Indexing a Weblog: How do we organize what we have?
When your information environment goes beyond the items on the top of your desk, or a layer or two deep in your computer's file structure, organizing the information to be usable is a new challenge.
The weblog software we're using here posts information by calendar date, and then archives it by month and year.
Yet that is abstract. We need some tagging structures, or some straightforward way to get at the information we have.
I've done a "quick and down" index for my weblog for this fall 2005 in this entry. I put up two tabs in my Firefox browser--first, this New Entry. Second, View Site. I copied by keyboad commands CTRL-C and CTRL-V just the date and the title of each entry. Then I boldfaced type the title for readability after I put it in the New Entry.
The outcome is an index of sorts.
We'll continue to work on this challenge, looking for a cost-benefit way to do it.
JEG
December 08, 2005
Working on the Internet--"Festina Lente" ("Hurry Slowly")--an Italian view
December 04, 2005
For the Scholars--Good wikipedia List of Latin phrases
December 04, 2005
Unethical commercial communication creates weblog parasites
November 27, 2005
A demonstration of information networking--Good professional weblog from our colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills
November 09, 2005
Professional Consciousness--When you get tired of work, work on your awareness
November 09, 2005
Toward New Perspective--Inward to Outward: Factors of Primary Perception or Orientation
October 27, 2005
The Information Economy is about Projects. Here is Advice from Professionals on How to Make them Better.
October 18, 2005
Visit the Tom Peters Weblog--Current Posting from London with Human Characteristics of a British hero, Horatio Nelson
October 17, 2005
Great Set of Guidelines for Weblogs, from Jakob Nielsen
October 13, 2005
Strategic management is the Art of the Future, by Jay Gillette.
I just posted an entry on the Information Renaissance weblog, concerning Aldus Manutius, a great European renaissance publisher.
Manutius's motto was "Festina Lente" ("Hurry Slowly"), a paradox that is perfect for anyone wishing to embark on technology work of any kind.
While I was researching this motto, I found a brief and compelling Internet essay by Giancarlo Livraghi, titled
"Festina lente (said Aldus Manutius)" (May 1999):
Here's how Livraghi starts off his essay:
It's depressing to see so many ruins on the net. Links leading to nowhere (the "linked" has disappeared, or the "linker" isn't checking - or both). Or the stuff is still there, but nobody has updated it in the last three or four years. Crumbling ruins of architectures of which we can vaguely guess the design.When I try to understand why these things happen, I often find that the reason is haste. Someone expected fast results, didn't get them and gave up. "Fast" doesn't mean days or weeks. I know cases in which an objective was set at the end of a year. It wasn't reached and the plan was abandoned. Someone else did the same thing with more consistency, over time went well beyond that objective - and now has the high ground.
A website (or any other presence on the net) isn't born grown-up, like Minerva jumping out of Jupiter's head. Nobody (including people who think they are "experts") can really know, at the beginning, how it will (or should) be. We must learn from experience and from our (unavoidable) mistakes, from dialogue with our readers, from testing and adjusting. The real advantage of the net is that we can constantly feel our way and experiment.An interesting thought comes from someone who found himself in similar circumstances five hundred years ago. Johann Gutenberg had invented a new technology, but not a new culture. A Venetian, Aldo Manuzio (or Aldus Manutius, as he is known internationally by his Latin name) faced a new challenge. He didn't only invent a new typeface, that set the pattern for those we are using today. He didn't only define a style of layout that is still a wonderful example. He also developed a new way of choosing and managing content. In one word, he invented publishing.
This was his trademark.
It was accompanied by two Latin words: festina lente. "Hurry slowly." It's no coincidence that his "paradox" is a good guideline (I think) for whatever we plan to do on the internet. Electronic communication is fast; but people out there have many other things to do before they come looking for whatever we have to say.
I think it's better this way. If we could really reach a large number of people the minute we go online, we would be in trouble. Very probably, we wouldn't be able to cope.
