What do you think of group blogs?
That’s the question of the day. Michael posts a comment he recieved:
Just one opinion, so take it for what it’s worth, but I hate a bunch of people having access to posting on your blog. I read it for you…not for them. They can have their own blogs. Or set up a guest blogger blog on KnoxNews.com. But I don’t like them on yours and find myself reading it less because I have to sort through posts.
I feel his pain. I’ve taken some flak for a couple of the co-bloggers I have here. Thibodeaux annoysed (not sure where that guy went) the lefty readers and Brutal Hugger annoys the righty readers. Les Jones says:
Even though I’m on one of those folks with posting privileges at No Silence Here, in all honesty I generally don’t much care for group blogs. I prefer a blog with a single voice. For instance, I think Volokh.com would be a better blog if Eugene Volokh was the only person posting there. As it is, there are too many voices and too many topics represented.
I do, however, like community blogs such as KnoxViews.com where anyone can set up an account and start posting. That’s more of a hybrid of blogs and message boards, and at KnoxViews it’s working.
I do think guestblogging is a good practice when the blog’s author is out of town or unavailable.
I like some aspects of group blogs. I like The Gun Blogs, you see good stuff there (I’m biased since it is my site) but the readership isn’t huge. So, let’s do a poll:
August 24th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Your “group” blog is ok because you dont have a dozen people posting 20 topics a day like Volokh.
August 24th, 2006 at 10:40 am
If one person dominates a group blog in can lead to confusion. Of course the readers will learn to pay attention to who the author is.
August 24th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Yeah, people credit me with stuff other write.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
There’s nothing wrong with group blogs when you’re reading a group blog. But when the blog is named after you, it is cluttered and confusing.
With this blog, I’m not really sure what that means.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
You should have the same survey in regards to the question “What do you think about subjective, ballot-box stuffing polls on blogs or webpages?”
I’d vote “Can’t stand them”, and then I’d email all my friends to get them to vote, while I used my neighbor’s wi-fi and a few handy proxies to personally stuff the ballot box. 😉
on-topic: Group blogs are OK, the advantage is that you don’t have to work as hard to get fresh content every day, although I don’t see that you need that. It’s also easier to get “momentum”, because all the authors usually read the feed and likely leave comments too. Seems like you need comments to attract comments. In all but one case, the group blogs seem to be dominated by mostly one contributer. I also need to get myself a better feed reader that shows the author. I only get author info on the comment feed (Akregator).
August 24th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Generally but not always I like blogs over forums (e.g. gun forums) because when I find a person who I think is intelligent and worth reading I like reading their postings. On forums it is to hard to sort through everyone else.
I agree with the concept that individuals should just get their own blog. I come here to read Uncle, not everyone else. Generally I just read via my bloglines subscriptions and I wish I could just subscribe to you and not your guest bloggers – no disrespect to them intended – if the one I am thinking of had his own blog I certainly would not subscribe to it however he would probably pick up his own readers that way.
I do not read many gun forums anymore, and though in blog format I consider “the gun blogs” just another gun forum, and there are already tons of them out there.
Thanks for allowing the feedback.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
sed s/In all but one case/In all but one case that I have observed/
August 24th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
It depends a lot on the format.
I can’t stand it when there are multiple authors writing with few formatting and stylistic differences. It needs to be obvious who is saying what, and that’s not often or always the case in many group blogs. Likewise, seeing five or six different posts on the same subject with very little differences in information, only opinion, gets old. And if you end up with spats like Wizbang did, it really isn’t fun for normal readers to hear about.
Other blogs do it well enough to make up for the issues, and the added information and threadcount is worthwhile.
August 24th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Uncle:
Thibodeaux [annoyed] the lefty readers
Actually, the lefty readers posted comments to Thibodeaux’s posts which dared to disagree with him, at which point he became annoyed and incredibly abusive.
As to the group blog thing, I think it’s fine, although you could avoid some confusion by making the author of the post more prominent. Maybe set it up so that if author != Uncle, the title would read Author: Title instead of just “Title,” or have some other red-flag style indicator that this is a non-Uncle-authored post.
August 24th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Or just set up icons/avatars for each blogger to the left of each title. That seems to be effective without getting too much in the way.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Well, I’ve never found posts by Thibodeaux, or any other contributors, to be distracting here at all. I don’t think you can judge it in general at all. A couple more ferexamples would be Assymetrical Information and Marginal Revolution — both fine blogs. Volokh, OTOH, used to be much more readable, but last few times I checked, was just overwhelming. One feature which used to be available at Volokh (and I don’t know whether it still is, since he moved from Blogger to Powerblogs) was to select by author with a little URL munging.
It really has a lot more to do with how well the various authors fit together, than whether a blog is better/worse based on being a single/multiple author.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
I like mine. Two people, one blog, with two names. Widly different writing styles, even the causal observer would not think were were the same person.
to many people is hard to follow, though with RSS it is fairly easy.
August 24th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
They suck when a co-blogger mentions embryonic stem cell research – let the delinking begin.
August 24th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
I have no problem telling who is posting here. I can spot #9 and BH in a heartbeat.
I think the more leisurely pace of a single person blog is fine. Having more than one is OK, but too many can push good info down the page quickly and might be missed.
I like the posters here. BH gets folks’ minds working. Nothing worse than falling into group-think.
August 24th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
As long as I have been reading SayUncle, I always assumed that all the posts where written by Unc. I have noticed some things that seemed a little off-topic or were written with a slightly different political viewpoint than normal, but I just figured that the maybe Unc had been up late or eating paint chips or something. Now I will have to start paying attention to the names listed under the headings (have they always been there?).