Yeah, I’m blogging about blogging. How narcissistic, self-indulgent and generally wanky can you get?

Well hang on a minute, I’m trying to make a serious point here — I know there’s a number of people read my site who aren’t bloggers, and who don’t really know how blogging works, and that the vast majority of comments that get put on my site are from other bloggers, who are used to the whole blogging idea, so I thought I’d run through a few points.

Firstly, what is a blog, and what is blogging?

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The term “blog” is derived from “Web log.” “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Wikipedia

Are we all clear? Right, well in my case, my blog is a collection of my thoughts about pretty much whatever interests me. It’s my website, I pay for it, and I’ll talk about whatever I want, okay? And that’s pretty much a blog: oh certainly, some focus around a specific subject, but this is a personal one, where I share my thoughts. It’s not a diaristic (is that a real word?) one, because I think you’d all get bored with this:

Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up I noticed I was late. Dressed the kids and fed the cat. In the car in seconds flat. On my way to work then have a Coke, and then somebody spoke and I thought of a meme…My diary

… with apologies to John, Paul, George and Ringo obviously…

One of the ideas I came across recently was that of Participation Inequality. Basically, this states that about 95% of people on the web will read sites or blogs at some point; about 5% of them will contribute from time to time, and about 0.1% of the online community will contribute the vast majority of blog posting and comment entries. This is very, very true.

That’s not to say that I don’t want comments from my regulars: I do, I welcome them. It’s just that I’m wanting to make it as clear as possible to anyone who reads but doesn’t regularly contribute that they’re more than welcome to chip in when a particular topic is of interest to them, or they’ve thought of a response. I’m not even asking you to try and bring yourself up to the commenting regularly post.

If you comment from time to time — that’s great. One mate I know will chip in on the Newcastle ones and not much else, probably ‘cos the rest bores him, but that’s fine — that’s all I’m asking for. Know your contribution is welcome as and when you want to give it.

So what else is there?

• You don’t have to have a website of your own to contribute: you’re free to post a comment or send me a message.
• You do need internet access, but I’m presuming you’ve got that one covered already.
• Like I said when Roger Johansen discussed blog comments, you don’t even need to agree with my opinion. If you want to disagree with me, feel free. Just be polite, reasonable and reasoned about it.
• To those people who’ve personally said that they’d worry about commenting in case I didn’t like their comment, or didn’t want comments on that article, I can delete any comment I like. I can also prevent certain posts from being able to be commented on if I don’t want feedback on them. I can (and do) ban specific words from appearing and force comments which fit certain profiles to be checked over by me before they appear on the site

. Use my contact form to send me a personal message, or post a comment on one of the articles you’ve enjoyed