Back in a Bit

I thought I’d write something of a normal post for a change, so here it is and you’re welcome to it. Regular readers may have noticed that my posts tend to exist at the extremes (either short links or spectacularly long passages) so I thought I’d attempt something in between. I should warn you that I may include a classic new-year cliché, around about the beginning of the second paragraph.

So, 2009, eh? Phfff. Where does the time go. Even if, like me, you’re entirely sceptical about the meaning of a new year, it seems impossible not to reflect on things that have happened and things that could be approaching. If you’ve been anywhere near any kind of current-affairs broadcast in the last twelve months, you’ll be only too aware that there could be many things to be miserable about right now. But here on the web, and specifically in the wacky world of the weblog, it’s a very positive time. There are plenty of reasons why this is the case — here’s the first five that came to my mind:

1. Lists are okay again now. Seriously. For a time it seemed like they weren’t, given that almost every blog post in the world had adopted a list-like format, but that’s now calmed down. It’s nice to have lists back. Yay!
2. Isn’t Wordpress great. For a time it seemed like it wasn’t, but the latest version’s really good. Yay!
3. Hasn’t the web become a pretty place of late. For a time it seemed it never would be, but now that modern browsers are really rather good, and thanks to the tireless efforts of many thousands of talented people, it’s mostly looking rather nice. Yay!
4. If RSS killed blogging, then microblogging brought it back to life. The social, personal side has returned with force, be it on Twitter or elsewhere. Even the status line on Facebook has rejuvinated personal publishing. Yay!
5. Isn’t there a lot to write about, all of a sudden. For a time it seemed like there wasn’t — you could either talk about Iraq or what your cat’s been up to. But right now there are loads of things to worry about! Yay!

So that’s not so bad, is it? Exactly. Plenty of reason to be cheerful there, even for a miserable sod like me. The global economy may be skirting around the pan, the energy crisis is still looming, but at least blogging’s in good shape again. Of course, this doesn’t quite stack up, but it might help to take your mind off the more pressing issues of the day once in a while, and everyone needs a little mental space from time to time. Anyone fancy a pint?

A title that amuses the author in at least three different ways simply isn’t enough: convention dictates that a weblog should have a subtitle. A number of publishing applications, notably WordPress, have functionality to allow, even encourage, the use of a subtitle. Prospective authors would do well to note the default subtitle, “Just another WordPress weblog”, with foreboding: for never a truer statement will likely fill this line.

Here, the use of a subtitle has been played down but, when one was required, I went with “a sporadic weblog from the United Kingdom about culture and technology”. You’ll agree that this, while basically accurate, is about as vague as its possible to be on subject matter. It does nothing to capture what the author regularly publishes nor, more importantly, what the visitors come to read.

Of late, I’ve been writing at length about my faulty brain; not exactly a cultural nor technological subject. Quite a fair few people came to read about it too, mainly because they’d been pointed to it by someone else. But what about the casual visitor? The ones that come here following a search on Google and the like? As it turns out, they care very little for my faulty brain. They also don’t care much for culture and technology. By far the most popular search term is “things to do on a train”, which guides them to a highly facetious post I wrote more than seven years ago.

Back then, it wasn’t so easy to post to your weblog on the move, but I’d developed a way involving my own CMS, a Palm Pilot (with sexy folding keyboard) and a mobile phone that allowed me to recover some of the time I was spending on trains (over two hours a day). All that was left to do was think of something to write about. As I looked up and down the carriage, I realised that inspiration was sitting all around me: a rush-hour train out of London packed to the rafters with irritating people. This was a time long before publishing weblog posts as lists was commonplace – I simply observed annoying things going on around me, arranged them in order of irritation caused.

It has occurred to me, however, that those arriving at this post via Google are going to be disappointed by what they find. Whereas they turned up looking for something to fill a tedious journey, what they find is me whinging about how bloody awful people are. So, let’s leave culture, technology and faulty brains to one side for a moment, and give the masses what they want. Following a bit of research, may I present (slightly) more appropriate lists of suggestions of things to do on a train.

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Last year, it was the Best British Blog Competition, and this year it’s the British Weblog Awards. Last year, many weblog authors, myself included, were very critical of the whole affair, and boycotted the competition. This year, however, such criticism is noticably absent. If anything, it has been greeted with comparative nonchalance.

For the 2002 awards, the basic idea was that a panel of judges would pick out the best British weblog, and give the author £1000, as well as five runners-up who would receive £500. What’s so bad about that? To start with, as was debated in great length at the time, defining the “best” weblog seemed to be an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. It implies a set of criteria, and it was hard to imagine any criteria that were appropriate to use for this purpose. What is it that makes a weblog “the best”? The look of it? The content? The number of gizmos? I lost count of the number of times I asked “what is the best vegetable” in an effort to highlight the challenge the Guardian had put before its appointed judges.

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The reverse-chronological arrangement of weblog posts has frustrated me for years. It’s a format that works for about the first week in the life of a weblog, and after that it becomes more and more of a headache.

One of the most basic principles of information architecture is that the good stuff should float to the top. Of course, what that means in real terms comes down to your definition of “good”. In the world of weblogs (and many, many other varieties of sites), this refers to the most recently added content, hence the reverse-chronological ordering of posts. But is the most recent thing you’ve written necessarily the good stuff?

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Curling is all very well, but it’s not very now. See, this things come and go with fashion and, sadly, Curling’s days are long gone. You just don’t see the kids going out Curling of an evening any more. Nobody cares.

So what are the kids up to right now, I hear you ask. Good question. Well, the game everybody is talking about is called Blogger Bashing. The rules are very simple: now that so-called weblogs and so-called weblogging culture are at least three years beyond being worthy of intelligent editorial, you simply have to write on the subject. This doesn’t necessarily involve owning, writing, contributing to, or (apparently) reading any weblogs—but the object is to become the world’s authority on them. Moreover, points are awarded for attempting to point out to the uninformed (assuming they exist) that they’re pointless, boring, egocentric, fashionable or passé. Basically, the more up yourself you are, the better you’re doing.

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