Authenticity And The Peanut Gallery - Part 2

I’m not sure that comments are not searchable. I did a name search of ME and found my comments at about five differnet blogs.

I’m not sure about the technical side of the point daniel luke was making, but the social side is bang on.

So many times I’m left in blog limbo though. I’ll read a post, and I’d like to leave comments, but I realize I’ve got just too much to say and it deserves a post, yet when I go to write a post about the thought that occurred to me when I was at the comments section, I’m thinking it really needs a simple link, not so much a post, because I really have nothing to add to the subject, but I haven’t linked thinking I might write a psot, when I should have just left a comment. This is especially true in blogs that are new to you as a blog reader.

BUT, yes, I’m finding a huge number of gems in the comments sections. It’s not even the socalled conversation occurring there that I find so interesting. It’s the prompt, the getting it down while it’s still fresh in your brain idea.

This comment is the exception that proves the rule.

Of course … all of your comments are.

Seriously … I think you’re right, in the sense that when i Google for me name (oh every couple of hours, every day I often find links to blogs where I’ve commented … but certainly not all of them, i don’t think. I should investigate further … maybe Google treats all the comments on differnetn blogs as “the long tail” and lumps them into that part of Google that says “Ther eare more results like these, but we’ve lumped them together bla bla bla” or whatevr that message at the last page of listings is.

Maybe what he means is that there isn’t an easy way to create RSS feeds, or a “gathering spot”, as a blog is for your “first-order” thoughts (couldn’t think of another ways to call them, itr’s early, need a coffee).

Hmmm… an aggregator called Aggregarious ? Wanna help build it ?

Think I agree with bmo: whenever I’ve googled for my name I invariably come across comments I’ve left on other people’s blogs. And though I can’t recall the name of the platform, there is indeed blogging software utilising the blogger API that allows oneself to subscribe to comments associated with a particular blog entry. Sure enough, converting individual comments to rss feeds is not trouble-free, nor hassle-free even for the initiated xml developer, however it’s nothing that cannot be done with a clever hack.

Perhaps the wisdon that ’s often found in the comments section is attributed exactly to the fact that one has to really engage into the underlying conversation, moving from being a mere reader of a post to being a contributor to the discussion underneath. Besides, separating those comments from the context they were intially developed-written for somehow decreases their value, no?

george, I don’t know if it necessarily decreases the value, but something certainly changes, when a post develops outside the blog comment section.

Case: I was about to comment on a post at Dave Pollard’s blog the other day. I realized I had way too much to say on the topic - collaboration, metaphors, and structures. But as I began ruminating about my own post, I came to realize I didn’t have nearly as much to say on the subject as I thought, external to the context of Dave’s post. Hence blog limbo.

The subject matter is something that directly affects me currently, regarding work, organization, hirearchy etc. and the piece I’m thinking about doesn’t fit in on my blog! My blog ‘voice’ - which has been described by certain people, like the proprietor of this blog (Jon), as a virtual ice fishing shack (never thought of it that way, but yeah, I like that) won’t allow it. It doesn’t fit. This isn’t even a matter of self censorship. It’s just that my readers have come to expect a certain degree of stupidity at my blog and I don’t really want to disappoint them with pompous heady critical thinking. AND it does seem like a waste of my efforts.

Hence Blog Limbo. Which might be an idea for a blog in and of itself. A place to park those notions and ideas - the essays, let’s call them - that might be ‘out of blog character’. Hint hint see Inspector Lohmann.

As for the rss - I’m torn. I pulled down a blog that had rss because I was finding I was getting all sorts of readers - and comments - from people who were ‘there for the wrong reasons’ and I don’t mean trolls. Another point altogether. I no longer use an aggregator myself, my blogroll suffices, and I let my ‘trusted sources’ do the meta sourcing - but I’ve reached the point where I think the rss thing is just now messaging anyway -

I don’t want messages - on the way in - or a bunch of readers on the way out, which is the point of rss, I think, sort kind of -

The Blog Explosion thing promises traffic, eyeballs, and the like - been there, done that.