The "haste" we need is not fast initial growth. It's speed in reaction and adjustment. We must be alert and fast in answering and learning. We must be flexible, to adjust to ever-changing circumstances; to problems and opportunities that can turn up quite unexpectedly.
It's better to make a gradual and "scaleable" investment. To begin with not-too-much visibility, so we can learn from our mistakes while the risks are manageable. To be prepared for gradual development over time. To add resources, and train people, while we learn and grow.
It's better, I believe, to check the foundations before we wave a flag on the roof - or we gather a crowd on the top floor. Whatever we do on the net isn't made of brick and stone; we can change it at any time. But it needs a precise and complex architecture, that won't work unless it's well designed and based on solid ground.
Festina lente should be written on the wall, I believe, wherever people work on internet projects. Following Aldo's advice may not make us famous for the next 500 years, but it would save us a lot of mistakes and disappointments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases
This great resource came to my consciousness from a comment post on the Tom Coates Plasticbag.org weblog.
Scholars credit their sources: the comment on the Tom Coates blog was to help him work up a Latin motto--a good example of the power of the Internet to build collaborative communities.
The person who posted the helpful comment was Simon Griffee.
His comment was reasonable and good, and he further added knowledge-value by giving the complete wikipedia URL so the next person could go right to it.
I don't personally know Mr. Griffee, yet because he has added value to my work, I post this link to his website, hypertexthero.com as a positive reward for positive behaviors in the community.
Thank you, Simon Griffee. Blog on.
JEG
The blogosphere has been plagued by parasites (there's a pun for you) of unethical commercial spammers using the comment function of weblogs to increase the Internet count of links to themselves. This unethical tactic makes them look more significant in Internet links and in the blogosphere than they really are.
Here's a four-paragraph quote, the complete entry, from "plasticbag.org" a weblog by Tom Coates, explaining and focusing on the problem of unethical commerical weblog spammers:
plasticbag.org home A weblog by Tom Coates who thinks up neat stuff for Yahoo! Concerning social software, mass-amateurisation, design, and future media You can subscribe to an RSS feed, read the disclaimer or explore the archives e-flight.biz - unethical spammers...Posted June 22, 2003 03:26 PM.
So yesterday I got a comment on an older entry of mine. The comment read, "This wonderful site is worth dropping a line in your guestbook to say thanks!" How nice, I thought to myself. How sweet to send me a note like that... But then I noticed the name of the person who had left the comment - Mr http://www.e-flight.biz. How nice. How... blatant...
So clearly this company is spamming my comments. That much seems clear. Probably they're after a little extra Google page-rank of some kind - they're clearly trying to dredge a little traffic their way, get some page impressions, make a little money. That's all fine, of course - we all have to make a living - but it seems to me that I shouldn't really be just expected to help them make that living. It seems odd that they should be trying to make money by exploiting the traffic and reputation of my site. I should have a say, surely? I should be asked? Even if - unsurprisingly - the answer would certainly be, "No".
So I've done some research, and it turns out that http://www.e-flight.biz (note that I haven't linked to them yet) has a bit of a habit of spamming other sites. A quick search on Google finds 591 links to their site, pretty much all of them on guestbooks. But those 591 links don't seem to be enough. That's the only reason I can find from moving from guestbooks to sticking adverts in the comments sections of weblogs. Do they not think I'll mind? Do they not think I'll object to the precendent they're trying to set?
So the question is, how do we stop them spamming all of our sites? What's the best approach? What's the best way to compensate for every frustrating piece of false advertising they stick on someone else's online home? What's the best way to communicate that e-flight.biz spends its time with unethical advertising and unsolicited spam and are therefore untrustworthy? Has anyone got any ideas?
+++++
Here's the URL to the Tom Coates entry above:
http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2003/06/eflightbiz_unethical_spammers.shtml
Nota bene the unethical commercial parasites also have swarmed the CICS Weblogs.
The self-centered information and communication manipulations of the parasites have cost the Center's people a lot of time, and even more mental vexation, to deal with the problems thus created.
That's two separate, indictable offenses in the architecture of professional justice in the Center for Information and Communication Sciences.
A bas le roi!
JEG