she only seems to have turned the comments on in Sept 05, nothing before that, the few comments made in October had no replies so maybe people got sick of talking to themselves - the content was interesting, my only complaint was the length of time it was taking to load, then realised it showed every entry from May 2005

BTW Wiley Publishing must be having a busy time - Blogger tips and tricks has just had to change his name from Blogging for Dummies

That's interesting about Blogger Tips and Tricks. I'm sure that Wiley will be busy for a while to come as more and more people enter with their own blogs.

Equally as interesting is this so-called "blog." I will try and find out some more information and give an update of what they're trying to achieve.

Oh, there's really nothing about blogging that demands community involvement. It's just keeping a web-based log of something. And linking to others is strictly optional: you do it if you think your readers will find value in the link, not necessarily because that is what blogging is all about. I don't think it's fair to say that those things determine whether something is a blog or not.

On my own blog(s) I just write about what I'm doing or interested in or whatever, and don't care much about other people reading it, though of course they do. My blogging has always been a way to keep friends and family updated on what is going on in my life, and I started doing that on the web in 1995, before most peopel had any idea what the internet was. I generally don't want to be involved in maintaining large lists of links, especially because I keep up with 200 blogs via RSS.

On the other hand, given the lack of interaction in the comments, it sort of looks like they've just got somebody posting those articles there automatically, rather than having a real person blogging. That's a decent use for the web as content distribution methodology, of course, but I don't know if it counts as a blog.

By the way, your Typekey authentication is broken.

Good points Ayse and I agree with you re: the definition of what determines a blog. However, if you're not interacting and you don't want comments then you could easily disable them.

One thing I've learnt is that gardening is a very personal thing. People want to share tips and have others talk about their work which is what builds community. The online chat over the fence spurs ideas and grows people.

Re: the Typekey authentication key. My apologies it's on the to-do list. Thanks for telling me.

Many early blogs were introspective, online diaries, with no comments or way to interact. And sometimes that was beautiful and perfect.

More community-minded folks were gathering at garden bulletin boards like Prodigy [I was on that board in 1991-3], where they talked to one another and shared ideas, plans, answered questions, gave tips, told jokes, and guessed plant ID's. There was no way to post photos, so it took darned good descriptive powers to get an identification back then!

Having conversations and interaction is great for those of us who are in a social mood, but it needn't be a given element of blogging. Personally, it would upset me to have rules or definitions of what a blog should be.

Annie
Austin/TX/USA

Our local paper is trying hard to integrate blogs. They invited people to start blogs on their online site (mixed success since people who have blogs prefer not to be under the thumb of an editorial staff). They also have enabled comments for some of the controversial stories that their paid reporters write. (Think of it like letters to the editor on steroids bulletin board style). Finally they are customers of Blogburst, a blog syndicator. I've licensed my blog to be syndicated by Blogburst and so it appears on the paper's online gardening page right next to content from their paid writers. (I remain an unpaid content provider).

I guess our newspaper is pretty progressive...I hope others will follow.

It sounds like your local paper is very progressive. This is what interests me, I guess, to see how mainstream media incorporate and deal with blogs.

My point regarding the Times Online is not one that I would direct at smaller personal blogs because we're allowed our own scope and priorities.

However there are greater expectations on mainstream media because they've dominated the marketplace for so long and their methods on paper won't work in the blogosphere.

News, articles and interaction have all changed and the rules are different. Times Online, how are you going to deal with that?

Check out my latest post as it directly addresses your question about big media and blogs. “Is it possible for mainstream media to actually play a part in this phenomenon and do gardeners actually want to build relationships with journalists?