose of the blog, good writing is what usually attracts and holds my attention. The message is important, but I’ll eventually get frustrated and stop reading a blog if the blogger has perpetually poor grammar and spelling, or makes lots of accidental homonym substitutions, etc. It’s stupid, but poor writing skills are annoying, and difficult to ignore after a certain point.

   So a good grasp of basic technical writing skills is key. On top of that, writing with flair and humor is what draws me into new blogs, and keeps me coming back to ones I’ve been watching for a while.

   As far as commenting and communit-building goes… This is a silly thing, but I always really appreciate blogs that are set up so that you can receive email notifications of replies to your comments, or to a post in general. It makes it so that you don’t have to keep coming back and hitting refresh to check and see if there’s something new to respond to, and a feature like that dramatically increases the likelihood of my commenting regularly on a blog.

4. piny–
   those are excellent points you put forth. i realy like the idea of encouraging people to hold long term conversations from the orignal blog post and on other sites. i think thats what a lot of us were getting at and you hit the nail right on the head.

   I’m glad you think so….And this does seem like a starter compromise between being oblivious and being acquisitive. I was wondering about something like a blog roundtable–like a one-subject serial carnival, maybe–but it’s still very vague.

5. O
   M
   G

   Quoted on the front page. I’m sorta famous.

   Anyways, I come for insightful posts, and stay for lively and intelligent comment sections. I can’t stay out of a good discussion.

6. Because of the way a lot of blogs authenticate comments, trying to share the same post script across a domain might be a bad idea.

   I think the obvious option is to simply turn off comments for the “big” blogger’s post so that commenters have to go to the original post.

7. I think the obvious option is to simply turn off comments for the “big” blogger’s post so that commenters have to go to the original post.

   So, linked without comment and links with no comments? I kinda like that idea.

8. Blog mining and appropriation are the heart and soul of blogging. Any attempt to force discussions back to linked blogs is flawed and probably doomed to fail. People post about what interests them and often tie the link to their own experience. Why is it more valid for the discussion to take place in one forum rather than the other? What if the linked post deals with a topic peripheral to the original blog’s focus but central to the linker’s? To the extent that the linker takes the idea further and adds new content, shouldn’t it be legitimate for discussion of that content to take place on her blog?

   The only time I can see this being workable is for single link posts with little added content or that comment only on the specific issue raised by the linked blogger without dealing with issues that are regularly debated by commenters at the linking site. For posts that draw together several threads and synthesize them, trying to have discussion take place on the originating blog is counterproductive, since comments that dealt with the synthesis might be viewed as off-topic by the blogger.

   Jill’s solution works, but if you don’t let bloggers express themselves, they have little incentive to link. Most bloggers think they have something important to say, after all, or they wouldn’t being doing it in the first place. And presumably there’s some reason you found something interesting: wouldn’t it behoove you to explain to your readers why they should bother clicking through? There are a lot of blogs that just consist of links to interesting things, but absent some serious personal capital as an arbiter of taste/intellectual merit, that model doesn’t work.

   Finally, not all blogs have comments sections that promote discussion and analysis. Commenting on a blog that has a string of zeros next to its comments links feels like dropping your thoughts into a black hole. To some extent this is a chicken and egg problem, but it’s nonetheless something that has to be acknowledged when examining why discussions take place on big linker blogs intead of small linked blogs.

   Re: making readership more than occasional: I find RSS readers are most useful in this regard. Especially for small blogs that are infrequently updated, these make it possible for people who might not check for new posts every day to see them when they appear.

9. Speaking as a “miniscule blogger” I care about the discussions happening on my posts and would kind of resent those debates being taken over by even “the small bloggers’. I suppose it’s an ego thing in the end. but I do have a reason that I blog in the first place (as I stated at the beginning of my blogging life): to generate discussion and dialogue. I love to get links and mentions by “small bloggers” (and big bloggers if I knew who they were?) but the point is, it takes a lot of time and effort to follow all these discussions and if people were to be discussing what I wrote I would like to know about it and be in on it. ( and I would rather it was at my place than somewhere else). I would love to have an email notification service but on wordpress.com (the free thing) we don’t have that option.

