A Bit of Blog-story

If you haven't been blogging since 1999, 2002, or before Blogger updated its features to include archiving, check out Weblogs and the News...

which was last updated in December, 2003.

oh, how time flies!

Of particular interest is the first entry, Blogging for Beginners: What You Need to Know to Start a Weblog...imagine that...using the quaint term "weblogs" rather than just "blogs"...how sweet!

I enjoyed reading Wagstaff's article, even though most of the info is out of date already. But I found alot of his pointers very amusing. Esp. the comment that "Perhaps because each blog is individually owned and managed, the interactions that take place seem to be less churlish and aggressive than some of the material you'll find on news groups and other public forums."

Well, if Wagstaff is still in the Blogosphere, he must've noticed by now that on some blogs (not necessarily any of mine) the comments sections can get as rough and tumble as old Usenet newsgroups. It seems to me that over the intervening years since this article, the amount of traffic on Usenet groups has gone down, while the traffic and "comments" on blogs has gone up-- with some blog comments sections being very much like Usenet groups, with their casts of characters and Those Who Must Be Obeyed and such. Flaming can abound on blog comment sections of this sort and when one is the recipient of the flame (such as yours truly) it can be kind of funny...

I grew an asbestos skin from years on the New York Times Film Forums. One could get so seriously flamed there that sparks would fly off your head...

But whenever I notice that a blog's comments section is acting like a bbs, I tend to think the blog is far too commercial for my tastes...then again, I'm not one who's into punditry, so the blogs I regularly view have very civilized comments sections.

So, while blogs are new, to some degree they are definitley incorporating some of the old--namely the old Usenet rule of "I comment here regularly, therefore it is MY domain"...and with that, the newcomer (I hate the word "newbie") will have to take a right flaming if he/she wants to keep on commenting.

None are immune from The Flame!