Flutterby™! : Community 2006-04-11 18:44:57.912806+00

Community

2006-04-11 18:44:57.912806+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Were I Columbine I'd come up with some grand essay on this topic, but since I'm not, how about an ill-conceived paragraph: When I started Flutterby, one of my thoughts was that I could use it to post longer pieces that I'd written for the various mailing lists I'm on. I no longer have any such mailing lists that engender the community that lead to long essays. We're all off in these little weblog islands, and not getting into the longer better thought out discussions that we used to. Or that I used to.

What's need, then, is a "essay web" - a way to link important essays, like a ring or an RSS feed (from multiple sources).

But I think we've discuss the challenge of integrating conversations across blogs...

And this is why I don't bother with my own blog and just post on Flutterby. It keeps me a little more focused on what other people might actually want to hear while providing something of an audience.

Yeah, I'd like an essay web, but I think part of what some of those mailing list communities engendered was a process that led to better essays. I don't write huge long things any more, recapping previous elements of the discussion and whatnot, because it's easier to do a drive-by posting and carry on, and while we have some good discussions, the format doesn't lead to fleshing out my ideas as much as I'd like. For instance, I think there are still some interesting and edifying places we could go with your musings on the purpose of higher education, but having it all on one long page makes me feel, at some point, like it's just you and me talking back and forth and once we get past ten or fifteen comments we've lost most of the rest of the readership.

Maybe I need to break down and make discussions threaded. I also have started thinking about wiki based comments...

#Comment Re: made: 2006-04-13 04:03:44.563355+00 by: spl [edit history]

Eric: I'm sometimes torn between posting on my own blog and making comments on others. Often, I really enjoy conversations. I'd like to have banter about about whatever the topic is, assuming I'm interested in it. As the case is though, some of my local friends, with whom I enjoy conversing in person, tend to leave comments much like mine above. They don't want to think too much and then write about it. Now, I don't always want to think, either, but I would enjoy developing a written argument every so often.

Anyways, as a result, I bother with my own blog. I attempt to think about my audience, though that audience differs depending on the topic at hand (thus the subtitle "ecletic"). I like having a central place for my own pieces. It's a place to which I can point people whom I meet.

Wow drive by posting is all I can muster but it's nice to follow a thread of conversation and if the topic is of particular interest see a wider view (multi community input). I think the indexing community (Google et al) are solving this for us by allowing us to mine content (no matter how disorganized)and view it on our terms.