Your Humble Blogger notes that production was down a trifle in June, with 32 notes (including 9 book notes). On the other hand, the production of Gentle Readers was up, with 119 comments (including a few spam, but not so many as to throw the numbers off) and only eleven posts without any comments. Sadly, I am gearing down for July, with an expected stretch starting next week where there will either be No Blogging At All or the odd stop-in-and-say-hi note. After that, there will either be a few notes and then another break, or regular blogging for a week and then another break. And that break may be long; YHB will be moving residence, and may or may not be getting broadband immediately. Much will depend on where we are moving to, which is still unclear, try again later.
John Scalzi, over at Whatever, is taking all of July off. He asked for guest bloggers for that period, and they are going gangbusters. Adam Cline over at Rhetorica asked for volunteer guest-bloggers recently, too, although it’s not clear if he has decided to use them. On each of those, I thought for a moment about volunteering before realizing that (as I just indicated) I was not going to be able to blog much in July. Not a good moment to volunteer to do more blogging.
When I mentioned guest blogging recently to my Best Reader, she was utterly perplexed. She could understand that it’s frustrating to have a blog remain without updates for a while, but isn’t the whole point of the blog the personal voice, which the guest blogger does not (one hopes) attempt to provide? Particularly, of course, since the guest bloggers are all (in the cases I’ve seen recently) bloggers themselves. In other words, while there are few posts here, there are lots of posts at, um, well, it looks like Rose is filling in for Francis for a week, very capably, but still. The good news is that Mark Schmitt has picked up production at his new table at the TMP Café, as well as still occasionally posting to The Decembrist. Also, the TPM Café has started a House of Labor, making the good decision to ask Nathan Newman to be mother. I’m not altogether convinced that the superblog is a good idea, but it does seem to have in the short-term inspired a few of my favorite bloggers (and a few more of my second-favorite) to explicitly respond to each others posts, which has been interesting.
The other metablog news is that there’s the possibility that this Tohu Bohu would change format. I’m not dissatisfied with the present format, but it’s possible that I’d be even more satisfied with a new one. If y’all have any concerns, Gentle Readers, any features you would like to see or hate to see go missing, please let me know. I doubt I’ll make any change before Labor Day, but I’m mulling it over, which is a good time to nudge me one way or another.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Aside from the personal voice, blogs also (in varying ways) offer information, ideas, links to other sites, and — importantly — an ability to participate in the conversation. All of these contribute to a sense of a blog as being a virtual correlate to a community coffeehouse. It’s easy to drop in, listen for a minute or an hour, chat with friends, and not have to worry about parking. Guest blogging can preserve much of that, allowing the coffeehouse to remain open and staffed while the owner is on vacation. Sure, the coffee will taste a little different during that time, but people who want their daily coffee don’t have to find a whole new place with a whole new crowd, and at least we know the milk is still hormone-free.
Oh. Um, about the milk…
Thanks,
-V.
I’m not a big fan of guest blogging. I don’t go to just one place for my blog fix, so, if one person is on vacation, it’s too bad, but it’s not like i’ll have to play solitaire while drinking my morning coffee because i’ve read the entire internet.
I’m a fan of schemes which make it easy to find out whether a blog has new entries. If your blog became RSS-friendly, that would make me happy, but, if it doesn’t, i won’t be terribly unhappy.
I would like the pop-up comment bar to default to opening at the correct width for the text it contains, rather than an inch or two narrower than that width, such that i have to resize it manually every time. This may be a configuration problem on my end, for all i know.