Thanks to Veronica for giving me my first lessons in CSS, I have been able to fix a couple of little design features that have always bugged me (the text spacing and size) and some things I wanted (blockquote bordering). You know, the kinds of thing that are only important me. I think it makes the site look much more crisp.
Just a note, as a sign of the new world we live in: I first learned about Raffy being caught on a blog.
I can't exactly explain why, but something about this strikes me as kind of an interesting blog moment.
Markos, of Daily Kos, mass banned a large group of people because wild conspiracies:
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones -- Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can't imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain't the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake -- this is a purge.
As one of the most visited websites ever, Daily Kos has become such a huge community and widely spread voice, it just seems to me that this sort of self-regulation is interesting. No value judgment, here. It's just interesting.
If you are going to, as part of your blog persona, spend much of your posting time ripping apart other writers' work for the sole reason of dislike for the style, you'd better be a damned good writer.
Lucky for us, James Wolcott is.
The problem is, I brought it on myself.
So, here's how things denigrated to the point of no return, and what I did to help cause it. I'm pretty proud of the post, itself, so maybe, someday, the post can be taken for what it's worth.
I wrote the post as the continuation of a thought I left over at Rusty's, in which I disagreed with his conclusion, but not his premise. In the comment, I mentioned that I thought this was an opportunity for Democrats to stand on their principals, the way that Republicans do so well, and refuse to back down. The Dick Durbin incident was a perfect time for us to do it as well, and I think that "we" were in the sense that most of the liberal blogs were supportive of Durbin's comments. Unfortunately, Durbin wasn't working from the same playbook, and his apology, to me, served only to save his political hide from what he viewed as the imminent onslaught. He, like most of us Democrats, hadn't learned what the Republicans have: Americans, by and large, don't care about this shit. So, refusing to back down isn't really all that bad for you, because it will all blow over anyway, and you look like someone who stands by the courage of your convictions.
So, in light of that, and then Karl Rove's comments, I thought I'd try to point out that we were in a moment in time where just simply fighting back might just be good enough. Also, I got to work in a reference to "The Outsiders", so the post was obviously a mistake.
What I did next was probably where I made my mistake.
I've mentioned before that I kinda like Wizbang. As Conservative blogs go, they are the less shrill and more entertaining than most, so I those guys fairly regularly. Sometimes I comment on what they've written here, which can lead to good exchanges like the one I had with Jay Tea last week on torture.
About once a week, they do a feature called "Carnival of the Trackbacks" in which they allow readers to track back to that post with any of their own posts that they want to draw attention to, and then the link gets posted on the front page of their blog, in that post. I've participated from time to time, but this time I think I had a little bit of a different motive in line.
I was doing a little troll-fishing.
I'm not sure why, except to say that I was just in a fun, sort of combative mood, and was pretty sure that putting up a link to a post titled "Karl Rove Can Suck It" on a conservative blog was sure to get some attention. Attention it got. And before long, we had "Bullwinkle" in our midst.
I can't say that I think Bullwinkle had much constructive to say, and most times I would have ignored it, but my inner-child wanted to rumble, and with a few of you readers, I egged on the conversation to something that wasn't as civil as I normally like to keep things. I pride myself and have been complimented on this blog being able to, when situations require, for me to give credit to those I disagree with and to have civil discussions with the few conservatives who happen to wander by and want to chat. I failed in this instance.
I had a conversation with my dad a few months ago in which I talked to him about the way the nature of my blog has changed slightly over the past 6 months or so. More and more, people come to my blog to be informed about things they wouldn't have found out about otherwise and not just to be dazzled by my intellect (of which I have a truly dizzying one). Because of this, I've become more conscious of making sure that I'm informed enough to speak to a subject before I write about it or link to it. I'm subscribing more and more to the "You link to it, you own it" philosophy of blogging. These words are here forever, and I have to live with what I write for the rest of my life.
Likewise, I've become more conscious about being the integrity of the voice from this blog. This doesn't mean I can be ribald or use language that wouldn't befit the dinner table, but it does mean that I am responsible for the tone with which I engage my readers and commenters. I feel like I've done a good job with that, up to this point, but when I engage in silliness like I did with Bullwinkle this weekend, I do damage to the voice that I've worked hard to build up.
