Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly.
He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
What do I love about blogs? Smart people and interesting commenters.
What do I hate? Blowhards and blogs that just run with the same thing all the other blogs are talking about.
I can’t really answer the third question.
How to make money? I definitely would not blog behind a paywall of any kind. I guess I would rely on the core readers/commenters/participants to fund me on a voluntary basis. But I might let everyone know what I need financially on a regular basis in order to keep blogging and display progress toward that goal in some way. (Good luck with that!)
I don’t think I’d try to be a regular blogger on top of a regular day job. That would be like having 2 jobs, and that’s too hard to maintain long term.
Or maybe I’d try to find another source of income so I could afford to blog without needing to make money from that.
Go directly to my comments history so I can see replies without being forbidden and…
The tweet, email buttons etc. to not be right next to the link to comments on the main page.
What I like about blogs are diverse content. Not just narrow topical or political stuff, but links and discussion about interesting studies on a wide range of topics.
Basically what I want from a Blog is Andrew Sullivan and staff’s ability to curate the internet with a smoother commenting system and to see the thought process of bloggers on interesting topics that might or might not have to do with politics but do have to do with life.
Maybe I could blackmail AG into paying me not to write?
on March 1, 2015 at 8:17 pm
What do I hate about blogs? Mostly that they have trivialized the essay. It used to be that a political essay would be written carefully, published in some journal of ideas, and people would read it over a month. Some would write letters, since there was no email, internet, or other way of providing feedback. If your letter got published, that was in itself a signal event. In many cases, we continue to read those essays (when forced to usually) years later.
Today, who reads a blog post from 2011? Who reads a blog post from November of 2014? We are in this rabbit hole of commentary, where comments are made about comments, and in many cases, not a whole lot of impact is felt.
When everything is free, there will be lots of it.
When there is lots of it, almost none of it will have value.
Since none of it has value, no one will remember what you wrote, and therefore writing itself will become irrelevant.
That’s what I am afraid of about blogs. They are basically irrelevant. Sorry about that, Boo.
KDrum (I think) calls this the “take.” Everyone (including me) is obsessed with the “take” of a blogger on any particular topic. But who cares about someone’s take if whatever that happened is days in the past? For example if someone said something now about the DRESS the reaction would be surprise that that’s still being talked about.
But I think my desire for “takes” in itself is an outgrowth of my desire to talk to someone else about current events in general. Most people don’t know or don’t care enough about current events to do that, let alone actually be even a little informed about any topic. A blogger who you follow is someone who you can discuss a topic you find interesting but might not many to discuss it with offline. The take has to come from the blogger because you formed an interest and respect in their opinion if you’ve followed them long enough.
on March 2, 2015 at 11:43 am
About finding a place to talk intelligently about current events, yes. I live in SoCal, so it’s doubly difficult to find people who are interested in talking about more than themselves or the Kardashians. When you bring up ISIS or the Ukraine or GOP vote suppression, you get a blank stare.
Blogs can be problematic because they sometimes have a quality to them that feels like indigenous people crashing head on with newcomers. There’s a feeling of coziness, whereby, you know what to expect from your fellow travelers, and there is a certain amount of leeway in tolerating a whole spectrum of comments. In a comfy zone like a well established blog, familiarity sets in.
Things begin to suck when often time new members drop in, and go through the place with a flame thrower. It’s like the rudest house guest you can imagine. Smarmy comments, pissy comments, and plain hostility follow in their noxious wake. The community gets disrupted for no apparent reason other than the forum is free and open, so I guess, Monster Truck RallyTM people can drop in with their bad habits. This is why I enjoyed the migration to Facebook that a good blog friend of mine encouraged. At first, I was reluctant because I had heard some horror stories about Facebook’s sharing of all kinds of information, but after creating some outrageous personal bio details I felt comfortable joining that sort of gated community. (No, I have never worked for Acme Screw in Hanoi, Vietnam serving in my capacity as “Chief Screw Up” as my Facebook profile contends.)
Obviously! Everyone knows that the Chief Screw Up works in Langely Virginia.
Anonymous
on March 1, 2015 at 8:35 pm
I love that they’re bite-sized bits of knowledge from (and with) people who are a) better-informed than I am and b) willing to engage. At least the ones I read are.
I hate, I guess, that they–and the internet more broadly, in some ways–seem to devalue knowledge and writing. It’s all gotta be free. ‘How do you make money?’ becomes almost an afterthought, as if providing this service is grounds for charity or something.
Don’t want any technical thing. What I’d love is I guess what MNPundit said. Curate the internet like Sullivan’s blog, but without his idiocy. I’d like to read a dozen posts a day about subjects I’m completely ignorant of–not just politics.
I love that good blogs provide a ready access point for folks like me to read posts by knowledgeable folks like you. Also, they provide a venue for things that I might otherwise miss. I have also met some really nice folks (face to face!) through this and other blogs. Finally, blogging has kept me painting, and improving my skills. Money? Let me know when you figure out that one, although I did sell a painting through Gallery kos.
In a society always away and isolated by institutional rules and economic commitments, a blog provides an asynchronous place to care on a serious or light conversation. Or examined issues in detail. Or crowd source data or critique on someone’s main work. Or to understand the situation outside of your local place and culture as backdrop to the conversations.
What do I hate about blogs?
If a blog is taking advertising, invariably loading the fancy, all-singing, all-dancing ads wastes a lot of time, even if I have a fair ad-block software. In some cases on some days it can come close to killing the site.
The failure of some ISPs to effectively manage their security for blog operators, resulting frequent outages. After the Snowden memos exposed that vulnerabilities are a feature not a bug, no ISP should be doing that to their customers. Any site can become a target of a DDOS attack without reference to its content. I hate that our own government has come damn near destroying the internet.
