Comments on: Blog Discussion and Citation

By: Gummi

Gummi — Tue, 27 May 2003 16:51:17 +0000

The impossibility you talk of, the little read link, is where the idea of meritocracy in weblogs flounders. Self organisation in blogdom does not mirror academia. Most blogs involve the dissemination of links and subjective opinion, they have no individual merit until they're validated by other subjective opinion. Not all academic research involves objective analysis, with proper controls and experimentation. This leads to a debate of what's academia and that's a trap I would rather not fall into. The Marxist view is interesting, but what of the anarcho-syndicalist? Railing against scientific socialism. Silly of course.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 26 May 2003 16:58:43 +0000

Those are big 'hows' aren't they? I guess something along the lines of Memigo woven into the fabric of weblogging tools and RSS readers, combined with a FOAF-style recommendation network is the way to go... but the problems that the large scale of weblogging brings seem unsurmountable and a system that allows a little-read, unlinked to blog post rise to the top of the pile on merit alone seems an impossibility...

By: Tom Coates

Tom Coates — Sun, 25 May 2003 19:30:27 +0000

Thanks very much for your comments! It's a good response that calls me up on a couple of things. I'm particularly interested in finding alternative models and ways of improving the mechanisms behind the way citation and commentary are bringing content to the fore. I think this stuff has to be improved at the technical level - how do we draw attention to the best posts more effectively and how do we help discussions from niche groups of people manifest themselves with the bluntness of tools like Daypop and Blogdex...