A Very Long Post About the Future of the Blog
If you’re here to listen to or talk about culture or politics or art or the world, you’ve got the right blog, but the wrong post. This here is a rather long summing-up and responding-to in the wake of the Berkman feedback lunch about the structure of the blog and the way the show itself works with the rest of the Internet.
We’re looking at some improvements and a redesign, and in fact this morning the staff will be eating doughnuts and meeting with the smart people at Public Interactive and the Public Radio Exchangee to speak, for a while, as if we had an infinite number of developers.
If you’re into that kind of thing, by all means, click “read the rest” and dive in. JonGarfunkel, Rochelle, Potter, Avecfrites, you know who you are. While we’re still in the main thread, however, I want to thank Amanda Michel of the Berkman Center (Amanda, why no profile to which to link?) who let me copy her notes, and Jon Garfunkel, who constantly and justifiably harasses me about navigation and usability. Jon has also written his own analysis of Open Source.
But read mine first.
November 7th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
*thumbs up*
Way to go, Brendan.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
The problem is that WordPress doesn’t really think about community
Bingo.
You should eat your own “open source” dog food and migrate this project over to Drupal. Drupal is open source, designed to build community, and modular. Jon Garfunkel has lots of good insight, but his best piece of advice is to switch to Drupal. By keeping this project on Wordpress you are only postponing the inevitable.
If a migration mission is too big of a project for y’all to take on right now, then I would prioritize tackling the “tyranny of the single-thread�.
The problem with the single thread is that it prevents people from having one-to-one conversations that are crucial to build community. Also, when there are lots of posters on a single-thread post, the conversation starts to resemble a bad AOL chat room. The signal-to-noise ratio becomes intolerable, and it is all down hill from there.
I think creating a community where people use their real names will help in getting people to be respectful to each other and post more insightful comments.
It should also be easier to edit comments. Keep up the good work Brendan, and thanks for the on air shout-out.
November 8th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Franz– thanks for the endorsement. You got it: I am a structural advocate. Choose the best form, and the function will follow.
Pray tell, it is only a few comments here and there. I do this because I think this is a community worth contributing towards, and I because I like to study these.
Brendan, thanks for pulling this together. I continue to enjoy the way we describe each other on these boards: now it is that I “constantly and justifiably harass” you!
Aesthetically, the standard blog layout is a Trumpic Tower of Babble– here’s a skyline illustration from when I took my first long hard look at the absurd lenghths of weblogs. The aim of a good civic site should be to provide a good, open, civic space. Think of the compact and orderly civic layout of Craigslist or Google News. I hope I achieve it in my own site’s design.
Consider the IRC– should it be a separate thing, or can it embed in the page? (I don’t even have an IRC client) I guess also you can pull in the del.icio.us feed, and send Josh Schachter a fruit basket or something for the privilege.
And, regarding the real-time transcript– of course it’s practically impossible. But enough people in IRC should be able to tap in the speaker’s name and some keywords– which would help if someone tunes in late or needs to search the show later.
Now, when Ethan and Rebecca say “it isn’t a blog”… it sounds like they have conceived of some platonic notions of what a blog shall be in the world of blogs, and I’ll just be a stick in the mud and say that I don’t get it. Blogs are great for emerging democracies and emerging pundits… but perhaps there’s some value in us charting a separate course? One thing about the whole cross-linked/ecosystem-aware/shared-space type of approach, it’s certainly helpful for a solo effort, but there is enough going on here in the ROS community.
I’ll be updating the Civilities piece shortly. Drupal is fantastic, but by coincidence you’ve caught me at my first upgrade of it in two years.
November 8th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Chris et al…
Please count me in as someone who is dying for a space to make ongoing comments about the content (remember that?) of the show. This has been a great discussion, but really exclusive of less tech-savvy listeners who want to talk about topics, perspective, interview style, balance in coverage, etc… When (and where) do we ever get to talk about what’s IN the show, as a general matter, rather than the way info is presented?
November 8th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
Great work Brendan, et al. and plenty of it! I hope someone is paying you handsomely for all this.
The quote, “Host an open discussion board..” attributed to plaintext is actually
a comment provided by avecfrites. Although I do second the thought.
Regarding anonymity:
There should be some way to keep one’s identity private perhaps with the understanding that anonymous contributions are moderated. Without this,
I would be loathe to provide comments on politics or even favorite cookbooks
that might run afoul of those of my superiors or just some snoop.
Conversely, attributed comments, although they should be subject to some
standard of decorum, should be editted only with consent.
I’d like to see some sideband mechanism for revealing identity on an
individual basis or according to some classification such as blogmaster,
deputized contributor, etc.
In my own case, I’ll put together another identity that is attributed and use it
when I care more about developing a sideband community connection and
less about the ramifications of snoops.
Also, it would be nice to be able to edit or eliminate one’s own comments.
November 8th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Wow, you folks are making great strides. I was away from my radio for a while, and I’ve tuned back in this week. The quality of the on-air work has settled in to a great place — deep, fluid, on-stride, vital. Now, apparently, you’ve got the radio part on a very solid footing and you’ve got the bandwidth to turn the same kind of energies to the web component.
Having skimmed all the ideas listed above (remember: Emerson said skimming was okay…) I have one comment to offer: beware the tyrany of the blog! Yes it’s all the rage and intoxicating as heck, but there’s no reason why this site *must* be a blog. Really, a regular old website is okay, even if it doesn’t sound nearly as exciting. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you call it, nor whether it fits neatly in to a easy web category, as long as it keeps appearing on our screens, with something to offer and easy to navigate. “Blog” is a lot of fun to say, but don’t get trapped by it.
