Comments on: Eponymous blogs

By: Colin Cmiel

Colin Cmiel — Tue, 23 May 2006 05:14:01 +0000

Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise, not a book yet… but soon according to Alex. Though one could say that they are really both named after Shakespeare.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Tue, 23 May 2006 01:10:05 +0000

The dictionary definition says “named after a person”, but the Wikipedia entry cites REM’s album Eponymous, and other instance of self-titled albums.

Of course a book named after a blog in the book is no more self-referential than any other.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Tue, 23 May 2006 00:35:53 +0000

Strictly speaking, doesn’t “eponymous” mean “named after a person” (as opposed to “named after another thing”)? What you’re going for would more accurately be something like “Self-referentially titular blogs.”

By: Arturis

Arturis — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:50:32 +0000

I’d want to do away with the computer interface altogether and have blogs be thoughts piped into my brain. And the comments could be connected stream-of-consciousness-style where each comment branches to all it’s replies and you can follow each one as far as you like and back out to whatever root you’re interested in. I’d want each ‘post’ and each ‘comment’ to be an idea that I could taste generally at first to see if it’s interesting and then experience in its entirety once I decided it was worthwhile.

Ignoring technical limitations.

By: Urinated State of America

Urinated State of America — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:27:15 +0000

“If we disregard technical feasibility, what kinds of wishlists do people have for improvements in blogs? Or is the form already so mature that any real improvement would change it into something else altogether?”

Flamewars will be conducted by intelligent agents, who will insult each other with wit and verve. Agents that use posts consisting of just “heh” and “indeed” at the end of a quote will be contained by advanced ICware and recompiled.

Otherwise, I’m minded of Stanislaw Lem’s story/essay about literature written by computers: where speculated that when computers start writing literature for other computers, we’d no longer be able to comprehend the output.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 22 May 2006 12:30:16 +0000

a) Threaded conversations; I find that on certain weblogs, I no longer read or contribute, because I’d be poster #200, and can’t reply directly to the post or a particular comment.

b) Widespread use of the method pioneered by Salon’s Table Talk. They had the name of the commenter on top of the post, where it belongs, for easier skipping. They also had a ‘next post’ button, on top of the post, again where it belongs, for easier skipping. The combination of those two techniques would make most comment sections much, much better.

By: Cpt. Iglo

Cpt. Iglo — Mon, 22 May 2006 10:39:20 +0000

I do know of a blog (Wateenlullig.web-log.nl) named after an episode of a comic strip I suppose that doesn't count, really.

By: Victor

Victor — Mon, 22 May 2006 07:32:32 +0000

Not a big deal! Imitating is a common art now a days.

By: Cheryl Morgan

Cheryl Morgan — Mon, 22 May 2006 06:55:33 +0000

Better means of organizing the conversation. There are, of course, blogs devoted entirely to this question. For example, Amy Gahran's The Right Conversation.

By: Bitch | Lab

Bitch | Lab — Mon, 22 May 2006 06:43:38 +0000

I would want a blog that had a way to thread comments, but without giving the user the ability to rename the title of the thread willy nilly! I think a blog such as Dailykos has such but I don’t really read there and I surely haven’t commented.

point-click-drool methods so that the average commentor could easily blockquote the text to which s/he’s replying.