So, let me explain... no, there's too much... Let me sum up: I stand by the initial post, I apologize for engaging in silliness. Sorry for the navel-gazing nature of this post, but it was important for me to have this post on the blog for posterity's sake.
I know this conversation is probably incredibly boring to some people, but it is fascinating to me, and since it is my blog... on with the technobabble! I'll divide it into two parts.
Part I
This conversation started from a different place than a technical, networking one, and it got (uncomfortably for some) rather explosive. I mentioned in the comments on one blog (and for the life of me I can't remember which one) that I thought it was strange that this was appearing on primarily female blogger's sites. It wasn't until I got a little immersed in the conversation itself that I began to understand a bit just why that was.
First of all, Lauren, whether intended or not, is followed and respected amongst female and feminist bloggers, so the knee-jerk reaction to her saying she would remove her blogroll was viewed through the prism of Shelley's original post, which was provocative in of itself.
While links are valued by all bloggers, it never really occurred to me how much more of a flash point they were to female bloggers in the context of the way the blogosphere rates a blog's worth, and the lack of inclusion of many female bloggers in that system. So, when Lauren decided to remove her blogroll, for mostly practical reasons even if she was spurred on in that decision by Shelley's post, the instant reaction was to see it as Lauren somehow giving up on "the good fight" and letting the big bad male A-list bullies win.
This, of course, leads into conversations that have already been hashed through as to just what kind of writing is rewarded, why it is rewarded, and who is dolling out the rewards in the first place. People better informed than I have already weighed in, but I tend to agree with Shelley's point that, even if the female bloggers got together and pushed several of their own into the upper echelon of the current ranking systems, it would be empty because, though more links would exist, those links would not indicate more interest, readership, or any sense that what is being written is being absorbed and taken seriously within the network.
Part II
That I approached this from a different perspective isn't a statement on my open-mindedness so much as it indicates a lack of understanding of the intricacies of what has been going on for a long time for many female bloggers.
That being said, I do think that this raises many issues which are not simply unique to women. Astarte takes issue with me when I mentioned that trackbacks might be a good way to indicate the quality of links rather than just the quantity of them, but she takes it a step further, saying that there is no need for tracking at all, because it isn't a competition and no matter what method we use, it will ultimately turn into a way to establish who is on top, and who is on bottom.
I disagree, although I do think that the competitive nature of the blogosphere will insert itself in whatever we do, but that's not exclusive to the blogosphere. I think a method of tracking conversation is important because we have to, have to, have to find a way to better visualize the network. What is appealing about blogging as a medium is the interconnectedness, the instant feedback, and the collective intelligence that comes out of it.
We simply aren't that far from a day when my blog will become not just a place where my writings exist, but a virtual manifestation of myself. As portability becomes more of intertwined in our daily lives, we literally will become walking media centers, broadcasting to those around us. The blogs have already affected the way information flows, now we have to find a way to visualize the structure of how the flow occurs.
I don't have any real answers as to how this can be achieved. Astarte did mention something, however, that I'm going to try to utilize a bit more as a beginning to help make the conversational elements of this blog more readily visible. With every applicable post, the readings and the conversations that led me to write it will appear in a "Additional Reading" section within that post. She has an excellent layout the she uses (click here for an example), and I'm not adept enough at web design to know exactly how to do that, so for the time being those links will simply occur at the end of the post. But I think it is important enough that I'm going to try very hard to get it established in a much more visible way.
Additional Reading: Feministe - "The Blogroll - One Last Time", Utopian Hell - "Fixing What's Broken" and "What Happened to Rebellion?", Aldahlia.net - "Blogrolls, Ego-surfing, and General Stupidity", Burning Bird -" Ms. Pancake", Arete - "Defending Blogrolls".
As part of the whole "To blogroll or not to blogroll" conversation, I've been involved in a conversation with Krista over at Arete.
I mentioned in my last post on this, and in the comments on her site, that:
[Y]es, Technorati is massively deficient, as is the Ecosystem and, for that matter, Google.
In the post that I tracked-back to this one, I mentioned that the problem, really, is an inability to weight quality links (those in which someone links to a blogger because they wrote something which they want to respond to) and quantity of links (as are found on many blogrolls). I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that trackbacks are a good way to indicate the quality of a link. I linked to your post about this subject, and it (among others) inspired me to write on my own blog. As a result, I sent you a trackback. If there was a software tool which could count trackbacks and weight them higher than other, more permanent links, we'd be on our way.