What would I want from a gadget or technical point of view?
Excape from constant HTML coding of blockquotes, links, images, embeds, italic, bold, and so on. The means for referencing between comments reflecting the conversational style of the blog. Copy paste linking of videos (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.) from the video URL with default of no autoplay. If infinite scroll is implementing, some way of keeping it from running away at the bottom and top of the screen; sometimes you really do want just line up or down. Titles that don’t hector you about title length that you didn’t create.
Any idea of how to make money from your blogging?
Have a heart-to-heart chat with Janet Yellen unless John Boehner suddenly becomes a spendthrift domestic Keynesian. The crunch likely will become worse.
Paywalls are offensive and make people angry, especially if the go there from a Twitter or Facebook link. Advertising is hit-or-miss and mostly inadequate because of all the competition. For most blogs, unless they have a huge member base, paid memberships are also inadequate. So pick your poison or mixture of them. The limits are the resources of your audience.
Democratization of info. Specifically practical information. Political information occasionally count. Back in the day, you really had to trust your local experts (restaurant critics, realtors, contractors, etc.) for just about everything you didn’t already know about local restaurants, houses, or home improvements. Now, the opinions of those people still have value, but you can supplement that information with all sorts of useful knowledge from around the web.
The downside of the blog format is that there’s a lot of bullshit floating around. You need a skeptical eye. But the practical, home improvement stuff tends to be a little more reliable than, say, dietary advice.
What I hate most about blogs and the bulletin board platform in general is what people used to call “epistemic closure”. I know that term has fallen out of fashion, but it’s a concise description of a widespread problem.
I think blogs have outlived their usefulness. They, along with social media, have amplified hatred and partisanship to the detriment of our country. Many of the posts are some version of “Wanker of the day” which highlight the awful things some other blogger or politician says or writes. We have all become more provocative and strident in response to the various outrages and dysfunction. Bloggers seek out events of trivial importance then magnify them.
And voter turn out this last election was lower than ever before. If blogs and social media were improving our political debates, such a thing would not have happened. At best they have no effect at all, but for me, this nonsense has left me frustrated and uninterested in the whole blommin’ mess. Good job bloggers, twitter, and facebook… you broke america.
I love the sense of community that I see developing in the blogs that I visit. I love that the whole world is connected.
I don’t like that Facebook and Twitter have managed to become the middlemen to so much of our communications, thus providing an avenue for the NSA. All my future blog plans have no access to them.
No idea on the money part, isn’t that supposed to be a permanent problem for writers? You could always go Hollywood – F. Scott tried it. Fame helps.
I can’t wait to sign up ad-free on your new place. It’s worth a lot to me to avoid being accosted by a buxom foreign woman who wants to date me.
I like blogs with a good community that doesn’t require near-real-time interactions to keep up. Balloon-Juice has a great community, but it’s almost real-time and threads can die quickly. Cole hates threads, so it’s hard to keep a discussion organized. His software doesn’t keep track of what you’ve already seen the way Scoop (used here) does.
I’m not on Twitter, I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Instagram, etc. Gadgets like that that slow down the page or get in the way annoy me.
I can’t stay camped out on a site for hours at a time. I will stop by occasionally and comment when I think I can contribute something. Don’t make the site only work for those who can live here.
If you use WordPress, please use a sensible spam filter (don’t kill comments with “Watson”), and don’t limit me to 3 links.
Disqus has some decent features, but some people hate it. I haven’t used it enough to let it bother me, yet.
Pay for the site with unobtrusive ads, a donation button or few, and Amazon-referrals the way Atrios does. And maybe offer “subscriptions” with a gold star next to the user-name, or something. Don’t use a paywall. You want new blood moving in all the time – paywalls kill that.
I guess you’re asking because of the new software/site coming sometime this year. Scoop has a lot of nice features – I hope that not too many of them are lost in the new version.
Sure, there’s a lot of terrible stuff online, but so much is great just because it’s not standardized: what I love is the surprises and quirks, the “tell all the truth but tell it slant” aspect, the lonely toilers that know so much more about things than I do and long to share it, and the sense of community you get at the gregarious places like here. How different from each other, really, nowadays, are the Times and Wapo and Guardian? But every really good blog is really unique and strange in its own way.
That’s for me and the gang of critical readers hanging out here. I realize there are many blogs that work toward a homogenization of everybody’s thinking, all chanting the same mantra-of-the-day, especially in the teabagger and firebagger factions, and there’s a thing about the online environment that encourages that, when the information (true or false) circulates so fast and gets reinforced through a positive feedback effect; it happens at the professionalized organizations too, and has been happening for years. It’s not a feature of blogs per se (it is an especially intensive feature of Twitter).
I don’t think much about the bells and whistles except when they go wrong (where’s the damn Twitter button?). I have with great sadness kind of stopped reading Balloon Juice because it tends to crash something on my old Mac at home and the PC at work, and that’s terrible, especially when I have no idea what it is. I love the commenting system here (but I want to be able to edit after posting!) and the Disqus system I use at my place, which integrates your interactions all over the Web.
I have no idea what to do about money, except to point out that it’s a huge problem for everybody in all media, and only a special problem for bloggers in that we wouldn’t exist at all without the Internet. I don’t mind looking at ads, or rather expending the energy needed to avert my eyes from them, but I believe you just need a huge readership to make any money off them, which will hardly happen to anybody. It may be that more of the really good bloggers will get corporatized in a not bad way: it was great news when Martin got a good job, and TBogg (writing actual journalism at Raw Story, though I miss the old deep snark), and Digby seemingly getting a ton of freelance work. So many fine blogs are already mainstays of old-line publications like Esquire and Atlantic Monthly and whatnot, as well of course as many dreadful ones.
on March 2, 2015 at 11:37 am
Agree 2d para. A good thing about this blog is on most issues — religion and belief, Obama, Clinton, etc — there seem to be a decent diversity of views, and no sense that conformity is being insisted upon by the majority.
