Comments on: I think I might be allergic to lists and awards

By: Where the F have you been? « electronic museum

Where the F have you been? « electronic museum — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:21:22 +0000

[...] pint recently: why the F do we all blog, anyway? We were talking at the time about Paul’s much-commented post on blog awards. Paul is similar to me – and different to Brian – in that the former blogs as a [...]

By: Why I’m A Fan Of The Edublog Awards « UK Web Focus

Why I’m A Fan Of The Edublog Awards « UK Web Focus — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:37:55 +0000

[...] Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) on 15 December 2008 I mentioned recently that the UK Web Focus blog had been shortlisted for the Best Educational Tech Support blog in this year’s Edublog Awards. As I commented in the post there have been criticisms of the idea of awards for blogging and Paul Walk has recently joined in the discussion. [...]

By: AJ Cann

AJ Cann — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:14:22 +0000

Surely it’s possible to do both in a single blog? I certainly aim to.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:12:30 +0000

Alan,
I do understand your point. If your motivation for writing a blog is (at least partly) to educate the ‘clueless’, then awards and lists would seem to be an effective way to reach them. I’d recommend getting some paper-fliers printed as well!

My motivation for my blog is not to educate others – it’s mostly thinking aloud and sometimes hoping for commentary from people who will help me to clarify my own thinking.

Conversational, rather than educational I guess?

By: AJ Cann

AJ Cann — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:19:20 +0000

I agree with Tony, these awards play an important awareness-raising role among colleagues who haven’t got a clue. My nomination made it onto the UoL website – more than my blog has ever done. As long as we all remain cynical about the whole thing we’ll be OK
Vote for me! http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/

By: Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:21:24 +0000

> I am very interested in knowing who reads my blog, rather than how many.

I read your blog.

By: Doug Johnson

Doug Johnson — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:55:31 +0000

Hi Paul,

I appreciate this post. I was beginning to feel a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness, judging from the comments I received on my blog post on the topic.

Soldier on!

Doug

By: Tim Beadle

Tim Beadle — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:11:31 +0000

The Shorty Awards are a case in point, and I said as much in a Tweet:

– http://twitter.com/t1mmyb/statuses/1051335252

On comments having a limit of usefulness: absolutely. Just look at BBC News’s Have Your Say or any local newspaper’s web site. Forum-like discussion going on in a bizarre, hard-to-follow reverse-chronological threading-less format. Utterly bonkers.

By: James F

James F — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:41:30 +0000

Just got a recommendation to add Brian Kelly’s blog from Google Reader (part of its brilliant new functionality ) so seemed somewhat apposite to add this here. FWIW, I’d agree with Paul that blogs are about sharing your thoughts with those you respect and there is an element of eroding that if you start giving out awards and having lists of ‘must read’ blogs. There is an element of ‘but how do you know about good blogs’ but surely that is part of being in a community and (sometimes) using good old fashioned methods of interacting.

Anyway, to pick up on Mike’s comment ‘Way to go Paul!!!’ .

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:19:09 +0000

The value of comments is an interesting one.

I had lunch with @keirwhitaker (Carsonified) earlier in the week and we got chatting about the diminishing returns you get on comment value once comment number reaches a certain point. I think you and I tend to get fairly thoughtful, insightful comments – maybe 3-10 per post. Once you get, say, 100 comments, the value of these drops off hugely – both from a reader perspective but also in terms of quality per comment. Ryan’s recent post on Carsonified about redundancies is a good example – currently 132 comments – half of them “great job, Ryan” and the other half the opposite. What possible use is that to anyone – either Ryan, Carsonified, or to the people reading? And what motivates people to post comments at this volume? Vanity?

Once systems start letting users “digg” comments up and down (for example http://www.intensedebate.com/) then things take on a whole different dimension.

But yes, I think comments are good motivators, albeit with a kind of Dunbar-like upper limit to quality…