Coping with complexity: how do you read other weblogs?.

Olaf Brugman on downside of blogging:

...skimming through blogs for gems is laborious, timeconsuming and ineffective. Firstly, because it is impossible to keep track of even a couple of interesting blogs. And if you monitor them, most bits and pieces are not relevant to you. Furthermore, the collections of info are unstructured, although some blogs offer channels, chapters and other means to structure (and what is the difference then between a blog and a MS Frontpage managed site, contentwise?). When following links to blog friends, things become more ineffective, since all blogfriends are crossreferences, and bloggers LOVE duplication of info. In fact, a blog is a hyperlinkmultiplier. May be one day we will start fighting hyperlink pollution of the internet.

Even when doing websearches, the number of identical hits is staggering, due to the duplication of links.
Can blogs be useful info sources? My personal experience is that they are NOT. Generating too much redundancy. But the gems and knowledge nuggets hidden in them are extremely useful. The most efficient mechanism for me to mine them is to find info in doing a websearch. I have stopped reading blogs, but go dig nuggets when i have a question that needs to be answered. :)...

Olaf makes a point that contradicts widespread views that weblogs filter noise. This makes me thinking…

As blog-writers we try to provide our readers with good ways to find useful posts in our weblogs (e.g. Tools to digest your own blog), but I also wonder what do we do as blog-readers to cope with information overload.

I have three main goals when reading other weblogs: staying updated, following a conversation and problem-solving. I will try to explain what I do in each case.

1. My main way to stay updated is my news aggregator.

I would like to follow more blogs than I do, but it would take too much time, so I have to make choices. At this moment I subscribe to weblogs falling mainly in one of the following categories:

• On-going conversations – weblogs about core topics that interest me
• Niche awareness providers – highly focused weblogs covering areas of peripheral interest to me (I want to stay aware of the developments, but not be involved)
• Connectors – weblogs linking to a variety of sources I don't read myself
• New weblogs - I usually subscribe to RSS feed of any weblog that fits my interests and has good quality posts on several pages I visit. Then I read it for sometime and it stays or goes…
• Technical feeds – Radio updates, my own comments, trackbacks, etc.

Criteria to find out if weblog stays in my news aggregator

• focus and signal/noise ratio
• connection to networks/sources other than my own
• original insight – I value authors writing original posts or offering non-mainstream commentary to a discussion
• writing style (very subjective ;) - if I feel difficult to read posts of a weblog continuously I unsubscribe
• probability of being linked by other weblogs I read – if I know that several people I read subscribed to specific weblog I trust them to select interesting posts for me (this is why I don't read A-list bloggers :)
• personal connections – sometimes I do not care much about all other criteria and read a weblog because I'm interested to follow specific person

For example, I really value a weblog of Dave Pollard, but somehow I find his writing style difficult. From another side I know that many in my news aggregator read his weblog, so I feel safe to unsubscribe: all relevant posts will come to my attention anyway.

This is something I had to learn: trusting that weblogs I read will connect me to all relevant posts (from interesting weblogs I do not subscribed or those that "scroll down" before I have time to read and comment).

2. Following a conversation is different. In this case I'm interested to see how idea from one weblog (my own or one I read) develops across weblogs. In this case I use mainly tracking tools: comments, trackbacks, Technorati, referrals.

3. Problem-solving. If I have a specific question/problem in mind I use search. Could be anything between searching my weblog/ weblogs I read/ all weblogs/ all internet.

Would be interesting to know how other people read weblogs…

[Mathemagenic]
6:22:44 PM    
  

This is too long, but I want to keep it long enough to use the link to Seb P's paper.

New Mediums.

Lin don  (there's more than one side to the man!) emailed me these thoughts on my communication and expression posting. Seb P also sent me a good link to his 2002 paper Personal Knowledge Publishing and its Uses in Research... well worth a read! Thanks guys :o)

Here are Lindon's thoughts:

"You say: "[personal publishing] seems quite a challenge to explain it someone who hasn’t experienced this"... A that point I was hoping you'd be adding/starting some sort of greater excuse list/reasoned argument set to present to these "people", and probably you are, so in a (probably poor) attempt to contribute to this:

I think you/we should ask ourselves the question:

 

"what do I need to say, and how do I say it to the people who have no experience of this technology in order to allow them to understand how it could be of benefit in the domain space I occupy?"

 

..hmmm big question.

 

Well I'm sure we need to say many things, in our arguments but you've made a great start so lets keep going, I'll add one thing here:

 

I think one thing that is missing from your outline of the different communication types is the view of the formal/informal axis of these communication methods.

 

Letters/Seminar presentations/Reports/Meetings are all formalised in some way(they have rules)

 

Less formal are emails(blah! - see where else would it be safe to say that [you just said it remotely ;o) JF] ?)/chat/discussion groups/f2f/phone

 

I think blogs are nicely placed in the middle of this.

 

Most on-line easy-to-use technology has promoted an oft VERY informal style. For example chat has ended up being a "yeah cool I agree with the last dude" never ending circle of, well frankly, rubbish. Discussion groups end up "me too-ing" a lot as well.  Blogs are "nicely-formal" to coin a phrase, in that the cognitive stuff you are doing as you write a new entry s interesting. The entry is almost always very personal in content, I know I'm writing an opinion piece, but I (and I think the rest of us) am/are aware that it may be read by many, many other people. So its publishing, and needs craft and loving care, and this means I do take care to make it personal AND informative. The signal to noise ratio is high as we techno-geeks like to say, or at least we're trying to make it high.

 

This is self serving in a community of web-logs, interesting people beget popular web-logs and they get other interesting people in their "knowledge network" as you call it(nice phrase by the way). What should be noted most here however is that this is a side-effect of "trying to be interesting to my readers", a lovely side-effect that produces a subtle feedback loop. I can think of only one other technology/time frame where this was true. UUNET News was like this BEFORE the web existed(early 1990's). You just HAD to stop and think before you posted, there were millions reading your stuff, you'd be flamed to Iowa and back if you were stupid. Stupid didn't mean poor grammar/spelling but poor ideas. Interestingly the frequency that flame wars descend to arguing about grammar/spelling or calling each other names went UP very quickly as the net population grew. Possibly explained by the fact that pre-web the internet was full of people with high IQ's but under developed social skills(bullying/name calling is a social skill par-excellence). 

 

This email could be a web-log entry, but it probably couldn't be a discussion group posting, and for sure not a chat entry. It would have different structure entirely(and you'd interact with it differently) if it were a f2f or phone conversation.

 

Marshal Mcluhan said it most succinctly :   The Medium is the Message

 

Blogs are a new medium - that promote a NEW communication."

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]
9:24:39 AM    
  

Personal and Collaborative Publishing (PCP): Facilitating the Advancement of Online Communication and Expression within a University.

Here's a 4-5 pager .pdf that I've just finished introducing weblogs (well, have decided to call them Personal and Collaborative Publishing tools (PCPs)) and their potential uses to a university. My eventual aim is to use this as the basis for a proposal to get this going... but it's only a first draft... any thoughts, comments, criticisms, questions are MORE than welcome.... please :o)

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

Worth a look to see what he is thinking about on this. Not sure I'm crazy about adding an acronym as a synonym for another acronym.

9:20:13 AM