I also appreciate that we can occasionally comment upon a very controversial area w/o being shouted down by the mob as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” Sadly, such groupthink strictly enforcing conformity occurs in one of the largest lefty blogs on the web.
The European Tribune is dying because some v. smart “moderators” chased away people not as smart as them by making them feel stupid or unwanted. Others got disillusioned with the European ideal, or went the way of social media – which to me tries to reduce everything to a soundbite and trivialises discourse.
You need a tolerance of a heterogeneous community to create critical mass, and yet too many “insiders” are happy to be a leader in a small “cozy club” rather than participants in a much broader but less “pure” or intellectual community. Blogs are not about policing aberrant thought, or if they are, they v. soon wither away or become a v. small mutually affirming bubble.
Newspapers & TV are dying and many people get their “news” from social media. Blogs could play a very imp6rotant intermediary role, but somehow are falling short. You have to supplement the online forum with real life events, conferences etc. to create lasting social bonds, but I have no idea how you fund that sort of thing. Making a living and blogging just don’t seem to be very compatible activities.
Perhaps if you combined some v. different art forms – photography, music, poetry, political analysis, local direct action, and literary writing you might create a critical mass of a self-sustaining community, but I can’t see individualistic standalone blogs surviving much longer.
” Blogs are not about policing aberrant thought, or if they are, they v. soon wither away or become a v. small mutually affirming bubble.”
Didn’t happen to Daily Kos which has a very effective thought police as I and Marie2 can attest. Both of us were banned for incorrect thought, although probably of different natures. I forget why Marie was banned. I was banned for “racism” because I said Obama was a lying S.O.B. I forget why Marie was banned, but it was some commentary that the herd didn’t like. I forget if I agreed or not. It doesn’t matter. Most of the time I agree with her, sometimes I violently disagree. The same with her. I’m sure neither of us would ever be tempted to ban the other.
on March 2, 2015 at 11:52 am
I got slapped on the wrist over there recently, but partly my fault. In offering a view different from the badly flawed mainstream one presented by the thread creator, I failed to remember I was in their Community (i.e. play nice and don’t disagree) Forum section, where apparently even the mildest politely offered dissenting views are called out for violation of the rules.
Haven’t commented since and don’t plan to. There’s something rather creepy and antidemocratic, almost Stalinist, about forums that aggressively enforce conformity of views or strictly limit the substantive boundaries of discussion.
Well there is a very large pro-Obama cohort for DKos to draw on, but there aren’t many other large liberal blogs who can afford to diss dissident users like you. I remember getting into trouble there for a deliberately provocatively entitled piece:Obama as Stupid as bush? where many chose not to see the “?”. I was trying to blow a hole in the “Obama can do no wrong” bubble, and point out that, in many ways, there was considerable continuity in US foreign policy between Bush and Obama.
But whatever, these are the stripes you bear as a political blogger. Where will DKos go when Obama is gone? I can’t see them going all Clintonista, and Saunders or Warren don’t have quite the same national appeal.
The election of Obama to the Presidency sure ripped the mask off all the Democratic Party partisans that had been pretending to be liberals or progressives. They may not be as ignorant and/or stupid as the Bushies and red-staters, but they’re no less willfully blind and hypocritical. Had I been more astute, I would have noticed another similarity earlier — they’re into playing the victim card and blaming absent facts.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that many of them weren’t always Democrats — but were always political partisans. Easier for fans to switch teams than stop being a fan.
A single and irrc one sentence comment from me that was deemed racist by a gang (later also banned) that had been trolling me for a few months. Made the comment in haste as I left to do other things for a few hours. By the time I returned, I was overwhelmed by the number of negative responses and made the mistake of trying to explain myself which couldn’t be heard and added to the number of my comments that were troll rated. Was banned within a couple of hours.
As I had made my first dKos comment in November 2002, it was surprising to me that my long-term record there was considered irrelevant. Appealed the decision. No response. Rather than grovel, I moved on. Much calmer and more thoughtful here.
I joined a year later, October 2003, three digit user number. You might have a two digit number, but as you say one’s long-term record is irrelevant. Also appealed the decision, promised to never comment on Obama again. Deaf ears. Amusingly, Kos goes through periods of attacking Obama, but everything there is top down.
As you may have noticed, I even engage trolls. I only issue a “watch out” in cases of personal attack against someone else. I think we should play nice in the Pond. But I hate mind control.
Had a four digit dKos user ID. Was in the process of relocating when Scoop was implemented and then delayed registering because of doubts I was beginning to have.
…promised to never comment on Obama again. So, groveling was useless. I was unwilling to do more than concede that others could have interpreted my comment as racist even if there had been no conscious or subconscious racist intent on my part. The other problem with the racist interpretation is that not one US, anti-Democrat, racist would ever have made that comment because it was criticizing Obama’s warmongering.
Edit button and grammar checker. Somethings wrong with the shift key on my keyboard and i never became a touch typist. A former boss once told me he was amazed at my productivity using only two fingers. I see the capitalization error on the “i” above and am not fixing it. I assure you that my left hand had hit the shift key.