But the ‘collective comments’ thing is really appealing and the idea that the blogosphere becomes twice what it is right. It would allow us to reread ourselves. Not only would we be writing ourselves into existence as Dave Weinberger once wrote, we would be able to better analyze our existence, by seeing themes repeating in our memes, much as we see aspects of our selves repeating in our dreams.

Holiday Snaps. Patterns. Finally seeing our lives as a haphazrd quilt more than a progression on a time line.

Imagine going back and picking up on an idea you had a year ago. I’ve done that with notebooks and paper journals, and it has on more than one occassion prompted me to get on with things in the real world - why not in the blog world. Not just a to do list, but a like to do list, that allows you or forces you to do something you’ve always wanted/intended to do.

And so you see, I’ve over extended my stay here in the comments. And this is not something I would write on my own blog. And yet it is my writing, a seed I’m laying down.

But what about six months from now? Will I even recognize myself?

 . . . eh, not everyone wants remarks made on the spur of the moment preserved for eternity . . . if I had kept my mouth shut, I would never had gotten into the fix I’m in now . . . first you know I’m making idle chit-chat over at the Tutor’s place, next thing you know et alia has me filling in when he’s too drunk to put his hands to the keyboard—that’s right! Our socialist or social democratic or collectivist or whatever noble name he gives to his preposterous Puritanism—he’s a lush! He tries to hide it behind a pretense of connoisseurship, but if you have to spike your coffee with cognac to keep your hands from trembling, it doesn’t matter if it’s XO you’re pouring in there! No doubt he’ll spot this, I’m sure of it . . . well, let him! To hell with the rubbish that he writes! To hell with my rubbish, too! There was a time, a man wanted the straight dope on something, he’d just hang around the cat house . . . not to romanticize the past, but when I was young, a brothel wasn’t like a fast-food joint . . . to be sure, you’d only have so much time with a girl, but then you could hang around the parlour, have a drink or two with a fellow you knew who’d gotten done just as you did . . . it’s how I met Captain Blowtorch . . . he’s really quite mellow after a session . . . not the mad fanatic the Tutor likes to bring out on a leash . . . but fucking is getting more and more expensive in that part of the world, he can’t afford it as much . . . so instead of an orgasm, he goes to that shack they call a church and raves in tongues . . . what insane prudes! they don’t even take wine for communion—grape juice! there’s your real mockery of the Christian love-feast, no alcohol, no αγαπη . . . 

 . . . but all’s not lost for them . . . I’ve considered this before . . . a good dose of sildenafil citrate in their grape juice—oh, what a sight that would be once it took effect! The congregation will be using their tongues for something other than spouting gibberish, I’m sure of that! . . . 

 . . . look at me! I’ve said too much already—if Blowtorch or any of co-religionists stop by here—so much for my plans! You see what mischief these things prevent? . . . next thing you know, every rotten little church will be treating their communion juice like gold for fear of contamination, all thanks to this absurd comments search you want! . . . but maybe a little more frenzy among them won’t do any harm . . . like coal to Newcastle, what the English say . . . and after all the mental stress, lack of physical release, bad diet, and want of any other compentant physician, they’ll come to me . . . and they won’t just get the treatment they need—they’ll get the treatment they deserve . . . go ahead then, let them search . . . they know who they have to come to in the end . . . 

rock on, Doc.

I use an aggregator to read my blogs of interest. A couple of them use haloscan for comments and thus have a separate RSS feed which allows me to track comments as well. Problem is, they’re not threaded. What I’d really like is a way to subscribe to a blog and it’s comments as a folder where each blog post becomes it’s own category and the comments are the items in that feed. Automatically so I don’t have to subscribe to the comments for each post seperately. How far off is this idea?