Blogcritics: Comments on Dear High Preists of Weblogs,

Comment by Phillip Winn

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:12:39 EDT

Dave Winer is a great evangelist for weblogs, and I'm not sure that I believe that there are no others. All weblog creators are in a sense evangelists, showing the world what can be accomplished. Some are just more influential than others. Part of your argument sounds as if you're trying to define what should or should not happen in a weblog. This is a natural and understandable desire, but also completely wrong-headed for weblogs. People blog about what is interesting to them. That's natural - we aren't being paid to write about things about which we do not care. Sometimes it seems like a closed circle, but what is the alternative? Write about things we don't care about to draw in new readers? Every week there are more articles and stories appearing around the web and in print about weblogs. Every day more people hear about them. Some are attracted to read them. Others are attracted to start one of their own. Could each of us be doing more? Some of us certainly could, but I don't see why I should have to evangelize. My weblog is a big part of my life, but some of my friends don't even know I write one. Most do. Dave Winer has banked his reputation on weblogs, and he has done a marvelous job of pushing the limits and showing what they can be and how they can be useful. Not all of us can be Dave Winer. :)

Comment by Mmmmurphy

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:48:06 EDT

You have a very good point. I just moved from Silicon Valley to L.A. last year. In SV, I felt out of it because I DIDN'T have a blog yet. So I start one. Then I move to LA and people I meet think I'm some kind of tech goddess because I have a "web page." I barely considered my [then] blogspot site as my webpage. I didn't design it, after all. But even with all their awe of the "web page" here, still, no one reads it. They tell me, "I can't read anything off a computer screen." I don't have that problem. But some people do. And if our lofty, humanitarian goal as Bloggers is to "reach the masses with the REAL scoop", we are failing. The masses aren't reading. Maybe the don't want the real scoop. Or maybe we're not using the right medium. i don't know, but we still have a long way to go.

Comment by Tom Johnson

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 01:01:59 EDT

Concerning Dave Winer at Harvard - I have frequently noticed for many months a number of hits in close succession from Harvard.edu in my site's stats and wondered what was going on. Now I'm wondering if my site isn't being *studied* by some Harvard students?! Scary . . .