   I’ve been reading so much about all this, these last few days, I just wanted to add my two pence worth.

10. I’m pretty torn about the issue. One thing you might do is ask the blogger what they want — because I agree with Amber, the heart and soul of the Web was hyperlinking to begin with.

    I don’t particularly care as a tiny blogger. It’s cool that y’all link to a post I make and sometimes, I might even shove it in your face in comments and see if it blows up your skirt. 🙂 I have long ago learned that the oppressions I deal with will _never_ be addressed in the way I’d like to see them and that, to even discuss them subjects one to personal attacks and ignorant comments from even the most progressive folks out there. As one person, I can do nothing.

    So a compromise could be:

    1. ask the bloggers.
    2. we could make a badge or something that indicates the blogger’s preference so a vistor knows that they shouldn’t link without pushing discussion to the linked blog.
    3. Blogger could post bit on their policy in the sidebar. (for those who don’t know how to modify their sidebar, some of us could get together to give instructions for major blog software.)

    Also, don’t forget that, when you get more traffic and more comments, it takes more work. People do expect a response from the blogger and, until you get big enough that you have trolls or people like KnifeGhost who’ll discuss anything :), so that comment wars kind of manage themselves (though not without some tending from the blog owner/s, it’s a job. A thankless one, too. 🙂 Lots of rewards, no doubt, or we wouldn’t do it.

11. A few de-lurking comments.

    I enjoy polemics and high style, so oddly I’m very drawn to both I Blame the Patriarchy and Bitch|Lab. I find their literary styles, and fictional constructs amusing, attractive, but I don’t agree all the time with their opinions. I really like Angry Black Bitch.

    On the other hand, I appreciate more and more what I think of as centered, clear posts where the style is subordinate to clarity and content—you all here at Feministe, Pandagon, Pam Spaulding’s site. I’m new to reading blackacademic and Slant Truth, and formerly read all of you without comment; and I’m not saying you’re chopped liver, you all have wit and sparkle aplenty. Now, I think I’ll say amen, howdy, like the curtains, because telling you I am listening and thinking is clearly important.

    I do not like seeing trashing, horizontal hostility, aggression, contempt. I wish the community on each blog site mediated it more. I am afraid to have it directed at myself. On the other hand, I’m a big girl, it’s happened before and jeez, I’m all in one piece and I understand the need to have difficult discussions.

    I’d like to see a time out room, or people told to take it outside. We live in a world where we have zero emotional education and zero education in productive confrontation.

    I don’t like the words troll & snark; they’re like the words politically correct, they mean something different these days to each and every person. On the other hand, I do see a repetitive sameness to these guys and their comments, and the way an argument gets twisted. Don’t feed the trolls is the standard, but the trolls get fed, clearly. Maybe the trolls should get kicked out of the living room? But maybe not, maybe some or many lurkers learn enormously from these engagements?

    I think criticism should be directed at the powerful, never at the powerless, and I am very unhappy when polemic becomes directed at the powerless.

    Oh, and I hate, hate, hate, the cut and paste, quotation method of discussion. So often it feels not like an attempt to get the words right, but a weird passive-aggressive literalization of chop chop chop to an argument, completely ignoring the real meaning and main points of what someone is saying. I realize this method is standard practice, but I think there’s something wrong with it. It’s too fast or too easy or something. This might be only my opinion about it.

12. Also, piny, I do believe that I need an email address so I can write love notes to you about how you have handled these issues — all of you actually. In which case, I do believe I should nominate this series at Feministe for a Koufax Award — or whatever those thingies are. 😉

13. @ dharmadyke,

    *blushing* but thank you and I love Twisty’s writing! (I’m notworthy!)

    I humbly (ha!) suggest, “This is what a feminist cooks like!” as a way to have the time out AND with a little collective brainstorming, a way to raise money for, say, reproductive rights, yes?

    I’m a dork, but this was truly one of the ways all this highly agressive men at a male-dominated list managed to allow the conversation to cool down: they shared recipes.

    I think this could be used as a fundraiser, too, as I mention in comments at the above post.

