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RE: Blog Pruning

• To: 'Joel Bender' <jjb5@c...>, 'Seairth Jacobs' <seairth@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Blog Pruning
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:28:36 -0600

I agree.  

1.  Blogs dedicated to promoting a product 
or mixed with the personal journal posts 
should have a clear policy.  If they don't, 
then they can find themselves in trouble 
later when someone keeps a separate log 
and proves the blogger was informed about a topic 
that they pruned.  It looks like memo shredding. 
For that and other reasons, corporate lawyers 
are nervous about non-corporate blogging with 
corporate content.  Better not to allow comments 
in these cases.  If one does, be as clean as 
a hounds tooth.

2.  I distrust bloggers who only reference other 
bloggers with the same opinions.  It isn't 
simply unsportsmanlike, it isn't informative. 
It attempts to fake consensus instead of 
building it.  That is why for all of the noise 
on mail lists, they are more reliable sources 
if one is sharp in their field. 

The danger of listening is hearing something 
one doesn't like.  The danger of not listening 
is not knowing what one doesn't like until it 
is popular.

len

ps: Limbaugh claims to be an entertainer and 
that hypocrisy doesn't apply to him.  One has 
to take his commentary in the same spirit as 
Britney kissing Madonna: it may mean something 
but is likely "just for the show ya know". I 
don't listen to talk radio.  I prefer soothing 
to enraging.  If I want to laugh, I read the 
news.  If I want to cry, I read the news. The 
content for those has been plentiful of late.


From: Joel Bender [mailto:jjb5@c...]

>Should blog owners prune their blogs?

I expect a blog to be a reasonably long term record of public 
comment.  If by pruning you mean remove your own comments, you and 
your readers will lose some valuable history of how your thoughts 
have changed (or not) over time.  If you mean just to remove 
comments, you will, at least to remove spam.

>Should they prune responses that are not in agreement with the theme 
>of their blogs?

I do not expect a blog to be a bulletin board with a bunch of "me 
too" sticky notes all over it, it looses some of its community value. 
I think if it more like a soapbox, and sometimes the cheers and jeers 
of the audience as just as entertaining and informative as the 
speaker.

>For example:  if I write a blog supporting Longhorn and XAML, should 
>I prune out responses from XULies who simply don't like XAML?

You don't have to make comments publicly available at all, if you 
don't want to.  You'll probably find that folks will talk about your 
entries on their own blog.  If that was your only goal, strictly 
supporting Longhorn and XAML, it would be difficult to view it as 
something other than marketing material.

>A blog is not a maillist.  How much should it be respected as an 
>open means of communication?

It depends on the author and how open they are.  There are some 
authors I don't trust, regardless of how "well respected" they are in 
their community or by how much putrid drivel they post on their site. 
In the end the respect it gets will be a reflection of what's written.

>Should we trust aggregations of self-selecting experts by content or 
>by their habits?

I normally would take them just by their content, but then I heard 
Rush Limbaugh come up with a new definition of hypocrisy yesterday 
and it cemented in my mind what my parents taught me all 
along...actions speak louder than words.

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