response 54 of 61:

Feb 18 17:23 UTC 2005

If you look at a blog simply as a collection of posts and attached
comments, they seem to be a lot like conferences with their items and
responses.  But that's not seeing the whole picture.  There are
significant differences between conferences and blogs.  One is control:
Blogs don't have "fairwitnesses", they have owners who can set limits on
content, in particular comments from others, as Anne pointed out.  But
there's another significant difference:  Visibility on the web.

When we say "Grex support for blogs", I assume we're talking about
enabling Grex users to become part of the world-wide community of
bloggers, commonly known as the "blogosphere".  This means that blogs
hosted on Grex will be more web-visible than the conferences.  To post
anything in a Grex conference, you have to be a logged-in Grex user; but
with blogs, you'd want to allow the option of anonymous posting by
anyone (the owner could turn this capability off if desired).  Also,
Grex conferences aren't indexed by search engines.  But if you want
folks to find your blog, you want to let the search engine spiders in.

Then there's the issue of inter-blog communication.  Modern blogging
platforms (Movable Type, WordPress, LiveJournal, TypePad, etc.) all
support "trackbacks".  It works like this:  If blogger A makes a post
that talks about something posted on blog B, then blog A can send a
"trackback ping" to blog B reporting this reference.  Blog B can then
post a link to the item on blog A, or perhaps the actual text of the
item -- sort of an "external comment".  All of this is automated. Blogs
A and B don't have to be hosted on the same blogging platform.  It helps
bloggers find other bloggers with similar interests and thus facilitates
community-building beyond the borders of any particular hosting service.

I gather from Jan's #0 that support for all this is part of his plans.

response 56 of 61:

Feb 18 19:20 UTC 2005

The blog owner rules his or her blog and can either allow a post or 
not.  This is very different from our conferences.  You'll know when 
you post to a blog that the blog owner has editorial control.  It's 
not a free speech issue from the get-go.  Unless, of course, you 
start a blog and promote free speech by announcing you'll never edit 
any comments.  Which would be your choice.

I'll be very interested to see how this goes on Grex.  Right now, in 
the conferences, it's any anything goes event.  From lucid, well 
considered commentary to the outbursts of the mentally ill.  It's 
all there, one big pile to sort through.  With the addition of blogs 
you'll be able to spend time in more controlled discussions.  For 
some, this will be wonderful, for others, well, it won't work as 
well.  I think having the choice to do either, or both, would be 
good for Grex.

About the only rule I'd like to see applied to blogs would be that 
they are at least readable by anyone who can log into Grex. 

response 58 of 61:

Feb 25 19:15 UTC 2005

With that kind of control, the "mentally ill" folks here will stick to
confs, unless of course someone creates a blog for these folks.  Well,
thanks to Mary's enlightenment, I'm all for the blog thing.

response 60 of 61:

Feb 26 01:59 UTC 2005

It's hard to imagine that the truth isn't disease ridden, then.