14. I follow a link to read it but I rarely leave a comment unless the post itself invites comments or the blog does.

    I stay for good writing always, sometimes for humor, sometimes (on a small, personal blog, because I really enjoy the person and their “take” on their life.

    Not commenting on a linked blog – well, your damned if you do and damned if you dont. As Twisty recently pointed out, commenting on one post ignores the writer’s context and other posts that may clarify one particular post (Ironically, the last time I clearly saw this happen was when a commenter on Twisty’s blog slammed Ayelet Wideman).

    I tend not to go back if the poster does not acknowledge comments in any way – i dont care if they acknowledge MY comments (although of course it’s nice) but if they dont acknowledge any of the comments (whether in the comments or in another post) then I feel like theyre not reading them or dont care.

    I shall digress re: dharmadyke’s digression that I find unease in the cut/paste method also. Then again, I have proven time and again that I am no good at internet debate.

    I also agree that links are the blog’s bread and butter and if you are not commenting on the link in any way, I probably wont even follow it in the first place (Even if your commentary is “Go read this, I cant top the way she put it”).

15. Basically, the problem (part of the problem) is this: a “little” blogger will labor in relative obscurity. Then a “big” blogger will happen onto one of their posts and go, “Neat!” and take it over to their blog to write a post that will drive up and sustain their already-impressive traffic. The “little” blogger may or may not see a spike in traffic; when the “little” blogger does, it will tend to be extremely temporary and mostly silent. The “little” blogger almost never gets to host the discussion about their own post; that happens over at the “big” blogger’s house, and tends to occur in a way that loses most or all of the original topic. It can also occur in space that is hostile to the original blogger.

    And the problem is?
    Look this is how the blogosphere works. Anything you write is out there. Other people may very well repost it, may link to it, may generate their own discussions off of it. That is the very essense of blogging- linking to the sources you discuss.

    If you write a blog for a niche market then you are going to have a niche audience. On the occasions you write something that appeals to a larger audience you may reach them but they aren’t going to stick around for your usual niche writing because that wasn’t what interested them in the first place.

16. I agree with the general “this is how the blogosphere works” comments. But in addition … I don’t choose which blogs to read solely based on the bloggers; I choose in part based on who posts. So I’m less likely to go to a blog I don’t know much about than I am to a blog where I know who’s who and what’s what.

    I mean, no one thinks there’s a problem when CNN cites Kos or Wonkette (as long as they’re cited, of course), but then holds a discussion *on CNN* rather than commenting directly, right?

17. I was going to suggest the closing-comments idea, but since I see it’s been suggested already, let me take it a step further.

    After you post a link (and close comments and encourage people to comment at the other site), you could add a follow-up post (not an update to the original) a bit later if the discussion at the other site proves interesting. Quote from a couple of the comments, and encourage folks to head over and add their voices.

18. Hmmm…These are good questions to be asking, Piny. Not easy to answer, though. For me, the issue isn’t so much linking. I agree that linking is at the heart of blogging. If it weren’t for linking, would we even be having this conversastion? For me, the issue is about hijacking. About the willingness of some to try to change the topic to something more palatable. I’m glad to see Twisty and Piny taking up these issues, linking to the relevant posts, and generating a discussion about race in the blogosphere. I haven’t said so over there at Twisty’s and I probably should.

    What bugged me was that almost instantly someone tried to change the terms of the conversation and did so in a way that suggest people of color don’t understand their experiences. I don’t pretend to speak for Nubian, but this, I think, is at least part of what she is taking issue with. It’s definitely what I’m taking issue with.

    I get the impression that some of Twisty’s commenters and others feel as if their space is being violated. That we are arguing that all progressive blogs should talk about race all the time. Fair enough, but that’s not the case. I’ve said many a time that we need to choose our battles. Nubian’s battle often focuses on race. Twisty’s often on the patriarchy. There’s plenty of room and necessity for both. But when our different areas of concern overlap (and they often should–after all, we are all battling the larger, more abstract notion of oppression), we need to be mindful of hijacking the discussion.

    Again, Piny and Twisy, thanks for being willing to have these discussions. They aren’t always pretty, but they are definitely necessary.

