Mass import, and some good reading on blogs and comments
First, my apologies to the two or three of you that have me in an RSS reader. I just went back and copied all of my BH posts into posts on my blog. I wanted to do it in the middle of the holiday weekend, so I’d be out of the way when everyone with current topics came back on Monday. However, it was just too beautiful on Saturday, and I went up and enjoyed a bit of a hike in Horicon Marsh instead (No jacket on November 28th? Hell yeah). Late Sunday night is better than midweek. So, if you’re freaked out that I’m suddenly talking about the ASM constitution or the district 2 race again, don’t worry.
One of the main points of this blog is a way for me to always be able to keep track of my own content, and ensure that it only leaves the Internet when I want it to. (The BH’s search functions are terrible, and the Daily Cardinal periodically seems to delete all of their old content.) This is sort of what John Udell calls Hosted Lifebits. I’m using WordPress at the moment, but I’m careful to use a URL that I control, and more importantly, I can always preserve the namespace no matter where I host it. I experimented some with Google App Engine to host the blog, because I’ve got some ideas for posts involving serious computation, but for now no GAE blog engine is as easy to use as WordPress. If I eventually move, however, it should be completely transparent.
Comments are off on the old posts. My original idea was to leave them off entirely. Again, I’m drawn to John Udell’s thinking on the subject, which is that each individual should ultimately be responsible for their own comments, though there’s presently no good way to do that. (For those of you wondering “wait a sec, didn’t he rail against people publishing their own stuff in his first post?” the answer is that publishing and syndicating are different.) I’m sympathetic, but less convinced, by Joel Spolsky/Dave Winer’s version of the argument. Finally, comments demand a fair amount of time, especially if you want it to be any sort of community. The Critical Badger has a great set of commenters, but ask him how much time he’s spent tending to them. There are other, more vibrant places for discussion, and I’d rather they get the traffic. However, I post so infrequently that comments aren’t really an issue, but I would encourage you to read Udell’s posts.
