The Structure of this Blog
A blog is a public, personal journal to which readers can post comments. It is different from a forum, which is a group of topical bulletin boards where readers can post comments. A blog centers on tracking the thoughts of the journalist over time, while a forum tracks each topic chronologically. Sense from Seattle was conceived as a blog, but the journal entries have been on issues of such general interest, largely political, that the comments from readers have become a vital part of it.
The active participation of commentators has revaled a deficiency in the structure of blogs in general and this blog in particular. While forums usually include a feature to inform return visitors of any new posts or comments since their last visit, blogs usually do not have that feature. It is possible to add the "new post inform" feature to this blog, but the skill required to do so is a little over my head. I am now going to be informed by e-mail when a comment has been posted, but I know of no way to have the blog automatically notify other readers. I might try to post a periodically updated list of new comments, but otherwise it looks like readers on each visit will just have to scroll and check each article of interest for new comments. Once an entry is old enough to be bumped off the main page and put in the monthly archives, it seems less likely that readers will be checking it for new comments, so you may be disinclined to post a comment on an old entry. Journal entries generating lots of comments are probably ones that I should regenerate with new thoughts, to keep the subject on the main page.
For your information, here are some features of this blog you may have overlooked. At the end of each post is an envelope icon, which if clicked will enable you to e-mail the post to someone. At the bottom of the page is a counter to track the number of visits. It was added December 18th, and many of the initial visits it tracked were actually by me working on the page set-up. On the Navigation Bar at the top of the page is a search box which is supposed to search the Sense from Seattle site, but it is not yet producing results, apparently because Google has not yet picked up the Sense pages to index them.
I thank those who have been commenting and encourage other readers to comment if so inclined.
The active participation of commentators has revaled a deficiency in the structure of blogs in general and this blog in particular. While forums usually include a feature to inform return visitors of any new posts or comments since their last visit, blogs usually do not have that feature. It is possible to add the "new post inform" feature to this blog, but the skill required to do so is a little over my head. I am now going to be informed by e-mail when a comment has been posted, but I know of no way to have the blog automatically notify other readers. I might try to post a periodically updated list of new comments, but otherwise it looks like readers on each visit will just have to scroll and check each article of interest for new comments. Once an entry is old enough to be bumped off the main page and put in the monthly archives, it seems less likely that readers will be checking it for new comments, so you may be disinclined to post a comment on an old entry. Journal entries generating lots of comments are probably ones that I should regenerate with new thoughts, to keep the subject on the main page.
For your information, here are some features of this blog you may have overlooked. At the end of each post is an envelope icon, which if clicked will enable you to e-mail the post to someone. At the bottom of the page is a counter to track the number of visits. It was added December 18th, and many of the initial visits it tracked were actually by me working on the page set-up. On the Navigation Bar at the top of the page is a search box which is supposed to search the Sense from Seattle site, but it is not yet producing results, apparently because Google has not yet picked up the Sense pages to index them.
I thank those who have been commenting and encourage other readers to comment if so inclined.
posted by Tom Blake | 2:15 PM
1 Comments:
Tom, thanks for explaining what a blog is. This is the first and only one I have attended. My previous experience has been on forums. As far back as the early 80's I attended a forum on our mainframe computer at Honeywell. I've wondered why the blog is so awkward to use - but now I know it's all about you.
John from Phoenix
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