This, of course, brings up obvious "gaming the system" issues, and would result in much more trackback spam, but we have those problems with links already. At least we'd be able to begin counting quality links.
I dunno... I'm rambling a bit, but I think this conversation on your blog and the others that it has been discussed on might mark the beginning of an evolutionary shift in the way we think about the blogging network. That is why I'm interested in why this has been discussed, for the most part, on female written blogs. But, if we could find a way to do this effectively, it would affect all blogs in a positive way, not the least of which would be the overlooked female bloggers.
What do I mean by "the beginning of an evolutionary shift in the way we think about the blogging network"? I guess what I mean is, this is just the kind of conversation that could plant a new seed in the collective mind of the blogosphere in which we all begin to understand the deficiencies in how we organize ourselves. Up to now, I'm not sure that its really been much of a consideration with the exception of the occasional "Where are the women bloggers?" conversations.
I'm not a programmer. I just updated my typepad account so I can mess with the HTML and customize my blog a bit more, then looked at the code and went "Yikes!" But I'm figuring that, using the tracking of trackbacks as a measuring stick, we can create a system which tracks all links, and more importantly, better indicates the connections within conversations.
I remember once reading someone's suggestion that we find a way to create a Technorati like program which utilizes the graphical interface of Musicplasma which uses a flash program to show the intertwining universe which connects certain musical artists. It seems to me that if we could come up with a system which could use text to show the connections between blogs and conversations they are having, then we can better address the issue of the linking hierarchy.
This wouldn't punish the major league bloggers - they've earned their position in large part because of their talent - but the blogosphere faced its first real explosive growth spurt in the past year when people who weren't first adopters of the medium, but were predisposed to the sort of rapidly updating journaling medium (like myself) finally heard about them and took the plunge. This served to dilute the blogosphere to some extent, but it also infused the blogosphere with a great deal of talent. By placing a premium on links inspired by a specific text and not just a general, political decision on who to add to your blogroll, you'd help promote those who have real important things to say, and make their words more visible.
Because we are already in an evolutionary shift. This most recent wave of bloggers have begun a change from cliquish debaters using the blogs as a web message board cum dear diary* into an effective and broad-reaching citizens media. It is changing on us whether we change ourselves or not, so we better well come up with a way to navigate it effectively.
*I certainly wouldn't want to imply that the first adopters were doing anything any less noble than the surge of newer bloggers. Without them, this wouldn't exist for us. I just mean that, when it was a much smaller universe, the bloggers were more interested in talking amongst themselves than they were disseminating a message to others who are interested. The quality and talent of their writing mixed with the explosiveness of interest took it beyond what they first started out doing.
There is, I think, a fairly interesting discussion going on about the merits of the blogroll.
It started, as best I can tell, with Burningbird's post, who mourns the lost opportunity to really explore the diversity of the blogosphere during the recent "Women vs. Men bloggers" discussion:
For once, we had the opportunity to actually explore issues of diversity in weblogging — international as compared to US-based webloggers; white as compared to not white; male and female. We could have grown and been enriched, and maybe we would all been the better for it. More importantly, we may have looked more closely at the technology that drives our perceptions, and had a chance to explore whether blogrolls and popularity lists are more harm then they are worth.
Instead, in a burst of emotional self-defense, it became Whitey versus the Gang. I am waiting for one or more of you to put “White Male and Damn Proud of It!” stickers in your sidebars, as you nod among yourselves about putting down this particular insurrection. After all, this is the ultimate egalitarian environment–anyone can have a weblog. Anyone can become famous. All you have to do, is write well.
Except that you forget that popularity in this environment can lead to opportunity, which, in turn, generates more popularity, and hence more opportunity and so on. Or maybe I have it wrong–you never forget this.
I agree with this completely, and it was a badly missed opportunity. However, Burningbird's final decision, I think, reaches the wrong conclusion when saying that blogrolling, the Ecosystem, and Technorati hurt the process:
In fact, to every weblogger who has a blogroll: you are hurting all of us.
