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June 30, 2005

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Zap

Typepad is redesigning templates and screwing things up in the process. It's temporary. In Explorer it currently looks better than in Firefox. Our apologies. Please be patient, they seem to think it is a weekend issue.

Ronald Rutherford

The Problem
Thank you so much for an opportunity to discuss some aspects of weblogs.
I too am learning about blogs and have no great insight about making a blog top the charts. Sorry. But please read on...
The first point I want to make is the concept of blogs being communities Communities, shared spaces and weblog reading. If blogs are little microcisms of society with no boundries, then how does the individual find his "home" and his relationship to his neighbors?
"Can blogging replace communities of practice?" says it nicely about prior attempts to create virtual communities...
Before the development of weblogs, "online community" tools like forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards were predominantly used for community building. Experience seems to show that weblogs are proving far more effective in creating meaningful interpersonal connections than centralized community spaces on the web. Can networks of bloggers be seen as the future of online communities?
I thinks the writer didn't address the other virtual communities such as friendster or Tickle. But let us get back to questions of blogs and how to find the right one.
There seems to be a plethora of search engines and directories (also) and getting RSS feeds and table of contents and weblog ranking system and monitor and keep an eye on your favorite weblogs or create your own Bloglines page and lastly reviews of blogs and of note The GeoURL ICBM Address Server.
But do any of these help you find the right weblog for yourself and where you will feel at home? What is the best way to find alsoalso? Can a key word search find it? Will reading every review in chronological order do it? Will looking through directories find it? Which category will it be in? In Blogorama they have categories: feminism, left, right, and policy. For PunditDrome: liberal, conservative, GLB&TG and centrist/libertarian. Which brings up how do centrist and libertarians get put in the same category? Which one does Also Also fit into?
For now I don't see a good way for customers (potential residents) to find the house (blog or community of blogs) of their dreams. Now it comes down to either picking the highest ranked or most linked or most traffic etc. Instead of doing the random walk of a drunk, it would be nice to direct an individual in the right direction. (Not noted above) there is some attempts to follow behind the footseps of someone else that came before you as in a search party or social bookmarks.
One last question for now. I have been trying to do a taxonomy of the political blogs as my first step into 10 or less categories.
What I think will cover the political spectrum without breaking into advocacy groups is:
*Left
*Right
*Center/Moderate
*Independent/Reform
*Libertarian
*Green/Environmental/Animal Rights
*Mixed
*Policy
*International
*Advocacy (Including religion, GLB, feminism)
What do you think?

Ronald Rutherford

This really sucks now (this website). Sorry but Firefox now has the the left side margin go down and then the middle section and then the right side margin. IE looks fine.
Everything looks good (linkchecker) except American Foreign Policy Council indicates yellow (forwarded, forbidden links).

Zap

I'm not sure if I agree to the premise of all this: Finding a home blog community. At least that's not how it works for me, or what interests me about the blogosphere.

I will agree that the ten categories you isolate seem to cover the poilitical spectrum, yet I would add "single issue" blogs to the advocacy category.

I don't think blogs are as intimate as message boards, therefore they cannot develop the same sense of community. Perhaps, they can, but then they basically become message board hybrids, no?

Further, the idea of directing readers/commenters to the best blog for them seems counterproductive, too isolating. Of course, the very busy and big communities like Kos and Redstate hardly qualify as blogs anymore. They truly are online communities where politics rule. Fast breaking news and insight from activist minded citizens is shared, the stories behind the stories get exposed, etc. I'm not sure where it's all headed, but freedom of speech is flourishing, and that can only be a good thing.

Ron Rutherford

How do possible neighbors find your house?
Since I will be advertising a business on line I have looked at some of the search engines and some aspects of getting our name higher on a google search. I think in many ways you are doing just what needs to be done. You have lots of good outgoing links and an increasing number of blogs are linking to you, with a drop of one this week to 55. From the sounds of it you are spreading your name around by word of mouth and posting on other blogs.
One suggestion is to write some Meta Tags as in: into your code. In my informal survey, it looked as if more from the right were using meta tags. A couple of studies of links and left-right divide are at Crooked Timber and hp.

Ronald Rutherford

But more importantly about.com has a good overview of raising your rank on Google and here is more detailed explanation at Page Rank Explained. And then to check page rank at google-check page rank but ranking without a keyword or phrase does not make sense so Rocket Rank is better or try Goya-rank for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Ronald Rutherford

Alsoalso ranked #1 (Rocket Rank) for the phrase “progressive-conservative meeting of the political minds” in 6 out of 10 search engines with the remainder resulting in no ranking.

Ronald Rutherford

Here is an interesting survey of blog readers at Blogads.
While I hope this missive is insightful, I still see problems with trying to find a blog based on keywords or directories. Even if your rank is high based on the phrase used earlier how many will type this into a search engine? One problem I encounter on a frequent basis is that my search will not go to the permalink but to an archive or to the front page. Thusly you will get results that pick key words from multiple posts and not a single post. Directories also have a tough time getting the weblogs into a coherent taxonomy with the most distinguished one being DMOZ.

Ronald Rutherford

Sorry for the breakup in the posts. I kept getting rejected for Comment Spam. I tried it on kos and it rejected it for the meta tag example. I see now it failed here also. "One suggestion is to write some Meta Tags as in: (meta name="(b)keywords(/b)" content="Pacific NW Portal, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northwest Progressive Institute, Puget Sound, Seattle, Portland, Boise, Spokane, Tacoma, Eugene, Bellevue, Redmond, Poctalleo, HorsesAss.org, Red State Rebel, Blue Oregon, Basie, Scott Jensen's Blog, From Red to White then Blue, Evergreen Politics, Pacific Views, RoguePundit, 43rd State Blues, BrightMind"> into your code. Using() instead of <>."
Zap, thank you for your comments and yes maybe I am making too much of community into weblogs. As far as message boards I always felt it was way too random. One thought to the next never had any cohesiveness and often tended to be one sided conversations. Even now I avoid open threads at kos. One example that does come to mind in blogs helping to bring people and communities together is the family blog or the local blog.
I don’t want to give the impression of directing a person to the exact spot to go to but give a choice based on a ranking system of a persons wants and desires with as many choices as they desire. Again, thank you for your time and opening up this thread. I will have some other thoughts latter, if that is ok. Lastly your comment box seems way too small especially when using links.

Zap

Yes, I have filed a list of complaints with typepad since the weekend changes. The comment box is one of them.

Zap

Ron, I came back to this late tonight to look at some of your links, and they're not working. Torrid's link to Kos worked fine in another thread though. Methinks you're doing something wrong, though it could have something to do with the unapproved tyrannical changes here.

Ronald Rutherford

Yes I tried the links here and only AlsoAlso and Typepad Comment Spam worked. They did work on Kos Diary. Goya-Rank is the only one that was slow and unresponsive. Yesterday the problem of the columns when off the front page was ocuring on Firefox with the blue background everywhere.

Ronald Rutherford

Links are still not working in "Post a Comment". In preview mode it returns a 404 not found error when checking the links.
And Zap, have a safe trip.

Ronald Rutherford

I don't know if I am happy or sad that Also Also has followed the advice of using rel="nofollow" in its comments section to avoid spamming(Google Spamming). I am not sure if this is a selection you can switch on and off from typepad. No?
Now commentators do not get points added to web sites that your guests may find of interesting value. Like here.
What do you think?

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