Over at this forum I get an e-mail whenever there is a comment on a thread that I am watching. If I comment on a thread, I am automatically marked as watching the thread. And yes, I can edit my comments, although it is bad form to alter meanings, but grammatical errors and the like can be fixed. since t is a technical forum, it’s important to be able to fix coding errors and URL’s.
on March 2, 2015 at 12:07 pm
Wish there was a quicker way to link things on blogs. Unless I’m missing something, it’s just too many damn key strokes and too time consuming. And I still have no idea how to do multiple links in one post — that seems like an awfully long process. Definitely need high-tech adviser, I know.
Also I like blogs that offer regular Open Threads, as it can often lead to interesting discussions besides the usual politics. Unless posters ruin them with their cat stories or recipes …
The signal to noise ratio is high even in areas of interest outside politics. Ocasionally you’ll find a gem, but mostly it’s endless groupthink and poutrage of the day.
Booman and Gilliard (RIP) are the only leftish bloggers I’ve found that had knowledge, critical thinking skills, could write, and were willing to challenge their audience.
I don’t see how the Netroots hating on stupid Republicans (and apostate Democrats), every single day for the last twelve years, has politically empowered, or actualized anyone. (You can also add “crashing the gates” and “moving the Overton Window” to that pile of bullshit.)
I’d just want easy turn key solutions that looked good.
If you want tips on how to ruthlessly monetize, see Ariana Huffington.
I don’t see how the Netroots hating on stupid Republicans (and apostate Democrats), every single day for the last twelve years, has politically empowered, or actualized anyone. (You can also add “crashing the gates” and “moving the Overton Window” to that pile of bullshit.)
Couldn’t agree more. Back in 2002, I thought that blogs could be a powerful force as a people driven, political and social think tank. Devolved quickly into “my candidate rocks” and “your candidate sucks” and a DEM version of the GOP direct mail fundraising.
Gilliard was a nice guy (he arrived at dKos a few months after I did), but I wasn’t a fan of his writings or analyses. Billmon was the best and Soto excellent as well.
Technically — once Scoop came along — I’ve had one complaint — the ratings system. Used as scoring/bragging badges instead of conversation facilitator.
In real world conversations we don’t score what someone has said and respond to statements in a variety of ways. If in general agreement or “close enough,” we nod even if the comment wasn’t expressed exactly as we would have phrased it. Might say, I agree, but not feel the need to add flourishes or extraneous words to the response. Half or more of the comments in long threads are nothing more than “agree” and for some reason, too many don’t just click a ratings button and move on without adding their own unnecessary one cent. However, the ratings structure discourage a simplified response because of the darn number and description attached to them. Good/close enough comments shouldn’t be in a scoring competition with excellent.
A “gross” rating could be administratively helpful to quickly identify non-redeeming, disruptive participants, but only if others users reinforce that rating by refusing to engage with the disruptive individual.
While I’d like to think that this aspect of blogs could be improved, I’m unclear how it could be done.
encourage that . While not a problem here, comment threads get weighed down with a large number of unnecessary and redundant contributions.
Rated that a “3”. Good comment, but a lot I don’t agree with. Mostly rated it “3” to get your take on “3” ratings. Are they a put down or what? Agree rating system needs an overhaul.
If I rate a comment, I always give it a four. (Unless a troll rating is applicable.) Don’t see any reason to lower a user’s “mojo” with a “3.” Not for a comment that IMHO has merit. It’s the best I can do given the quantitative format of the rating structure. More often than not I rate for “good/close enough — 2nd this, and no need for me to add to this.” IOW — a time saver for me and a thread space saver which is a time reading saver for others. Sometimes, I do mean “excellent” with a “4,” but excellent for different reasons. Could be particularly well phrased, insightful, important information that’s new to me, too funny, or just a tip for initiating a conversation that I choose to jump into. Sometimes I tip to close a conversation — that I’ve read the last comment and for any of a number of reasons, time to move on.
But I’m not wrong about Putin. Not that I’ve ever offered an opinion much beyond him being the “lesser evil” in Russia today, that he’s more intelligent than most US politicians, and he saved Obama’s butt in Syria before Obama went on a bombing spree in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian military when some rebel faction had done it.
I’m reminded of my International Business class. The professor (asst. Dept Chair) was a Pakistani and rabid anti-communist. The course was a total waste of my time (except for the creative term paper I wrote for it). Walking into the final exam, I said to one of my classmates, “Hope one of the questions isn’t on the USSR.” He said, “I’m just going to say that communism is evil and I hate, hate, hate the USSR.” I sighed and acknowledged that would be an easy way to get a good grade, but I lying is very difficult for me. Can’t recall what was on the final exam — but know that I didn’t lie.
Subsequently had to meet with the prof in his departmental capacity, but managed that by wearing my red dress.
Agree with much written above. I like a place to discuss politics, to read cogent analysis and others’ responses to the analysis. I find the analysis on US politics here insightful, thoughtful and constructive and I appreciate the good discussions that follow. Other topics – environment, for example, cultural topics, I’m involved in with my work, so don’t usually get involved in those posts. I’m not on FB or twitter, time sinks I cannot afford, though I follow some twitter accounts for their insights and links.
I guess for me I most appreciate constructive conversation and links to interesting articles.
don’t mind seeing the ads if it helps the blog, except the disgusting ones – I won’t say more lest they suddenly appear again, but some sites now take forever to load and autoplay is a curse. also, the translucent messages and sign this petition on some sites I find very annoying.
I enjoy reading the humor – the tweet of the day over at the orange place and comments on TPM, but only participate here and an occasional thread at the orange place before the thread degenerates into name calling.
What do I love about blogs? Smart people and interesting commenters.
What do I hate? Blowhards and blogs that just run with the same thing all the other blogs are talking about.
I can’t really answer the third question.