Rarely do people discover new webloggers through blogrolls; most discovery comes when you reference another weblogger in your writings. But blogrolls are a way of persisting links to sites, forming a barrier to new voices who may write wonderful things — but how they possibly be heard through the static, which is the inflexible, immutable, blogroll?
So for all of you who have a blogroll, you are also hurting us.
If I had a wish right now, I would wish one thing: that we remove all of our blogrolls and take down the EcoSystem and the Technorati 100 and all of the other ‘popularity’ lists. That whatever links exist, are honest ones based on what has been written, posted, published, not some static membership in a list that is, all too often, stale and out of date, and used as a weapon or a plea.
The conversation it spawned was given legs when Lauren agreed and decided to remove her blogroll. Since then, I've seen more conversation on aldahlia, Arete, Rox Populi, and Bitch Ph. D. Here are my two cents.
First of all, I've never really seen the merit of the extraordinarily long blogroll (the kind that seems to made up mostly of reciprocal links). It seems to me, in some way, to be about gaming the system ("this person helped me, so I will help them, and together we will take down the bastards at the top"). For instance, and this isn't meant as an insult to Roxanne, but I would sincerely doubt that she reads my blog every day, despite the fact that I'm on her blogroll (which is one of the longer I've seen). Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
But that's ok, because I don't think the end-all purpose of the blogroll should be simply to indicate which blogs you read every day but, rather, should be an indication of blogs with which you most wish to align yourself with or, put another way, endorse most fully. I don't have to link to the major bloggers, even though I read them often, because everyone is going to find them. My blogroll is for people who I want to see get greater exposure because of their unique voice. This greater exposure remains relative to the degree to which they are already exposed, so my link simply exists to indicate my desire to see that exposure grow.
It is about networking in the purest sense of the term. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to see one of the blogs I've linked to show up on someone else's blog that I've linked to. We are all central hubs of a network, and as our networks spread out a bit, so does our ability to reach others with our message.
There is, I think, merit to the idea that blogrolls are rarely explored. It isn't very often that people come to my blog because I am on Roxanne's blogroll but from some things I wrote on her site during my guestblogging stint. This brings up the real problem, which does not spring from the existence of blogrolls, but from the fact that there doesn't exist a tool which weights links that are provided because of actual, specific content that a blogger posts higher than just a constant, blogrolled link. In other words, it would solve the problem if we had a quality linking system instead of a quantity linking one.
All that being said, and I wrote about this in the comments at Arete, it would be a shame to see any movement sweeping the blogosphere to do away with blogrolls. I don't think we are in much danger of this, but as Bitch Ph. D. said in the comments on Roxanne's blog, "I think that it’s problematic, frankly, that people like you and Lauren are thinking of ditching your blogrolls. Because you guys are FAR more likely to link to sites that AREN’T the big boys, and by removing your blogrolls, you’re removing links to those other sites, and just knocking ’em further down the technorati and TTLB rankings."
It isn't a perfect system, but it is a decent system and if a large group of reasonable bloggers do away with it, they aren't helping and, as Veronica said, like saying that you don't like the way the game is played so you are taking your ball and going home.
The problem is, the people who are going home are precisely the ones we really need to continue playing.
We all knwo that I'm a Typepad whore, but with good reason.
I had an issue with bandwidth... I wrote about it on my blog, and I got a comment from someone at Six Apart. From Ian yesterday:
I just checked in with our support team to make sure you're sorted and they confirmed that they got your message and have gotten back to you. If there is anything else you need, don't hesitate to follow up with them.
He just checked in to let me know that it is being looked at. Do any of you Blogger get personal comments on your blog when something goes wrong? I didn't think so... That's been my experience with them the whole time. When I have a problem, I write them, and I have an answer within 24 hours, and often it is quicker than that.
Thanks for your help everyone.
So, Arianna Huffington is starting a blog to which she has invited many big name celebrities, writers, politicians, and pundits to join in.
Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.
Not bad. It got me thinking, and thinking led to blogging, and blogging led me to start this meme. Who would be your top 5 people, living or dead, that you'd want to see blog? List them in the comments or on your own blog and trackback, then pass it on! Here are mine.
You're up...
UPDATE: To get things started, I'm tagging Lori, Collin, and eRobin, because I'll make them feel guilty if they don't do it.
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