19. I mean, no one thinks there’s a problem when CNN cites Kos or Wonkette (as long as they’re cited, of course), but then holds a discussion *on CNN* rather than commenting directly, right?

    Well, the alternative forces people to join communities they may not wish to be a part of.

    Let’s say that Feministe had a discussion about rape by victims, based on a post at another blog that purports to defend rape. If that blog full of rapists applied your perspective, couldn’t they force themselves into that discussion? Or force the discussion to happen at their own blog, with their own moderators, and with their own “house rules” that stack the deck in their favor?

    “That’s interesting; let’s talk about this post” doesn’t always imply “let’s talk with the author of this post”. Sometimes we’re looking at a post where the author is so obviously wrong and so obviously committed to defending their wrong views that no discussion is going to be possible if that author is a part of it. It’s sad, but true, I think.

20. The “little” blogger almost never gets to host the discussion about their own post; that happens over at the “big” blogger’s house, and tends to occur in a way that loses most or all of the original topic. It can also occur in space that is hostile to the original blogger.

    Well, if the big blogger is talking about a different topic (or the discussion leads to a different topic) then the big blogger cannot really be accused of stealing the little blogger’s topic.

    The reason I don’t think this should be a big deal is because I think of each blog (that allows comments) as it’s own community. Yeah, sometimes they overlap. But if I were a big blogger and I saw something cool, why should I be prevented from bringing that something over to my community to talk about with all my friends? No one has a claim to any topic. Sure, people can claim ideas and should get credit for it, but simply having a brilliant post doesn’t give anyone justification for the demand that further discussion on the topic must take place at their blog to the exclusion of all others.

    This discussion is about the invisibility of bloggers of color, particularly those who post candidly about the issues that are important to them.

    Here, too, I don’t see the problem because I do not believe that anyone is being marginalized. [Please stick with me here, I’m about to analogize blogging to free markets and I know that can be a touchy subject.] Blogging is one of the most free-market activities in the sense that there is almost no barrier to entry (the only cost to starting up is setting up your template on a free blog host) and there is no cost for readers (the consumer) to switch which blogs they read (IOW, substitute the product). Success in blogging derives for many bloggers by numbers of readership. As far as this discussion goes, any blogger upset by “stealing” of topics and use of that stealing to drive readership is deriving success from readership.

    So, the most successful blogs will have high readership. The “invisible” blogs will have low readership. When you write in concern about the “invisibility of bloggers of color” you’re really just saying they have low readership. Analogizing to “real life” is not that productive because of the two free-market features I just mentioned. It costs nothing to start blogging. And it costs nothing to attract new readers. Readership will be a simple function of how interesting/funny/edgy/beautiful the writing on a blog is.

    These invisible bloggers are invisible because they have low readership. If they want more readership, they should be better writers or “market” themselves more actively to bigger bloggers.

    That’s all. No one is being marginalized.

    And I’d like to offer this as a little consumer survey about your blog habits, particularly as relates to this space. What gets you to stick around? When do you become engaged? When do you tune out? In the past, have your comments been narrowly focused? And did you go read the linked posts and their archives, or just refresh the leading page?

    I read here because the topics interest me and the view points are radically different from my own. I am engaged when I see things that strike me as “wrong” in some way — things that are demonstrably false, or rely on a worldview incompatible with my own. When that happens I want to dig deeper and figure out the differences and similarities between my view and the writer’s. And then I want to figure out why we come to a different conclusion.

    I almost never (on any blog, not just here) feel the need to comment in support of a post or comment. What’s the point of saying “right on!” if I have nothing else to add?

    I can’t say whether or not my comments have been narrowly focused, but I always try and stay within the main topic of a post. I do follow links to previous posts or off-site sources. I don’t think it’s possible to have a fair and productive conversation (which is what this is) if I don’t go look and see the source of a topic or previous discussions.

21. I’m a wee little blogger with a wee little blog that’s so niche it has no niche. I get the spike thing– and you know what, it’s neat when people take the time to read my post at all. Everytime it happens there will be a few curious wanderers who stray from the rest of the mob and wander around and if they like what they see maybe they’ll return– or maybe they won’t. It’s neat that someone else thought my post was worth linking to and discussing.

