I am a firm believer that it is personality that is important in this modern age of Web 2.0, distributed communications and mediated, online societies. I have always felt that blogging is about making connections between people. Easier said than done, but possible. The blogs I enjoy reading are the blogs where the authors are clearly identifiable. They have personalities and opinions and voices that I do (and don’t) enjoy reading.

As Mia has pointed out, blogs from a “personal” standpoint as opposed to an official view are rare in corporate environments. This is not to say that they can’t be done and done well, but these are the exception rather than the rule. I think that people need a ‘face’ to relate to. The Net is a hyper-crowded market place and you need to make full use of any hook you can develop to bring the customers in. One of the reasons I keep coming back to Innocent smoothies, despite their high price, is that they are just so fun and approachable as a brand.

How does this relate to blogging and in particular the “personal” blogging that I practice?

I used to joke that Bright Meadow was a small community of people, more than just me, made up of everyone who reads and comments. I have also said time over time that I couldn’t do it without y’all. I would still be writing and blogging without the regular input of readers, but for damn straight it wouldn’t be the same. It was brought home to me recently that this jest has actually become the reality. In my latest moment of blogging angst (yes, even the best of us have our moments of insecurity) several people stepped up to the plate and flat out told me that I had created a great community around the site.

And that chuffed me to bits.

I am also chuffed to bits by the fact that I have had just three – yes, three – trollish comments in the five years I have been blogging. And the people responsible for two of those came back to me, apologised, and now contribute to the wider BM community.

What has perhaps chuffed me to bits the most is the welcome my guest writers have received. I know it was/is a big thing for both of them so my heart is always in my mouth when they post (not because I don’t like to let anyone loose on my baby, but because what if the readers are rude?!) but I should know better. Somehow there has developed a unique group of people who hang around Bright Meadow and I can trust them (you) to treat the space and everyone in it with respect.

How have I done this? I am not exactly sure, but I think it is something to do with my personal policy on comments. I do have a comment policy, but as you can see it is fairly basic: no spam; no meanness; and I reserve the right to remove/edit obscene or inflammatory comments. My unofficial comment policy is that I leave no comment un-answered, even if it is just a “hello”. All first time commenters get a “welcome to Bright Meadow and thank you for commenting” and as much of a personal response as possible. Even if the comment left is rude I much prefer to respond in a reasoned fashion and try to engage the person in dialogue than just summarily delete it.

I think it makes a difference. I know it has worked on the trolls because one of them flat out emailed me, said mea culpa, and now joins in the fun.

I know when I comment on other sites and don’t get a response, something that happens all too often, I feel unwanted by the blogger. Quite frankly, I find it rude. If you don’t want to join in the conversation, don’t have a comments field. I am a reluctant commenter at the best of times because I am shy and hate to be rebuffed. I can’t be the only one who puzzles for an age over the simplest comment and who more often than note clicks on from the page leaving her contribution unsaid. It is a big thing for someone to leave a comment. Acknowledge it!

This policy, I think, has directly led to readers getting involved with Bright Meadow; makes them want to come back and contribute again and again. It has got to the point where whole conversations and debates happen in the comments between readers. We even had our first duel a few months back! I can’t express what this means to me. It means I have succeeded. And it makes me think other bloggers should do the same. Without our readers we are just one more self-obsessed geek pouring our hears out to the disinterested Net. People read our words, especially on personal blogs, because they want to make a connection. It is unpardonably rude to ignore them.

Where did this thinking stem from? I am not totally sure. It certainly has something to do with my background in customer service, where more often than not a smile, an anecdote and a personal connection with a customer got me that machine sale, and more importantly for my manger, repeat sales. I wouldn’t be surprised if my first introduction to the web being on gaming communities where all the posts contributed to an ongoing story doesn’t have something to do with it. But it is also the inescapable conclusions my research over the past few years have led me to draw. I am not the only one. Neko is finding it hard at the moment to get this personal approach into her research and I can understand her frustration ^*. There are currently certain arenas where it is not deemed appropriate to bring the personal voice (scientific research being one of them) but blogging is categorically not one of those arenas!

So how has my comment policy affected by blog? It has made my blog! It is not an after thought, but something integral to the site. Just as I will not tolerate spam or meanness, I will not tolerate ignored comments. If I ever ignore a comment you make, feel free to take me task.

And now we perhaps come to the best bit and what keeps me sitting at the computer, typing away despite the RSI in my wrists. Here, as always, is where you all get to say your stuff. How did the welcome make you feel? What are your thoughts on commenting? Am I totally talking out of my hat?