November 9th, 2005 at 12:21 am
Nah, we’re not actually that intoxicated by the word “blog.” The word itself is becoming rapidly less descriptive, particularly given a site like Josh Marshall’s new TPMCafe, which pulls in as much content — and from as traditional of a list of contributors — as the New Republic. In casual conversation I’ve started to substitute “writes at” for “blogs at.” A lot of freelance magazine writers keep blogs, so the distinction is sort of pointless.
We use the word “blog,” then, not out of intoxication, but out of necessity. Remember our audience; in a comment thread like this, one about the structure of new media, we can dispense with “blog,” but at a wedding this August I had to explain to my aunt, who is college educated and an active news consumer, what a blog is in the first place. I was briefly on a network news feature reported this summer that had to define for its audience what a “hyperlink” is. Open Source is still a public radio show, and straddles a pretty wide demographic, from my aunt to content dorks (and I count myself among the latter).
I’ve agreed with Jon Garfunkel over email before that blogs navigate TERRIBLY. It’s an oddly arrogant form of navigation, these “last/next” links at the top of the page. They assume that, to find what I’m looking for, I want to read through everything you’ve written. (This is getting better as bloggers begin to tag and organize individual posts by theme.) So the challenge on this website is to construct something that implies “blog” and all the behaviors associated with it — commenting, accessible tone, variable content lengths, permalinks — without losing the basics of navigation and usability that shouldn’t have to be reinvented.
I think that Global Voices Online finds a pretty good compromise; we just need to find OUR compromise.
And thanks, KenLac, for liking the show. Development on the blog and the show follow a funny pattern; I don’t know if you remember, but when we first started we had an out-of-the-box Word Press installation, and we ran up against the limits of what we could do with it pretty quickly, so I hacked together the site you see here. Now, four months later, as we figure the show out, we’ve run up against the limits of what that hacked site can do, and we’re working with a real developer to make a whole lot of changes. We’ll be doing this again in June of 2006, I suppose, though hopefully what we’re working on now will be a lot more robust and upgradeable than what I built this summer.
re Drupal - I see everyone’s point, but we’re so heavily invested in WordPress right now that if I suggest a new platform right now our development company would beat me. And I would deserve it. I’ll get back to you on Drupal when Audi gives us a million dollars.
As for user anonymity in the comment threads, I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I’ll share them in a more formal way soon. And yes, plaintext, thanks for asking, they give me money in exchange for my services here. And thank you, everyone, for continuing to respond for free.
November 9th, 2005 at 3:34 am
My initial reaction is - we all need to slow down. We are not going to change the world here; content will continue to rule. As long as we have Chris facilitating insightful conversation and inspiring brilliant people to speak brilliantly, we’ll be ok. Thank you pmassari, for sticking up for us “content geeks.” I don’t know the difference between an IRC and OBP (on base percentage?), but I know that the “the tyranny of the single thread” enables me to bring my raw, potentially naive statements to THE table, quickly and prominently. Forums or such, might help hide my ignorant statements in some corner space; but I’m enjoying the freedom now.
“Car Talk is great because the person calling and the person listening do not need to know anything about cars. How much do I really need to know about blogs.
As much as I appreciate the JonGarfunkel’s of the world, - and I do - you should think about the 2000 other people who have registered but do not post. The reality is, most people do not have the time to post. Concequently, the site should be geared towards the 2000 and counting members who might have something insightful to say, but not have much time to say it. Why are only 20 out of 2000 posting regularly? Maybe you could email the people from their profiles and request specific ideas on show topics. Instead of inviting the 20 of us to suggest topics, go after the 1980 people who registered, and seek, and push, and question them. It may sound like a contradiction, but you’re going to have to advertise your sincerity on this matter. Jon, Plaintext, Potter, we’re all fun, but to push the limits, we must infiltrate the 2000 people who have registered.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Hey Brendan,
Haven’t read it all, but two things come to my mind as I’m reading about some of the structural/functional things you’re trying to tweak.
To see how someone else scans and reports on the blogosphere you might check out Cursor.org - they are scanning the media, but there are a lot blogs they round up each day. Also, Salon.com has their Daou Report.
As for threaded comments and getting to know other community members, there are a couple of options. Many don’t like to use them, but you could put photos (not icons or graphic images) in the profiles. Not likely to be popular. But also, Salon.com, now has comments to each of their stories and their War Room. One feature is that when a person comments there is a link where you can see all comments posted by that person and in that report there are links to each of the stories that were commented upon. This may be a good way to use the comment feature on a blog, while creating a repository of each person’s voice so that you can get to know a person as their input into the community increases.
Good luck. I’m struggling with all of this at Circles as I debate using a Forum, or sticking with a blog format for community conversation.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
I think its absolutely essential to use real names. Real names lead to real dialogue. But how will you know?
November 9th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Another feature that discussions boards have that’s nice is an archival bank that users can browse–and when they comment on an old discussion, that discussion is qued to prominence. This way, discussions may be sustained without being nudged to oblivion by newer entries.
I think the most important improvement would be the ability to display nested comments.
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November 21st, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I know I’m a good year late on this discussion, but I wanted to weigh in for the record. WordPress is open source software (Franz Hartle makes it sound like it isn’t). So is Drupal, but ROS is most definitely eating their proverbial dogfood with WordPress.
Drupal happens to have a much better structure for community participation: threaded comments, public profiles, moderation. It probably would have been a better choice starting out, though it also requires much more active maintenance than WordPress does. (Funny how that happens, make something more complex and it needs more care and feeding …)