Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 12:25:49PM -0400, Jeri C. Gloege wrote:
> Okay when did we start erroneously calling online journals "blogs"??  A 
> blog is simply a list of links folks.  Dare I refer you to 
> http://www.spoonfed.net/blogs.html who rants about the misused verbiage 
> of late much better than I???  

Dare you? Obviously. But I'm not sure what the point was, exactly. Scott
tends to rant a bit, and I admire his style, but I'm never sure exactly
what he's saying. It seems he's "upset". Or maybe just depressed. And to
say that a definition of "blog" is "simple" is pretty silly.

Rebecca Blood has a much more intelligent take on the history of the blog:

 http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

Maybe I'm biased - I know and like Rebecca, and have had the good
fortune to know many of the people involved in the early history of
the form, going back to Justin Hall's Links from Underground and
Michael Sippey's Filtered for Purity, through Peter Merholz, Brig
Eaton, Meg and Ev and PB and Jack and Matt Haughey at Blogger, Jesse
James Garret, Cameron Barrett, Jason Kottke, Gael Cooper, Jessamyn
West, Jeffrey Zeldman, Dave Winer and others.

You may want to distinguish between "weblog" in the pure form, which
is the term coined by Jorn Barger in 1997, and "blog", which is the
looser term, and what all the fuss is about (and which likely dates
back to Peterme's coinage of "wee-blog", which I thought was silly,
and which was soon shortened to "blog").

I've used guestbooks in blog-like ways going back to 1994 or so, and
more recently Blogger and Moveable Type and so forth, and still have a
blog, of sorts, though I made a conscious decision to make it more of
a diary and ranting ground than a high-profile news filter or
discussion board.

Despite early vocal opposition to blogs, notably at SxSW 2000 during a
panel on weblogs, I've revised my opinion of them. I still think the
urge to post something to a blog rather than to a relevant mailing
list (whether out of some self-serving ego need, or simply as an
attempt to maximize the reach of your voice) has a negative effect on
the quality of list communities. I've seen vibrant lists wither while
blogs flourish, and have seen lists revive as their members lose
interest in their "personal brand" or as they realize that fame is in
one sense simply trading a few good friends with whom you can talk for
a few thousand who simply watch you and your activities. Or, simply as
they manage to integrate their blogging activity into their overall
pattern of online output and behavior.

I'm interested in the evolution of the Web as a medium, and whether
you like it or not, blogs have had a lot more impact on the way 
people speak, listen, and interact online than anything since email.

> Blogs are not going to change the face of anything. 

They already have. That's why you're ranting about it, after all.

> Thanks to Blogger, BlogSpot and every other build-your-own-webspot-in-
> thirty-seconds tool, anyone with something they want to say, can.

No, this has always been the case. Now, they can say it online, in a
visually rich format, without worrying about the underlying markup or
styles. That is changing the face of the Internet, and it may have an
effect on a society that is learning, after fifty years of consumption
of media, that they can be producers as well.

> If you want a Blog, go to Memepool (www.memepool.com) or Mefi
> (www.metafilter.com).

That's ridiculous. I know Matt Haughey doesn't refer to MeFi as a "blog".
It's a community site. And memepool is a filter, not a blog.

> If you happen to enjoy blogging then do so.  Just don't call the synopsis 
> of your day that cause then you are misusing the term.  And let's face it, 
> if something is going to change anything, can't we at least get the words 
> right here folks??

I strongly agree - perhaps we can start by using the word "blog" properly.

 http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213547,00.html

  1) A Weblog (which is sometimes written as "web log" or "weblog") is
     a Web site of personal or non-commercial origin that uses a dated
     log format that is updated on a daily or very frequent basis with
     new information about a particular subject or range of subjects.
     The information can be written by the site owner, gleaned from
     other Web sites or other sources, or contributed by users.

     A Web log often has the quality of being a kind of "log of our
     times" from a particular point-of-view. Generally, Weblogs are
     devoted to one or several subjects or themes, usually of topical
     interest, and, in general, can be thought of as developing
     commentaries, individual or collective on their particular
     themes. A Weblog may consist of the recorded ideas of an
     individual (a sort of diary) or be a complex collaboration open
     to anyone. Most of the latter are moderated discussions.

     Since there are a number of variations on this idea and new
     variations can easily be invented, the meaning of this term is
     apt to gather additional connotations with time.

     [...]

Hey, language evolves! Amazing. 

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