    The idea of asking each other’s permission to link to other blogs and discuss them on our own is antithetical to the spirit of free exchange of information that is what makes the internet what it is. Not too mention it overlooks totally obvious scenarios such as, what if I’m linking to your post to point out that it is really, really dumb?

22. If it’s just a matter of familiarity, maybe there could be a Don’t Read My Blog Week, during which the bigger blogs could turn off all comments and link only to posts from smaller blogs without elaborating on them outside of the smaller blog’s comment threads. It could either highlight several small blogs or a single blog that could use more attention.

    And maybe someone needs to link to an RSS tutorial. I think I’d read more blogs if I figured out how to receive new content alerts without visiting every site. Of course I could just look it up myself…

    I read blogs that consistently post content-heavy and well-written text. (I can’t stand bad grammar, either.) I often read blogs that represent more than one–but fewer than five or so; larger than that and it gets unwieldy–blogger because there’s a greater chance of new posts when I visit. I rarely comment, and when I do, it’s at places I’ve visited for a long time, after I’ve become familiar with the community of bloggers and commenters there. I generally just read new posts, because I simply don’t have the time to read through the archives unless I become aware of a post that interests me.

23. I’m so curious: who is this editorial “we” that so many people speak of/ for in their posts?

24. who is this editorial “we” that so many people speak of/ for in their posts?

    That would be the Royal We.

25. If it’s just a matter of familiarity, maybe there could be a Don’t Read My Blog Week, during which the bigger blogs could turn off all comments and link only to posts from smaller blogs without elaborating on them outside of the smaller blog’s comment threads.

    What motivation would thay have to do so?

    Also this just leapt out at me:

    This discussion is about the invisibility of bloggers of color, particularly those who post candidly about the issues that are important to them.

    Is this really true? I mean I have absolutely no idea what the race is of the vast majority of bloggers I read. Is Jane Hamsher white, black, south east asian, NA, inuit? No idea. The only way I can see making this argument is in the second part: blogs about minority issues aren’t as popular as blogs about majority issues. Well that’s kind of a colossal ‘duh,’ really.

26. On a related topic, has anybody tried to eat soup with a fork or herd cats recently?

27. Not the fat ones, Lauren. I meant lean, feral cats. Hold up… I should actually wait for that reply first.

28. Pingback: Nerds for the Cause of Justice I: Proof of Concept

29. I suppose I always think of myself as having a little blog — and that justifies my “mining”. Admittedly, the majority of posts I put up are not based on the news or other blogs but on my life and on my students. That doesn’t justify my habit of occasionally picking up a topic discussed elsewhere and moving it to my place.

    I need to be a better and more thoughtful commenter, that’s for sure.

30. Hestia: I heartily recommend Bloglines for anyone new to RSS reading.

    All: I’ve just whipped together a proof-of-concept you might enjoy, where I attach this comment thread to one of my blog entries. The templating scheme needs some help, and Feministe’s engine is for some reason only publishing the first 10 comments in the thread (I think this might be default WordPress behavior), and setting it up required intermediate to advanced tech-nerd skills… but I think it does prove some kind of concept. If there’s interest, I’d be happy to write a tutorial on how to do this (for WordPress only, though, I have no idea how to port to other software).

    My thought is, throwing together a collection of threads would:

    Give more exposure to the discussion happening on smaller sites
    Allow each blog involved to maintain its idiosyncratic mix of chosen discussion topics and moderation styles
    Maybe help unite a bunch of related tangents, so each tangent gets its own arena and you’re not repeating the same discussion at different sites?

    I dunno, I’m just thinking out loud at this point.

31. I really go back and forth on this one. I did the post-without-comment thing because what I was hearing from other women was that they didn’t want their words recycled and reinterpreted by other people. I had nothing to add to what they said, and I thought it was important to let them speak for themselves.

