On the 'one big site'-ness of weblogs...
Here's a weird quote about weblogging: "I believe in my heart that people should come up with their own publishing methods. Frankly, it's boring to surf the blogosphere and see so many sites using the same, tired weblogging tools. The same basic templates, the same 'post a comment' form, the same URL schemes! It's almost as if they're all small parts of one huge site." (Adrian Holovaty).
So my immediate reaction is that the fact that there are a limited set of really popular weblogging systems has probably been a good thing, because it means there's an active and widespread community large enough to be able to self-support, fully explore the boundaries of the software available and push for new functionality. But more importantly, there's an element in which all weblogs are part of one huge site. And that's only partly the sense in which all the web is basically one big hypertext entity in which all boundaries between sites are essentially arbitrarily - or culturally - enforced.
More specifically I mean that at that point where a weblog is pretty much balanced between personal publishing (micro-broadcasting or 'one-to-some' communication) and social software (something like a distributed discussion board) there are aspects of 'one huge siteness' in play - and that that's precisely why they're mostly working. We have a roughly common vocabulary about what an entry consists of, a set of structures about how a site works, and systems of trackback, permalinking and commenting that are pretty much interoperable (in one form or another).
I suppose if I wanted push an old comparison (that I never thought really worked) in a slightly different direction, then I'd say that weblogs needed to be 'like one huge site' to the same extent that a peer-to-peer network needs to consist of mostly coherent and standardised applications in order to do what it does. Maybe some of the newer responses to writing and interactions between people are demonstrating that 'siteness' (heimlich) and 'unsiteness' (unheimlich / other) aren't categories with as much utility as we once thought - or at least that breaching or straddling them provides opportunities for new, powerful kinds of applications.
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Bollocks. Have you ever read a blog writted by a self coding ASP or .NET developer? All they talk about his how they are coding the tools and how the database is working or RSS syndication or what ever. The advent of premade software and the GUI allowed people to focus on the task and less on the process. I seriously doubt that people will make a better weblog if we make it harder to do. I like the fact that I can almost allways rely on Movable Type and that I don't have to worry about editing perl everytime I want to tweak my site.
Then again AOL started their blogging tool this week.
→ Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at August 28, 2003 12:38 AM
One word: Trackback. It wouldn't be nearly as useful if there was fifty competing standards. Thanks to MovableType licencing the standalone client under the Perl Artistic Licence, I've been able to put a basic working TrackBack in to GLUE (the PHP-based collaborative blogging engine that I use).
Surely, the other argument is that due to their simplicity, blogs are easier to customise and fit in with complex designs.
It's also interesting that he's arguing for web standards then saying that we ought to change all blogs so that they are fundamentally different from one another.
*scratch head*
→ Posted by: Tom Morris at August 28, 2003 1:51 AM
I wrote all the scripts that automate my blog myself, yet it still takes on the general appearance of an MT blog...
→ Posted by: Dag at August 28, 2003 2:06 AM
Hmm... 50 tools does not necessarily mean 50 different standards. I think weblogging could definitely benefit from a wider selection of tools that adhered to one standard of permalinks, trackback, etc. A different set of developers could have a different set of ideas about what a weblogging tool should consist of. To limit the number of developers bouching ideas off of and competing with each other doesn't seem that advantageous to me. I'm not really convinced that 10,000 users supplying feedback to one MT development team would be better than 10,000 users supplying feedback to 10 teams of weblogging tool developers, either. Also, how many ideas do you suppose have been put on the backburner by MT's developers that other teams would put a higher priority on simply because it's impossible for one application to handle that many new features while they would be tried out more readily by other teams?
→ Posted by: Bart at August 28, 2003 3:58 AM
I have huge respect for Adrian Holovaty but on this one I think he's missing the point in a profound way. It's like suggesting that each novelist invent their own printing press technology.
→ Posted by: xian at August 28, 2003 6:32 AM
Working on the OneBigWiki, right now it is kinda like the OneBigList. (working on it though)
→ Posted by: Mark at August 28, 2003 7:46 AM
This is obviously tosh. Custom CMSs are all very well for bleating about how 1337 you are with MySQL, but no-one spends three years writing one properly to accomodate the flexibility that MT can give you. Anyway, as a programmer, I find writing CMSs dull as dishwater. Thank God someone else has done the job properly so I can worry about other stuff.
More of a problem, I think, is the ubiquity of design across weblogs. If I see another two or three panelled flowing CSS type design, with dashed borders and undecorated hyperlinks, I'll shoot myself (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone).
→ Posted by: paul at August 28, 2003 7:55 AM
Surely whining about the similarity between weblogs and blogging tools is like complaining that all TVs have rectangular screens and remote controls.
I admit, I do get narked (with myself) when I see blogs that look identical to mine, even if they're using a different blogging tool, and I tell myself to get off my butt and sort myself out a new look and feel. Course I never do because I'm too busying writing my blog and reading other people's to spend any time designing. But is that such a bad thing?
→ Posted by: suw at August 28, 2003 8:19 AM
Surely the similarity amongst tools is a bonus for both writers and readers?
Writers get consistency in how they put together their weblog, build up mental models of how the blogging process works, and can easily transfer this knowledge between packages.
Readers get a fairly consistent interface: posts organised by date, blogrolls, etc etc.
→ Posted by: Tom Hume at August 28, 2003 8:46 AM
Why do all good sites use descriptive page titles? Why do all good sites use clean, consistent, hackable URLs? Why do all good sites use breadcrumbs? Because page titles are important. Because hackable URLs are important. Clean design is important. Site structure, "information architecture" (gag), typography, accessibility, liquid design, usability, navigation. These things matter, there's an infinite number of ways to do them, but only a finite number of ways to do them well. It's not better because we say it's better. It's better because it's better. Adrian should know this better than anyone.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/12/18/the_right_ones_in_the_right_order
"""Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly... [He clucks his tongue to make the noise.] What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel ... [He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.] Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!” with your hands stuck into your armpits. This isn’t better because someone says it’s better, or because there’s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It’s better because it’s better. You don’t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on. [quoting from the play] “You’re a strange boy, Billy, how old are you?” “Twenty, but I’ve lived more than you’ll ever live.” Ooh, ouch! [He drops the script and hops about with his hands in his armpits, going “Ouch!” ANNIE watches him expressionlessly until he desists.]"""
→ Posted by: Mark at August 29, 2003 1:26 AM
Adrian Holovaty says "people should come up with their own publishing methods...as far as I’m concerned, people who do Web development for a living yet don’t use a custom-built weblogging system shouldn’t be trusted."
I agree two hundred percent with the first part. I wrote my own CMS because I like the programming and knowing everything that's going on under the hood. Also, I want to develop new publishing methods.
But that doesn't mean anyone should trust me. My CMS is full of bugs. If you want one you can trust, get Moveable Type or something.
I think the "shouldn't be trusted" comment caused many people to treat this insightful statement as a troll. Too bad.
→ Posted by: Lloyd Dalton at September 2, 2003 5:29 AM
Heh. My comment wasn't meant as a troll, and it certainly didn't deserve all this. Mainly, I'd wanted to point out that, if everybody uses the same tool, innovation stagnates -- no matter how intricate of a plugin system a weblog tool includes. I like diversity. I like fresh ideas. I like choice. I don't like monopolies or oligopolies.
→ Posted by: Adrian Holovaty at October 3, 2003 9:41 PM