If I want your links, I'll sub your links
Published by dchud on March 19th, 2007 in rant
When exactly did it become the fashion to forgo writing completely and just lazy-post shared links into a blog stream? If I subscribe to your weblog, I think you're nifty and want to read what you have to *say*. AND I CAN FIND YOUR LINK FEED THANK YOU. I'd much rather see your blog go quiet for weeks, months, or even years and then happily find the occasional post than just find links where I once expected to find your own original words.
Like I needed a reason to unsubscribe from a bunch of feeds.
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Dan Scott (not verified) on March 19th 2007
In case you care, I don't think you're off in a corner being all crotchety about this. It annoys me too, particularly when the posts are part of an aggregator. I assume most people that blog links have already set up a separate feed for their shared links, and likewise provide aggregator-specific feeds. It's why, for example, you don't find videos of my daughter showing up in code4lib... it might be cute once, but it would quickly get annoying.
So those who aren't already providing separate feeds for your shared links -- be warned! dchud's on a rant, and I've got his back.
dchud on March 19th 2007
I definitely am being all crotchety about this, but it's good to know I'm not alone. :)
jessamyn (not verified) on March 20th 2007
I'm on the fence about this. The occasional tab-dump from good friends is something that I like to read from time to time, but the "I made my blog software auto-post everything I stuck on del.icio.us" shift is not a step forward. I don't think I'd unsub right off the bat, but if it's becoming more links and less content and shows no signs of turning the other way.... Links aren't content, they're just a arrow pointing away, not what you want your entire blog to become, I'd think.
dchud on March 20th 2007
I agree, and, the ones that became just links and no content are now gone from me reader. This was just notice. :)
mattman (not verified) on March 20th 2007
Yawn.
dchud on March 20th 2007
sleep much? :)
Jonathan Rochkind (not verified) on March 20th 2007
Hmm, I don't really understand what "shared links" means, or "seperate feed for your shared links".
But I see the point about saving blog posts for original content, in the world of aggregated RSS especially.
dchud on March 20th 2007
By "shared links" I mean "your recent links shared into and exported from delicious/magnolia/unalog/whatever". By "separate feed" I mean the feeds those services already make available.
Jonathan Rochkind (not verified) on March 20th 2007
With the exception of some blogs I read mostly BECAUSE of the links they provide, basically the blog functions as an alerting service. Catalogablog is an excellent example of this genre. I read it in order to get pointers to other articles, sometimes with the tinyest bit of editorial content from Dave Bigwood, but often not.
Of course, lately he's been posting original content about what he's doing at his job, which I'm NOT in fact generally interested in.
The blog is clearly a genre that's still in formation as a genre (or genres).
walt (not verified) on March 20th 2007
I'm not that fond of linkposts either. Most frustrating: blogs that have great original content once in a while and linkposts most of the time. But it's easy to scroll past the linkposts...
Edward Vielmetti (not verified) on March 25th 2007
I've been link posting to my blog, in part because I like to see the click-throughs from it to postings (which I don't get from delicious) and in part because delicious is really weak at time sensitive context. I like to have that record of context in my own stream.
Mostly I blog for myself, not for the imagined audience (which is small and self-selecting), so I doubt that you are complaining about me!
bkerr had a nice deal where the linkposts didn't go to his blog's RSS feed but did go to his blog, so feed reader types can ignore it.
Steve Lawson (not verified) on April 04th 2007
Your post appeared right after I'd managed to get selected items from my del.icio.us feed to appear on my main blog. So, even though I doubted you were talking about me, it left me a little deflated. So I immediately linked to this post in my linkblog.
For me, the impetus to push those links to my blog had to do with sites where I really like the links at least as much as I like the longer posts, like Kottke's remaindered links or Stephen Downes' OLDaily.
But I try to be selective (I don't send all my del.icio.us link to the blog, just selected ones) and I try to use the description to add value. I agree that those blogs that just dump the raw links don't get a lot of clicks from me.
For me, it seems to be working. Five of the seven linkblog entries have received comments, which seems like an indicator that someone likes them.
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