One Big Weblog
Lisa Williams implores you not to start a weblog elsewhere on a different topic. As the person responsible, for good or for ill, for this weblog, that weblog, this weblog, and, to an extent, that weblog—a site I administer, if "administer" is the right word for what I do there—here is what I have to say: too late. I agree with her general idea though: having lots of weblogs makes it look like you has lots of time on your hands. I still don't see why that's a bad thing, however. I mean, would you really rather not having enough?
An agreeable sentiment: “In blogging, quantity has a quality all its own.” This is what I like about Robert Scoble's weblog: he has a topic (generally geeky, but usually personal responses to what his employer is doing well and how it could do better), and he posts frequently and with one idea per post.
A good question: “Wouldn't I attract more readers into my conversation if I had a blog about one relatively focused topic?” It's a question that need not be answered in the affirmative to have an effective weblog, though. Sometimes it's who reads your weblog, not how many people.
I've actually considered making this site as an aggregator for all my sites in addition to what is regularly posted here. At the moment, it actually aggregates two weblogs on one installation of MT: a "filter" site of links, quotes and commentary and one for the personal side of things. (Both of which, at this writing, have over 1000 entries. The vast majority of personal posts are unpublished, and there hasn't been an entry there for months. That is a temporary condition.) This is where one installation for all weblogs would be very useful: it would be able to aggregate all posts yet still keep distinct domain names in the URLs for each, and a distinct index for each at the root of each domain.
I couldn't agree with this statement more: “In short, your blog is who you are, and your blog is what you say it is.” Le weblog c'est moi, right? Well, this weblog and my others give one reflection of what I'm really like. Not necessarily a totally accurate reflection, but not totally inaccurate either.
On cross-posting: “I think blog authors of the future, if we are lucky, will have a blogging platform that allows them to check a few boxes and "stream" content to multiple different sites.” While I'm not sure that making it easier to do such a thing is a good idea (why is it that when something is easy to do or is done right that we always feel the need to "improve" upon it), but I have no problem with cross-posting. Some people have done it at Vancouver Webloggers and got criticized for it. That site was intended as a site where people could reach not necessarily a bigger audience, but at least a different audience than their own weblog. It turned out to be a weblog about what's happening in the Greater Vancouver Area, which is fine. Some of the best posts, however, have been cross-posts.
Part of the penultimate paragraph is worth quoting at length:
I love machine-aggregated pages or feeds of posts like Blogdex or Localfeeds that simply say, "Here are all the posts in a given geographic area" or "here are the stories people are linking to the most." This completely unedited view also gives me information and points me to places I might not otherwise visit left to my own devices. As syndication becomes more robust, I think we will see more and more site/feeds that contain vast quantities of news and commentary on a specific subject as people map their own categories to a kind of "pidgin taxonomy." The categories in that taxonomy could then be themselves a feed displayed in an aggregator or on a webpage or both.
I have a problem with the phrase “completely unedited view”, because I argue that it's literally impossible for humans to have completely unedited views of anything. That's a point for philosophers to argue, actually, and I'm not one, but that's not going to stop me from arguing it. Our brain is one massive filter which tries—not always successfully—to filter out what it doesn't want to know and filter in what it wants to know. I also disagree with the notion that every weblog entry must be categorized according to some taxonomy. This site's entries have a taxonomy, but most of the entries go uncategorized. Making a feed or a "category" page of just uncategorized wouldn't actually be too hard in my publishing system of choice. But for the moment, there is nothing resembling a page or feed of "just one category", and there's no great urge on my part to create one. (Not having a great urge to do something doesn't necessarily mean that it stopped me from doing that something, however.)
This weblog is my "everything else" weblog. For a few months now, I've considered linking to my other sites from this one (but not vice versa, yet), and for a few weeks I considered experimenting with the idea of a directory, making my official page the "root". Lisa at least sealed the deal with respect to linking to my other "projects"—"project" sounds a lot more professional than "weblog", still despite increased popularity of the latter—but experimenting with a directory-like structure will have to at least wait until a new version of the publishing software comes out—or, say it ain't so, a switch to a different one. In the coming weeks, I may be inclined to experiment with aggregating posts made on my other sites to this site, with the permanent links reflecting the respective domain. To me, then, I would still have my individual weblogs with its targetted audiences. But to you, this site would be One Big Weblog.
