Here's an interesting take on how hard it is to maintain a weblog:
By Kara M. Dawson , University of Florida
Her overview:
Sure, blogs have changed the face of communication, and brought new opportunities, new relationships, new forms of recognition, and even new earning potential to many people. But not to everyone.Certainly not to my two classes of graduate students who ended the fall semester blogged down and blogged out. In the past, when I had required students to write blog postings in my courses, the assignment was at least a novelty. But last semester, it just seemed a snore.
For her analysis, and a summary of her students's experience, click on the link above,
or this link.
Just time for a quick post
to Who Killed the Webmaster?
on the blog
"(Yet Another Web Development Blog)"
by a Michigan geek.
Here's his lede:
”Webmaster” was a vaunted, almost mythical, title. The Webmaster was a techno-shaman versed the black arts needed to make words and images appear on this new-fangled Information Superhighway. With the rise of the Webmaster coinciding with the explosive growth of the web, everyone predicted the birth of a new, well paying, and in-demand profession. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I’m left wondering “Who killed the Webmaster?”
His suspects here:
Suspect #1: The march of technology . . .In 1995, the “professional web design firm” was single, talented person working from home. Today it’s a diverse team of back-end developers, front-end developers, graphic artists, UI designers, database and systems administrators, search engine marketing experts, analytics specialists, copywriters, editors, and project managers. The industry has simply grown so specialized, so quickly, for one person to hardly be a master of anything more than a single strand in the web.
Suspect #2: Is it the economy, stupid?Then again, perhaps the disappearance of the Webmaster can better be explained by an underwhelming economy rather than overwhelming technology. . . .
Suspect #3: The rise of Web 2.0Another strong possibility is that the Internet has simply evolved beyond the Webmaster. “Web 2.0″ is the naked emperor of technological neologisms; we all nod our head at the term but then stammer when pressed for a definition. As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. But it also seems to be about an emphasis on social collaboration. This may seem like a no-brainer given the connectedness of the Internet itself; however, thinking back to Web 1.0 there was a distinct lack of this philosophy. Web 1.0 was more an arms race to build “mindshare” and “eyeballs” in order to make it to the top of the hill with the most venture capital. Even the Web 1.0 term of “portal” conjures up an image of Lewis Carroll’s Alice tumbling down a hole and into an experience wholly managed by the resident experts–the Webmasters. Despite the power and promises to be so much more, the web wasn’t much different than network television or print. Even the most interesting and successful business models of the Web 1.0 era could have been accomplished years prior with an automated telephone system.
It wasn’t until after the failure of the initial experiment did people begin to rethink the entire concept of the Internet. Was the Webmaster as gatekeeper really necessary? If we all have a story to share, why can’t everyone contribute to the collective experience? Perhaps it was the overabundance of Herman Miller chairs, but Web 1.0 was inarguably about style over substance. Yet, as anyone who’s ever visited MySpace can attest, today content is king. With all of us simultaneously contributing and consuming on blogs, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and SecondLife, who needs a Webmaster anymore?
For a colleague who is a technical editor,
for a Christmas present, I sent a copy of the Wired Style Guide
at work to have it for a professional reference.
It's an editorial style guide developed by the editors of Wired Magazine.
They take a NEW approach to editing—for example,
suggesting to drop the hyphen in terms like email and ecommerce
and so on, while the more conservative approach assumes the audience
doesn’t understand the neologism and won’t get it.
Many of the people we work with are SURE
they know how language and spelling and grammatical constructions work
whereas what they are sure about is what Miss Smith taught them in seventh grade.
And while Ms. Smith herself might or might not have had it right,
language shifts with usage, and some of us are a long way from seventh grade.
I have half a dozen different style guides,
including a run of the last four editions of Chicago Manual of Style.
(Here is the Chicago Manual of Style Online, free trial use.)
“Chicago,” or “The Orange Bible” as professionals call it,
is the style guide I find the most useful, and
the one we used for the University of California Press style,
with our own emendations.
Nota Bene--Chicago has altered its style in every edition.
It’s sobering to show these multiple style guides to students
and haul the books out when colleagues get ideological about style.
It shows how many approaches there are to editorial style.
Some colleagues agitate for APA as a “house style”—to be
REQUIRED of all the graduate students.
Why? Surely for consistency for our graduate Center and for grading,
but I also suspect because their own grad school departments did so.
(The Communication Department at last university I taught in also required APA.)
I do recommend APA for our geeks
even though I don’t think it’s the best guide in the world,
because APA is the normative SOCIAL SCIENCES style,
and Communication as a field is a social science.
But I DO NOT LIKE the authoritarian approach of THOU SHALT use suchandsuch
a style in a graduate school.
As in Chicago’s guidelines, you can make any blessed
style you want as long as it’s reasonable and consistently followed. In my own doctoral
dissertation for a leading USA graduate school, I used a combination of MLA and APA. Nobody complained.
The authoritarian approach is not conducive to developing masters, just automatons—
someone who excels by following orders and conforming to norms.
So, happy styles to you, until we meet again
(lyrics from the classic “Song of the Editorial Cowboy”).
Weblogs in theory
are your public diary entries.
Indeed one of the most famous political blogs
calls its entries "diaries."
"Diary" is defined here, with lots of meanings and quotes
like those below:
Here is the essential definition and etymology:
di·a·ry (dī'ə-rē) pronunciation n., pl. -ries.1. A daily record, especially a personal record of events, experiences, and observations; a journal.
2. A book for use in keeping a personal record, as of experiences.[Latin diārium, daily allowance, daily journal, from diēs, day.]
My favorite quote on this is by the American humorist Ambrose Bierce ("Bitter Bierce")
from his Devil's Dictionary:
diary n.A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
Yet the observation that has prompted me to post is this article
from the main USA trade journal Chronicle for Higher Education:
By James M. Lang
He says:
I have never been an enthusiastic passenger on the blog bandwagon.
I attempted to start two separate blogs myself, but never kept up with either of them. . . .
Lang's column talks about how tough it is to keep blogging
when you are busy with higher or more urgent priorities.
So follow the link above if you are struggling with time to blog.
It may inspire you to post an entry on your blog.
And now, prosperous western (01 January 2007) and Asian (18 February 2007) new years to you!