How to make money? I definitely would not blog behind a paywall of any kind. I guess I would rely on the core readers/commenters/participants to fund me on a voluntary basis. But I might let everyone know what I need financially on a regular basis in order to keep blogging and display progress toward that goal in some way. (Good luck with that!)
I don’t think I’d try to be a regular blogger on top of a regular day job. That would be like having 2 jobs, and that’s too hard to maintain long term.
Or maybe I’d try to find another source of income so I could afford to blog without needing to make money from that.
oops. my “good luck with that” last minute addition was supposed to be attached to the final line in the post.
The only way I have ever made money off my blog was when a print publication -the Philly Weekly- gave me a column for a year.
I would want the ability to
What I like about blogs are diverse content. Not just narrow topical or political stuff, but links and discussion about interesting studies on a wide range of topics.
Basically what I want from a Blog is Andrew Sullivan and staff’s ability to curate the internet with a smoother commenting system and to see the thought process of bloggers on interesting topics that might or might not have to do with politics but do have to do with life.
#2 is my big peeve about most blogs. Just as you go to hit ‘comment’ the final load moves the tweet button. I think they are designed for that.
What I want from a blog is information.
‘All knowledge is worth having.’
nalbar
Yes! to both!
Maybe I could blackmail AG into paying me not to write?
What do I hate about blogs? Mostly that they have trivialized the essay. It used to be that a political essay would be written carefully, published in some journal of ideas, and people would read it over a month. Some would write letters, since there was no email, internet, or other way of providing feedback. If your letter got published, that was in itself a signal event. In many cases, we continue to read those essays (when forced to usually) years later.
Today, who reads a blog post from 2011? Who reads a blog post from November of 2014? We are in this rabbit hole of commentary, where comments are made about comments, and in many cases, not a whole lot of impact is felt.
When everything is free, there will be lots of it.
When there is lots of it, almost none of it will have value.
Since none of it has value, no one will remember what you wrote, and therefore writing itself will become irrelevant.
That’s what I am afraid of about blogs. They are basically irrelevant. Sorry about that, Boo.
And the tweet has taken it further.
nalbar
Indeed. Trivialization of opinion and reaction.
KDrum (I think) calls this the “take.” Everyone (including me) is obsessed with the “take” of a blogger on any particular topic. But who cares about someone’s take if whatever that happened is days in the past? For example if someone said something now about the DRESS the reaction would be surprise that that’s still being talked about.
But I think my desire for “takes” in itself is an outgrowth of my desire to talk to someone else about current events in general. Most people don’t know or don’t care enough about current events to do that, let alone actually be even a little informed about any topic. A blogger who you follow is someone who you can discuss a topic you find interesting but might not many to discuss it with offline. The take has to come from the blogger because you formed an interest and respect in their opinion if you’ve followed them long enough.
About finding a place to talk intelligently about current events, yes. I live in SoCal, so it’s doubly difficult to find people who are interested in talking about more than themselves or the Kardashians. When you bring up ISIS or the Ukraine or GOP vote suppression, you get a blank stare.
Blogs can be problematic because they sometimes have a quality to them that feels like indigenous people crashing head on with newcomers. There’s a feeling of coziness, whereby, you know what to expect from your fellow travelers, and there is a certain amount of leeway in tolerating a whole spectrum of comments. In a comfy zone like a well established blog, familiarity sets in.
Things begin to suck when often time new members drop in, and go through the place with a flame thrower. It’s like the rudest house guest you can imagine. Smarmy comments, pissy comments, and plain hostility follow in their noxious wake. The community gets disrupted for no apparent reason other than the forum is free and open, so I guess, Monster Truck RallyTM people can drop in with their bad habits. This is why I enjoyed the migration to Facebook that a good blog friend of mine encouraged. At first, I was reluctant because I had heard some horror stories about Facebook’s sharing of all kinds of information, but after creating some outrageous personal bio details I felt comfortable joining that sort of gated community. (No, I have never worked for Acme Screw in Hanoi, Vietnam serving in my capacity as “Chief Screw Up” as my Facebook profile contends.)
Obviously! Everyone knows that the Chief Screw Up works in Langely Virginia.
I love that they’re bite-sized bits of knowledge from (and with) people who are a) better-informed than I am and b) willing to engage. At least the ones I read are.
I hate, I guess, that they–and the internet more broadly, in some ways–seem to devalue knowledge and writing. It’s all gotta be free. ‘How do you make money?’ becomes almost an afterthought, as if providing this service is grounds for charity or something.
Don’t want any technical thing. What I’d love is I guess what MNPundit said. Curate the internet like Sullivan’s blog, but without his idiocy. I’d like to read a dozen posts a day about subjects I’m completely ignorant of–not just politics.
I love that good blogs provide a ready access point for folks like me to read posts by knowledgeable folks like you. Also, they provide a venue for things that I might otherwise miss. I have also met some really nice folks (face to face!) through this and other blogs. Finally, blogging has kept me painting, and improving my skills. Money? Let me know when you figure out that one, although I did sell a painting through Gallery kos.
What do I love about blogs?
In a society always away and isolated by institutional rules and economic commitments, a blog provides an asynchronous place to care on a serious or light conversation. Or examined issues in detail. Or crowd source data or critique on someone’s main work. Or to understand the situation outside of your local place and culture as backdrop to the conversations.
What do I hate about blogs?
If a blog is taking advertising, invariably loading the fancy, all-singing, all-dancing ads wastes a lot of time, even if I have a fair ad-block software. In some cases on some days it can come close to killing the site.
