Any consensus on 'responsible' linklogging?
I’m reluctant to write meta-posts, because I recognize that they’re mostly self-indulgent navel-gazing crap that only contribute negatively to the blogosphere’s value as a whole. Imagine my pleasant surprise, then, when I found out that everything I was gonna write now and more was already said two years ago, way back when linklogs were hot and “tumblelog” was a new word. Macdara Conroy (whose nicely minimalistic website was an inspiration for this new design, by the way):
In a way, my linklog is better understood as a weblog where the entries form around the links, rather than the links adding context to the entries. I’ve seen a lot of linklogs evolving into this style (like Kottke’s, for one) which would contradict Neil’s sweeping assessment of what linklogs are [they always seem to me (personally) like a lazy way of generating excess content, Neil wrote], I believe.
I think the best linklogs are those written by people who read more widely than just the run-of-the-mill, all-this-turned-up-in-my-newsreader-this-morning types, who tend to prop up memes (and regurgitate Kottke). I like to follow links resulting from personal research - like “I was looking for a picture of an elevator the other day and found this great collection of images of elevators from around the world” - and from truly personal interest - “My football team won on the weekend by the biggest margin in history” - because it gives me a sense of the blogger’s personal tastes and browsing life.
Following Anil’s lead, my remaindered links started as a place to put links that I’ve read but didn’t want to commit a full post to in discussing. They started out as pretty spare, more bookmarks than anything, but once it got going, I started treating them as things that other people were reading and would have to make sense of without too much trouble. They’re definitely something that’s explicitly published for consumption rather than just for my own personal bookmarking (like del.icio.us). With the recent switch, the remaindered links are now more small posts than links, which is a better approach for me and what I want out of them.
I approach [my linklog] fairly seriously from an editorial standpoint. Like Tom, I read everything I link to (unless I’m linking an entire site like Wikipedia, in which case I’ve seen enough of the whole to get the gist). In any given day, I’ll run across 30-40 links that I’m interested in putting on the site, but I whittle those down to 10-15 daily. I’m not out to overwhelm people with information like the Gawker sites, Boing Boing, or the, gag, Weblogs Inc. sites. For some posts, I’ll read multiple pieces on the same topic and select the best one…e.g. if I run across a science article in the Guardian, I’ll look for articles on the same topic on the BBC, NY Times, New Scientist, Nature, etc. to see who’s got the best coverage. Strong editorial is my goal, not pageviews.
In other news, in my continuing quest to put the content in focus, I redesigned the log. Overall, I’m pretty pleased, so with renewed faith that I’m writing something I myself would like to read, I’m continuing.