    On the other hand, the blogosphere (god I hate that word) is one big work in progress, and one big mess of ideas being recycled and picked apart and re-structured. The whole thing is about borrowing and re-framing. It’s not like newspapers, which go out a try to find new, breaking stories; it’s about taking existing stories and analyzing them and discussing them. In that way, the idea that discussions should only happen at the place where they’re started is antithetical to the idea of blogging itself.

    I think community also factors in a lot to this issue. People may read dozens of blogs in a day, but there are a handful that they feel they’re a part of. I feel like I “know” several of the frequent commenters here. Sometimes I write things with them in mind, and I’m curious as to what their reaction will be, or what they’ll say. If every time you link out to another blog you say, “Go talk about it there,” you lose people. They may not be comfortable talking about it there. They may just not want to click that extra link. You might want to read what they have to say, but just lack the time to follow conversations at numerous blogs. You may find a particular piece of the other conversation interesting, and want to start a new (but related) conversation without derailing their thread. Or you may take issue with what they’re saying and want to criticize it, without trolling or getting into a huge argument on their turf.

    So there are lots of perfectly valid reasons to link to other people and have a conversation at your blog, even if that blog is “bigger” than others. As an example, Amanda from Pandagon links to Feministe fairly often, and will add commentary of her own. Then her readers will go to town, on her site. Personally, I find it flattering to be linked to by someone I respect, and I like seeing where the conversation goes over at her place. I like seeing how these ideas morph and change. I check our Bloglines and Technorati citations constantly to see who links to us, and what they and their readers are saying. I’ve never considered it an affront that they would discuss it on their own sites.

    But I obviously don’t speak for every blogger, so I think this is an important conversation to be having. I’m really glad we’re having it.

32. people like KnifeGhost who’ll discuss anything

    Bitch|Lab, it warms my heart that you’ve noticed. I’ve recently hauled my discussing anything to new blogs, as a direct consequence of this cross-blog debate we’ve been having. I can’t guarantee I’ll become a regular, but I have 3 or 4 new bookmarks in my “blog” folder. I’m a bit afraid, though, that becoming a ‘name poster’ on multiple blogs will lead to me falling into the bottom pit that is blogging.

    Tlaloc, not that I expect you’ll get this, but ‘big’ bloggers may feel that sending traffic to ‘small’ blogs will have a positive effect on the level debate in their corner of the blogosphere (I hate that term) and will expose their readers to valuable voices theyotherwise wouldn’t hear.

    I mean, for fuck’s sake, how many people on here would never have had to engage trans issues had Jill not brought piny on board at Feministe? That effect can be repicated and multiplied if ‘big’ bloggers use their access to a broad audience to highlight ‘small’ blogs in a way that shares that audience.

33. Tlaloc, not that I expect you’ll get this, but ‘big’ bloggers may feel that sending traffic to ’small’ blogs will have a positive effect on the level debate in their corner of the blogosphere (I hate that term) and will expose their readers to valuable voices theyotherwise wouldn’t hear.

    Maybe. Of course the big bloggers are generally professional bloggers. So you are asking them to lose money in order to promote their competitors. Generally any idea that relies on extreme altruism is best supported with a contingency plan.

34. Maybe. Of course the big bloggers are generally professional bloggers. So you are asking them to lose money in order to promote their competitors. Generally any idea that relies on extreme altruism is best supported with a contingency plan.

    I think we’re using different definitions of “big blogs” here. As I understand it, we’re discussing the big feminist blogs, of which this blog is apparently one, along with blogs like Pandagon, BitchPhD, CultureKitchen, etc. This isn’t as much a conversation about Kos and Atrios and HuffPo, or any of the really huge mainstream blogs. None of us are getting paid for this. So “supporting competitors” isn’t really an issue. And honestly, I’ve nver thought of other bloggers as “competitors.” It’s a growing medium; there isn’t a finite audience yet, and I suspect that most of us (or at least many of us, myself included) write because we have big egos and like to bitch, not because we’re in a struggle to up our readership.

35. I think we’re using different definitions of “big blogs” here. As I understand it, we’re discussing the big feminist blogs,

    Ah. That wasn’t clear to me. If that is the case then the fact that the bloggers are all motivated by a common cause makes a scenario likeHesita’s more likely to work.