The failure of some ISPs to effectively manage their security for blog operators, resulting frequent outages. After the Snowden memos exposed that vulnerabilities are a feature not a bug, no ISP should be doing that to their customers. Any site can become a target of a DDOS attack without reference to its content. I hate that our own government has come damn near destroying the internet.
What would I want from a gadget or technical point of view?
Excape from constant HTML coding of blockquotes, links, images, embeds, italic, bold, and so on. The means for referencing between comments reflecting the conversational style of the blog. Copy paste linking of videos (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.) from the video URL with default of no autoplay. If infinite scroll is implementing, some way of keeping it from running away at the bottom and top of the screen; sometimes you really do want just line up or down. Titles that don’t hector you about title length that you didn’t create.
Any idea of how to make money from your blogging?
Have a heart-to-heart chat with Janet Yellen unless John Boehner suddenly becomes a spendthrift domestic Keynesian. The crunch likely will become worse.
Paywalls are offensive and make people angry, especially if the go there from a Twitter or Facebook link. Advertising is hit-or-miss and mostly inadequate because of all the competition. For most blogs, unless they have a huge member base, paid memberships are also inadequate. So pick your poison or mixture of them. The limits are the resources of your audience.
Is that why BoomanTribune fails to load so often? I had thought that WOW! was slowing it to a crawl, since their management are RWNJ’s.
“What do you love about blogs?”
Democratization of info. Specifically practical information. Political information occasionally count. Back in the day, you really had to trust your local experts (restaurant critics, realtors, contractors, etc.) for just about everything you didn’t already know about local restaurants, houses, or home improvements. Now, the opinions of those people still have value, but you can supplement that information with all sorts of useful knowledge from around the web.
The downside of the blog format is that there’s a lot of bullshit floating around. You need a skeptical eye. But the practical, home improvement stuff tends to be a little more reliable than, say, dietary advice.
What I hate most about blogs and the bulletin board platform in general is what people used to call “epistemic closure”. I know that term has fallen out of fashion, but it’s a concise description of a widespread problem.
I think blogs have outlived their usefulness. They, along with social media, have amplified hatred and partisanship to the detriment of our country. Many of the posts are some version of “Wanker of the day” which highlight the awful things some other blogger or politician says or writes. We have all become more provocative and strident in response to the various outrages and dysfunction. Bloggers seek out events of trivial importance then magnify them.
And voter turn out this last election was lower than ever before. If blogs and social media were improving our political debates, such a thing would not have happened. At best they have no effect at all, but for me, this nonsense has left me frustrated and uninterested in the whole blommin’ mess. Good job bloggers, twitter, and facebook… you broke america.
I love the sense of community that I see developing in the blogs that I visit. I love that the whole world is connected.
I don’t like that Facebook and Twitter have managed to become the middlemen to so much of our communications, thus providing an avenue for the NSA. All my future blog plans have no access to them.
No idea on the money part, isn’t that supposed to be a permanent problem for writers? You could always go Hollywood – F. Scott tried it. Fame helps.
I can’t wait to sign up ad-free on your new place. It’s worth a lot to me to avoid being accosted by a buxom foreign woman who wants to date me.
Ditto, Alice. Except the part about the beautiful Russian girls that want to meet ME!
Bad software makes it useless.
I like blogs with a good community that doesn’t require near-real-time interactions to keep up. Balloon-Juice has a great community, but it’s almost real-time and threads can die quickly. Cole hates threads, so it’s hard to keep a discussion organized. His software doesn’t keep track of what you’ve already seen the way Scoop (used here) does.
I’m not on Twitter, I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Instagram, etc. Gadgets like that that slow down the page or get in the way annoy me.
I can’t stay camped out on a site for hours at a time. I will stop by occasionally and comment when I think I can contribute something. Don’t make the site only work for those who can live here.
If you use WordPress, please use a sensible spam filter (don’t kill comments with “Watson”), and don’t limit me to 3 links.
Disqus has some decent features, but some people hate it. I haven’t used it enough to let it bother me, yet.
Pay for the site with unobtrusive ads, a donation button or few, and Amazon-referrals the way Atrios does. And maybe offer “subscriptions” with a gold star next to the user-name, or something. Don’t use a paywall. You want new blood moving in all the time – paywalls kill that.
I guess you’re asking because of the new software/site coming sometime this year. Scoop has a lot of nice features – I hope that not too many of them are lost in the new version.
HTH. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Sure, there’s a lot of terrible stuff online, but so much is great just because it’s not standardized: what I love is the surprises and quirks, the “tell all the truth but tell it slant” aspect, the lonely toilers that know so much more about things than I do and long to share it, and the sense of community you get at the gregarious places like here. How different from each other, really, nowadays, are the Times and Wapo and Guardian? But every really good blog is really unique and strange in its own way.
That’s for me and the gang of critical readers hanging out here. I realize there are many blogs that work toward a homogenization of everybody’s thinking, all chanting the same mantra-of-the-day, especially in the teabagger and firebagger factions, and there’s a thing about the online environment that encourages that, when the information (true or false) circulates so fast and gets reinforced through a positive feedback effect; it happens at the professionalized organizations too, and has been happening for years. It’s not a feature of blogs per se (it is an especially intensive feature of Twitter).
I don’t think much about the bells and whistles except when they go wrong (where’s the damn Twitter button?). I have with great sadness kind of stopped reading Balloon Juice because it tends to crash something on my old Mac at home and the PC at work, and that’s terrible, especially when I have no idea what it is. I love the commenting system here (but I want to be able to edit after posting!) and the Disqus system I use at my place, which integrates your interactions all over the Web.
