YAWA...

November 28, 2000 9:55 AM

YAWA... Yet Another Weblog Article...it's amazing how writers always manage to talk about the same seven (or so) weblogs in every article I've seen on the subject.
posted by Succa (13 comments total)

Yawn. I could only skim it. The only thing that caught my eye was:

"You don't have to be any kind of cowboy; many smart, well-read bloggers are women."

Way to condescend. But I really only picked up on that because I was looking for something contentious.

I'm not bored with weblogs, but I'm bored with people that can't say anything new about them. On the other hand, there may not be anything new to say.
posted by frykitty at 10:05 AM on November 28, 2000

it's amazing how writers always manage to talk about the same seven (or so) weblogs in every article I've seen on the subject

Huh? This article mentions The Blorg and A Curmudgeon Teaches Statistics, which are two blogs I don't believe I've seen mentioned elsewhere. And it sidebars Follow Me Here and /usr/bin/girl, two excellent blogs that don't get a lot of mention in media takes. It's also not totally focused on Blogger's impact.

Oh, and it's old, too. July?
posted by daveadams at 10:48 AM on November 28, 2000

I've never read that article before, but I'm sure I saw that sidebar attached to some other story. Weird.
posted by sudama at 10:57 AM on November 28, 2000

I completely agree. I for one am HEARTILY bored of reading articles where I'm not mentioned... (take that how you will)
posted by barbelith at 11:00 AM on November 28, 2000

Granted, it did mention a COUPLE others, sure, but usually the same few blogs that get all the attention in every single article I've read. And they always mention Robot Wisdom in the first paragraph, it seems.

I've never seen a blog mentioned that I actually read on a daily basis, with the exception of memepool (and maybe slashdot, if that counts).

Sure, there are some sites that are at the "forefront" of the whole scene, but you've gotta wonder where these reporters are getting their information. How come they always stumble across Robot Wisdom, Memepool, Slashdot, Blogger (understandable), Userland (also understandable, I suppose), Rebecca Blood, MetaLog, Obscure Store, /usr/bin/girl (which I HAVE seen in other articles), etc.? Not that these sites aren't all great, but I didn't discover many of them in YEARS of blogging. All I'm saying is that there is a certain degree of redundancy in all the weblog articles I've read, and while it's somewhat inevitable, it's also very tiresome.

I didn't notice the date was July, but does it really matter? Would it be any different if it was written today, or six months in the future?
posted by Succa at 11:01 AM on November 28, 2000

YAWA...

Do not take the name of my God in vain. :-)

Also, is that anything like "JAFO"?

Would it be any different if it was written today, or six months in the future?

In all my years of surfing, I've never found ANYTHING written 6 months into the future. If you have, please share with the class so we might be enlightened as well.


posted by ethmar at 11:16 AM on November 28, 2000

Slashdot certainly counts as a blog. It was definetely one of the first, and defined the tech blog/discussion forum (for others, see kuro5hin.org or technocrat.net) which is being used all over the place.

I didn't even realise that diarist-types and non-techies were using the weblog format 'til Succa (curiously enough) switched his site to use Blogger (yeah, I'm like, 8 degrees from cool, go away :-), and I've been constantly astounding at how little cred /. gets for being one of, if not the, first weblog.

(course that "first" argument depends on how you define weblog, leaving What's New way ahead of the pack, but you all know that anyway, so I'll just shut up now.)
posted by cCranium at 11:20 AM on November 28, 2000

ethmar: all I'm saying is that weblogging articles are ALWAYS gonna be like this, now and into the future, if the current trend is any indication. Yes, even six months in the future. YAWA? I know JAFO is "Just Another Fucking Oprah" or something, right?

cC: I'm glad I've been your beacon of technological change. But I think /. is a blog on a much larger scale. A blog loses its sense of cozy community when it gains thousands of dollars worth of corporate sponsorship. Not that I think /. has sold out to The Man, but it's definitely as far from a personal commentary haven as I can think of.

I'm turning into a "this is a blog, and this isn't" monster, so I'm biting my tongue now.




posted by Succa at 11:41 AM on November 28, 2000

The /. "staff" still usually post a one-line comment on the submitted article, and the personal commentary comes from the threads themselves. :-)
posted by cCranium at 12:11 PM on November 28, 2000

Maybe the reason for the constant repetition of the same x blogs is that most journalists get their info about blogs from other journalist's articles. Also bear in mind that it's pretty difficult to sift through the 60000 blogs to find the ones that are well written. You can't really blame them for covering the easy ones.
posted by davidgentle at 5:13 PM on November 28, 2000

As the author of the article discussed, let me chime in. 1. It was published in July; if I was writing today, with months more experience, I would certainly have included some different weblogs. 2. The article was written primarily for print readers of a local newspaper who wouldn't have known anything about weblogs. That's why a lot of the content might seem obvious to hardcore webloggers. 3. Even given my relatively light level of experience at the time, I don't think the article is completely full of usual suspects. For example, almost no print media I can think of had written ANYTHING about Follow Me Here before I did, and I actually interviewed Eliot Gelwan for the piece. (A nice guy, too; had to call him about 10 p.m. after both his children and mine were asleep so we could talk.) I tried to strike a balance (given what I knew then) between the obvious and the lesser-known but still interesting. And for that matter, I hadn't seen too many daily newspaper pieces quoting Dave Winer of the Userland Empire, either. 4. As for sudama's comment, if my sidebar list was attached to some other story, it was without my permission. (The sort-of one-liner description thing, however, is a common type of sidebar format.) 5. Here is one difference between the subset of the universe that reads MeFi everyday and the subset of the universe that consists of the staff of the local newspaper where I work. To MeFi hardcores I'm sure most of what I wrote IN JULY seems obvious. To many of my dead-tree colleagues I had to explain over and over again what a weblog was. So I appreciate your criticisms, but I thought a little context would be helpful. P.S. I am an everyday reader of (and infrequent poster to) MeFi, which I learned about through The Blorg (one of my favorite weblogs, and thanks to daveadams for mentioning I was onto The Blorg).
posted by jhiggy at 6:34 PM on November 28, 2000

was ist "das Blorg?"

it's me! The Blorg thanks jhiggy for the praise! xoxo

[sorry, i just figured someone might stumble onto this thread having [gasp] no clue about my little slice of cyberspace the web.]
posted by palegirl at 7:02 PM on November 28, 2000

I thought it was a nice little article at the time, jhiggy, and I was especially impressed with Eliot and Zannah's appearance. And good digging on Cuwu (Curmudgeon).

I'm just sore about not being in the New Yorker, given that I was reading it when I was eight. Well, the cartoons and filler, anyway. I dunno how many people even here can say the same. ;-)
posted by dhartung at 8:14 PM on November 28, 2000