There's an article over at
There's an article over at guardian.co.uk about weblogs this morning. Which means, of course, that it's also in the Online supplement of the magazine. As usual the article is prescriptive - it informs the world what makes a good weblog, intentionally or not. This time, the byword of a quality weblog is personal content.
"The basic premise, however, has remained unchanged. Imagine your own precious little black book (probably a distant teenage memory now) spread open for the world to see. All your hopes, mistakes, peeves and secrets made public but lurking anonymously in the depths of a search engine, daring to be discovered. "
Now, regular long-standing readers and writers of weblogs know that they are a fickle beast and that they change and shift in response to pressures in your life. For example, for the last few weeks I have been short of money, working from home and having remarkably little contact with the outside world. So where does my content come from? The things that I stumble upon from around the web. Links. But that's not all. Long-standing webloggers are also generally aware that people they know read their writing - even if only very occasionally. Some may even have friends who read and write sites of their own. Bits of your life become circumscribed - 'no write' zones. You're not being dishonest, but you have to limit your subject matter. Personal content is the first to go - and over time it becomes harder to find, produce and put online.
Needless to say, I read this article and felt that (while I think that it is missing the variety of weblog content) I had forgotten to write about my life for several months now. I'm going to think about how I might reintroduce it.