I have no idea what to do about money, except to point out that it’s a huge problem for everybody in all media, and only a special problem for bloggers in that we wouldn’t exist at all without the Internet. I don’t mind looking at ads, or rather expending the energy needed to avert my eyes from them, but I believe you just need a huge readership to make any money off them, which will hardly happen to anybody. It may be that more of the really good bloggers will get corporatized in a not bad way: it was great news when Martin got a good job, and TBogg (writing actual journalism at Raw Story, though I miss the old deep snark), and Digby seemingly getting a ton of freelance work. So many fine blogs are already mainstays of old-line publications like Esquire and Atlantic Monthly and whatnot, as well of course as many dreadful ones.
Agree 2d para. A good thing about this blog is on most issues — religion and belief, Obama, Clinton, etc — there seem to be a decent diversity of views, and no sense that conformity is being insisted upon by the majority.
I also appreciate that we can occasionally comment upon a very controversial area w/o being shouted down by the mob as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” Sadly, such groupthink strictly enforcing conformity occurs in one of the largest lefty blogs on the web.
I’m still trying to figure out how to make money in Photography…especially when “everyone” has a camera..
The European Tribune is dying because some v. smart “moderators” chased away people not as smart as them by making them feel stupid or unwanted. Others got disillusioned with the European ideal, or went the way of social media – which to me tries to reduce everything to a soundbite and trivialises discourse.
You need a tolerance of a heterogeneous community to create critical mass, and yet too many “insiders” are happy to be a leader in a small “cozy club” rather than participants in a much broader but less “pure” or intellectual community. Blogs are not about policing aberrant thought, or if they are, they v. soon wither away or become a v. small mutually affirming bubble.
Newspapers & TV are dying and many people get their “news” from social media. Blogs could play a very imp6rotant intermediary role, but somehow are falling short. You have to supplement the online forum with real life events, conferences etc. to create lasting social bonds, but I have no idea how you fund that sort of thing. Making a living and blogging just don’t seem to be very compatible activities.
Perhaps if you combined some v. different art forms – photography, music, poetry, political analysis, local direct action, and literary writing you might create a critical mass of a self-sustaining community, but I can’t see individualistic standalone blogs surviving much longer.
” Blogs are not about policing aberrant thought, or if they are, they v. soon wither away or become a v. small mutually affirming bubble.”
Didn’t happen to Daily Kos which has a very effective thought police as I and Marie2 can attest. Both of us were banned for incorrect thought, although probably of different natures. I forget why Marie was banned. I was banned for “racism” because I said Obama was a lying S.O.B. I forget why Marie was banned, but it was some commentary that the herd didn’t like. I forget if I agreed or not. It doesn’t matter. Most of the time I agree with her, sometimes I violently disagree. The same with her. I’m sure neither of us would ever be tempted to ban the other.
I got slapped on the wrist over there recently, but partly my fault. In offering a view different from the badly flawed mainstream one presented by the thread creator, I failed to remember I was in their Community (i.e. play nice and don’t disagree) Forum section, where apparently even the mildest politely offered dissenting views are called out for violation of the rules.
Haven’t commented since and don’t plan to. There’s something rather creepy and antidemocratic, almost Stalinist, about forums that aggressively enforce conformity of views or strictly limit the substantive boundaries of discussion.
Well there is a very large pro-Obama cohort for DKos to draw on, but there aren’t many other large liberal blogs who can afford to diss dissident users like you. I remember getting into trouble there for a deliberately provocatively entitled piece:Obama as Stupid as bush? where many chose not to see the “?”. I was trying to blow a hole in the “Obama can do no wrong” bubble, and point out that, in many ways, there was considerable continuity in US foreign policy between Bush and Obama.
But whatever, these are the stripes you bear as a political blogger. Where will DKos go when Obama is gone? I can’t see them going all Clintonista, and Saunders or Warren don’t have quite the same national appeal.
The election of Obama to the Presidency sure ripped the mask off all the Democratic Party partisans that had been pretending to be liberals or progressives. They may not be as ignorant and/or stupid as the Bushies and red-staters, but they’re no less willfully blind and hypocritical. Had I been more astute, I would have noticed another similarity earlier — they’re into playing the victim card and blaming absent facts.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that many of them weren’t always Democrats — but were always political partisans. Easier for fans to switch teams than stop being a fan.
A single and irrc one sentence comment from me that was deemed racist by a gang (later also banned) that had been trolling me for a few months. Made the comment in haste as I left to do other things for a few hours. By the time I returned, I was overwhelmed by the number of negative responses and made the mistake of trying to explain myself which couldn’t be heard and added to the number of my comments that were troll rated. Was banned within a couple of hours.
As I had made my first dKos comment in November 2002, it was surprising to me that my long-term record there was considered irrelevant. Appealed the decision. No response. Rather than grovel, I moved on. Much calmer and more thoughtful here.
I joined a year later, October 2003, three digit user number. You might have a two digit number, but as you say one’s long-term record is irrelevant. Also appealed the decision, promised to never comment on Obama again. Deaf ears. Amusingly, Kos goes through periods of attacking Obama, but everything there is top down.
As you may have noticed, I even engage trolls. I only issue a “watch out” in cases of personal attack against someone else. I think we should play nice in the Pond. But I hate mind control.
Had a four digit dKos user ID. Was in the process of relocating when Scoop was implemented and then delayed registering because of doubts I was beginning to have.
…promised to never comment on Obama again. So, groveling was useless. I was unwilling to do more than concede that others could have interpreted my comment as racist even if there had been no conscious or subconscious racist intent on my part. The other problem with the racist interpretation is that not one US, anti-Democrat, racist would ever have made that comment because it was criticizing Obama’s warmongering.