36. On a related topic, has anybody tried to eat soup with a fork or herd cats recently?

    Not the fat ones, Lauren. I meant lean, feral cats. Hold up… I should actually wait for that reply first.

    I did try to eat some fat feral cat soup with a fork the other day, but it just didn’t feel right dipping Doug in broth like giant fondue. I shaved Pablo and ate him instead.

37. I think this comes down to the difference between the big blogs and the little blogs, and it’s not necessarily a difference of quality (ahem, Atrios). For whatever reason, there are a few blogs that people use as portals to news, rather than just to read what some blogger things about news items x y and z. As a “slimy mollusc,” I realize that I am no one’s portal (maybe some of my friends who don’t get into the blog thing like I do), so I try mostly just to add info that is underrepresented or something original I come up with. Bigger blogs have more of a role in laying out the issues involved in news items because they’re where the discussions begin, and it’s likely that their readers use them as portals to more narrowly-focused blogs (like mine).

    Not all blogs fit comfortably along the big-or-little, portal-or-narrow-focus dichotomy – what I’m mostly talking about are blogs that aren’t run by professionals, don’t update regularly, and don’t cover every issue, but still get quite a lot of discussion. I’m sure it’s nice to have a blog like that, but I think it takes an intersection of both extraordinary luck and talent.

    As this relates to comments, I agree with everyone else who’s said that the communities on the bigger, portal-like blogs are why the comments go on there and not on the smaller blogs. I’ll leave a comment on the original blog if it’s something I want to address to the actual writer of the piece or to another commenter on their blog. Otherwise, if it’s something I want to address to the Feministe or Political Animal or Whatever, I’ll comment there. You leave comments where you want a response and not to give a writer blogging points.

    It’s hits that give you points, duh. And, of course, whoever gets the most points Wins.

38. I usually prefer comments on the “big” blog because if that is how I found the original post, I probably think of the big blog as a home. I want to discuss an issue with the people that I know at that blog, hear what they have to say, and use a formatt I’m familiar with. I don’t see how those things can be transfered to a smaller blog… and I don’t think that forcing everyone over to the small blog will do anything but upset their balence with a heard of strangers all wishing they were somewhere else. There are jokes on here that wont work in other places, and likewise for Pandagon and Twisty and BitchPhD too. There are people I look forward to hearing from here, even though I don’t post a lot, and ig given the choice between being forced to comment somewhere I don’t feel comfortable and not commenting, I would probably not comment.

    On smaller blogs the comments tend to be fewer, and more congratulatory or “I agree!” and nothing more. And what if I don’t want to comment on the original, but what the next blogger has said about it? Should I have to do that at the original site? That seems silly to me. Would a monster comment thread really work, or just get huge and loose community cohesion? I’m not optomistic.

    Linking, quoting, etc are part of the blogshere (I actually like that word) and are one of the cool things about it. It is about sharing information… if you don’t want it linked to, cut and pasted, ripped apart, derrided, or commented upon, don’t post it. Once a blogger puts it out there, it is no longer their thoughts, they are public thoughts and you can’t steal something that belongs to everyone. People can take your stuff in a million different directions and places that you might not like or want. But if it really is that much of an invasion to you, don’t blog or restrict access to your blog.

39. Tlaloc: Jill clarified my point very nicely, but I would add that by looking at other blogs as “competitors” would be (or is, maybe) a limiting way for the big big big blogs (HuffAtriKos) to look at it. I suggest that community is a far more valuable resource (in the straight hard-nosed economical rational-choice cost-benefit sense) than many people give it credit for. Communities built on reciprocal exchange have a lot of benefits over societies of individuals built on a market economy, and that goes several times over for cash-poor communities like less institutionalized bloggers.

40. Your cats may be slightly nutty, Lauren, but Woo-Hah! Lewis got them all in check.

41. Lewis is under house arrest, forbidden to leave his home.

    Solveira also arrested the cat’s owner, Ruth Cisero, charging her with failing to comply with the restraining order and reckless endangerment.

    Comedy gold.

42. UserFriendly recently covered some of these topics.

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