I’ve been participating in a discussion over on Amy Gahran’s new blog, The Right Conversation about…well, conversations. Specifically, blogs and conversations.
The other night while I was avoiding the ADHD post I’ve been fighting with I ran across her post about missing the conversation. Now this is something I’ve been wrestling with since I conceded that Denise is always right and I admitted that I love blogging.
As much as I love my blog, comments and conversation have been a stumbling point for me. I love comments. I love comments because they mean someone is actually reading what I’m writing. I love comments because they mean that someone actually cares enough about what I wrote to take the time to write something. I love comments because I hear other points of view.
I do not love comments because they foster conversation. I don’t think they do, at least, not on their own. I think blogs are an awkward medium for a 2-way conversation. By definition, when I blog I am standing on my own little self-made podium spouting off about whatever topic I want. I am shaping context without regard to what others may be saying.
Back to the conversation on Amy’s blog, I posted a comment asking why a blog made a great platform for conversation. Why not a message board? The message board interface seems to me to be much more conducive to a give-and-take exchange of ideas.
Out of that came Amy’s ten reasons why blogs are awkward conversation tools. Denise shot back with her ten reasons why boards don’t work either.
A comment that stays with me was Jeremiah Owyang’s:
Perhaps a forum is a “social mixer” vs blogs as a “soapbox preacher” could be used to visualize the differences.
Now I don’t really see a blog (at least not THIS blog) as a soapbox preacher but I do see it as a way to gather and organize my thoughts on various topics in an effort to be heard about issues, topics and people who are important to me. In that regard, blogs become part of the larger social conversation. So maybe my analogy would be the “town hall” (blog) as opposed to the “coffee house” (board).
The remark that dropped all the pieces into place for me was Amy’s:
…blogging tools provide feeds and permalinks.
Yep, yep, yep. That’s it in a nutshell. Forum posts archive and scroll, but blog posts are permalinked, searchable, fed, and easily found. That really puts it all together for me.
And Denise amplifies that:
And of course I could ask Amy if she wanted to Skype about this or I could call DnW on the phone and say let’s talk this out and it would be faster – but then it would be just us, and we wouldn’t be drawing more folks in, hearing new perspectives and learning from a wide range of experiences. Faster is not always better, in fact it generally isn’t when you’re talking about conversation.
…which of course, is exactly right. I was defining conversation in terms of one-with-one interaction, but a blog is a one-with-many conversation, with comments amplifying the “one” to “many” voices.
It doesn’t resolve the question of comments and how conversational they should be. I know Maryam makes a point of responding to every comment made on her blog. I think that’s awesome. I love the whole “culture of blog”, and wish I had the organizational skills to respond to every comment, but when you’re running in 19/7 time, about a third of the comments get responses and the rest get my appreciation and gratitude for telling me that you’re reading, you’re responding, and on some larger level you’re participating in the conversation.
Technorati Tags: conversation, community, communitytools, blogs
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