Edit button and grammar checker. Somethings wrong with the shift key on my keyboard and i never became a touch typist. A former boss once told me he was amazed at my productivity using only two fingers. I see the capitalization error on the “i” above and am not fixing it. I assure you that my left hand had hit the shift key.
Over at this forum I get an e-mail whenever there is a comment on a thread that I am watching. If I comment on a thread, I am automatically marked as watching the thread. And yes, I can edit my comments, although it is bad form to alter meanings, but grammatical errors and the like can be fixed. since t is a technical forum, it’s important to be able to fix coding errors and URL’s.
Wish there was a quicker way to link things on blogs. Unless I’m missing something, it’s just too many damn key strokes and too time consuming. And I still have no idea how to do multiple links in one post — that seems like an awfully long process. Definitely need high-tech adviser, I know.
Also I like blogs that offer regular Open Threads, as it can often lead to interesting discussions besides the usual politics. Unless posters ruin them with their cat stories or recipes …
The signal to noise ratio is high even in areas of interest outside politics. Ocasionally you’ll find a gem, but mostly it’s endless groupthink and poutrage of the day.
Booman and Gilliard (RIP) are the only leftish bloggers I’ve found that had knowledge, critical thinking skills, could write, and were willing to challenge their audience.
I don’t see how the Netroots hating on stupid Republicans (and apostate Democrats), every single day for the last twelve years, has politically empowered, or actualized anyone. (You can also add “crashing the gates” and “moving the Overton Window” to that pile of bullshit.)
I’d just want easy turn key solutions that looked good.
If you want tips on how to ruthlessly monetize, see Ariana Huffington.
Couldn’t agree more. Back in 2002, I thought that blogs could be a powerful force as a people driven, political and social think tank. Devolved quickly into “my candidate rocks” and “your candidate sucks” and a DEM version of the GOP direct mail fundraising.
Gilliard was a nice guy (he arrived at dKos a few months after I did), but I wasn’t a fan of his writings or analyses. Billmon was the best and Soto excellent as well.
Technically — once Scoop came along — I’ve had one complaint — the ratings system. Used as scoring/bragging badges instead of conversation facilitator.
In real world conversations we don’t score what someone has said and respond to statements in a variety of ways. If in general agreement or “close enough,” we nod even if the comment wasn’t expressed exactly as we would have phrased it. Might say, I agree, but not feel the need to add flourishes or extraneous words to the response. Half or more of the comments in long threads are nothing more than “agree” and for some reason, too many don’t just click a ratings button and move on without adding their own unnecessary one cent. However, the ratings structure discourage a simplified response because of the darn number and description attached to them. Good/close enough comments shouldn’t be in a scoring competition with excellent.
A “gross” rating could be administratively helpful to quickly identify non-redeeming, disruptive participants, but only if others users reinforce that rating by refusing to engage with the disruptive individual.
While I’d like to think that this aspect of blogs could be improved, I’m unclear how it could be done.
encourage that . While not a problem here, comment threads get weighed down with a large number of unnecessary and redundant contributions.
Rated that a “3”. Good comment, but a lot I don’t agree with. Mostly rated it “3” to get your take on “3” ratings. Are they a put down or what? Agree rating system needs an overhaul.
If I rate a comment, I always give it a four. (Unless a troll rating is applicable.) Don’t see any reason to lower a user’s “mojo” with a “3.” Not for a comment that IMHO has merit. It’s the best I can do given the quantitative format of the rating structure. More often than not I rate for “good/close enough — 2nd this, and no need for me to add to this.” IOW — a time saver for me and a thread space saver which is a time reading saver for others. Sometimes, I do mean “excellent” with a “4,” but excellent for different reasons. Could be particularly well phrased, insightful, important information that’s new to me, too funny, or just a tip for initiating a conversation that I choose to jump into. Sometimes I tip to close a conversation — that I’ve read the last comment and for any of a number of reasons, time to move on.
Much the same as I. Thank you for your input, I always value your input, even when I think it’s wrong, except about Putin.
But I’m not wrong about Putin. Not that I’ve ever offered an opinion much beyond him being the “lesser evil” in Russia today, that he’s more intelligent than most US politicians, and he saved Obama’s butt in Syria before Obama went on a bombing spree in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian military when some rebel faction had done it.
I’m reminded of my International Business class. The professor (asst. Dept Chair) was a Pakistani and rabid anti-communist. The course was a total waste of my time (except for the creative term paper I wrote for it). Walking into the final exam, I said to one of my classmates, “Hope one of the questions isn’t on the USSR.” He said, “I’m just going to say that communism is evil and I hate, hate, hate the USSR.” I sighed and acknowledged that would be an easy way to get a good grade, but I lying is very difficult for me. Can’t recall what was on the final exam — but know that I didn’t lie.
Subsequently had to meet with the prof in his departmental capacity, but managed that by wearing my red dress.
Agree with much written above. I like a place to discuss politics, to read cogent analysis and others’ responses to the analysis. I find the analysis on US politics here insightful, thoughtful and constructive and I appreciate the good discussions that follow. Other topics – environment, for example, cultural topics, I’m involved in with my work, so don’t usually get involved in those posts. I’m not on FB or twitter, time sinks I cannot afford, though I follow some twitter accounts for their insights and links.
I guess for me I most appreciate constructive conversation and links to interesting articles.
don’t mind seeing the ads if it helps the blog, except the disgusting ones – I won’t say more lest they suddenly appear again, but some sites now take forever to load and autoplay is a curse. also, the translucent messages and sign this petition on some sites I find very annoying.
I enjoy reading the humor – the tweet of the day over at the orange place and comments on TPM, but only participate here and an occasional thread at the orange place before the thread degenerates into name calling.