And can you help me update the Usual Suspects page? I really want to get it up-to-date and to include as many of you as want to be included, but I don’t want to miss anyone! If you want in on the page, pipe up in the comments or shoot me an email. Requirements are a name and a short bio (no bigger than 50 words if poss). If you want to include a link to your own site, then even better 🙂

^* Yes, I did read it sweetheart, I just needed to think things through.

The following I throw open to everybody to contribute to and talk around. I lack the coding skills to create this myself and I lack the experience in the field to 1) know if it already exists or 2) if I am alone in even thinking this might be a good idea. It is what it is – a moment of possible inspiration that struck (very) late at night after a (very) odd week.

And now time for something a little bit different. My “research” in the field of Archaeology/computing/mulitmedia has taken something of a back seat to life lately. If I’m being one hundred percent honest with y’all, I haven’t so much as looked at a proper academic text or a field report in about a year. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped thinking about things. Bit and pieces have been ticking away in my back-brain and, every now and again, I have to jot something down before I forget it. That’s what follows here. It’s not a concise piece, or very coherent. In fact, it’s more a collection of notes: but I hope you enjoy and it makes you think as well –

Take as our start a complex hypertext document – Holtorf’s infamous piece will do very well here. Hyperlinks are used extensively throughout the thesis to present information in a new way and to forge links between pieces of information and ideas. You, the reader, follow these links through the material, and create your own ‘reading’ of the document. My ‘reading’ will not be the same as your ‘reading’, as we will have chosen to follow different links at different times, taking different paths through the document. Holtorf’s argument is that the sum is greater than its constituent parts. By working your way through the document in your own time and way you make something new and better. He also mentions, though does not really utilise, the fact that hyperlinks can go outside the original material to other extant sources.

All well and good.

However, you the reader can only travel down paths that Holtorf the author has already mapped out for you. You are only able to make a connection between two points, pieces of information, or ideas if he has previously forged that link by hardcoding the link into the document structure.

What if I, Cas, feel that a particular occurrence of the word “neolithic” should link to a different definition of the term than the one Holtorf has used? My own reading, and hence my own version of the document, are severely limited.

With a wiki you are given the choice to make your own edits to the basic source text and to forge your own links between things. I don’t like the definition of neolithic that has been chosen, I can change the link to a different source. Among other things. I can add pages, delete content, change things. The document truly becomes MY document.

However, the original Holtorf vision is lost. What the new user sees is the Cas-Holtorf vision. Previous versions can be looked at, by using the underlying wiki database which saves ‘histories’ of pages, but in looking at them, you loose the Cas aspect.

And what if a third user comes along after Cas and edits yet again? You have spent time editing the wiki and made it your personal reading, yet when you come back, destinations have been changed, links have been added or removed that mean nothing to you, and suddenly it is a completely different document AGAIN.

This is what happens in a wiki – the ideal is the ‘community’ or consensus view. In reality, you tend to get what is the view of the most vocal authors and the most persistent members of the community. These may, or may not, be representative but there comes a point when any but the most ardent editor will give up rolling back edits or making new edits. They will just give in and say “ok, let this person have the final say”. And the reading of the document becomes fixed yet again into that final editors version.

Now I do not say that this is wrong. A community view could be argued to give them broadest view, the view that is least radical and, as such, maybe most correct?

But is there anyway that a wiki can be all things to everyone?

Would it be possible to have a system where the links YOU make are related to you personally – already it is possible to see who has edited what. But is it possible to make your view of the document can be separated from everyone elses. When I sign into the wiki-version of Holtorf’s work, I view the base-work with MY edits and MY links. MY reading.

I can then, if I will, turn to the ‘community’ view of the document. The amalgam of all the edits and links (though I imagine that this would/could become insanity if strict version controlling was not kept in place). It would theoretically also be possible to view the individual collections of edits/links relating to individual people. As overlays? that can turn on/off?
You want to see Johns path through a document, click on Johns view…

Want to see your own, click on your own…

Want to see what the community has decided on, click on the community view…

As I said at the start I am not sure if there is a use for this sort of methodology. I am not sure if there are tools out there which allow you to do this already. But the idea of what it could be excites me. Does it excite you?

So how do you follow a self pitying, melodramatic, over-the-top, love-me-please! post like we’ve just had here on Bright Meadow?

Easy.

By going to the opposite extreme and posting a video that explains wikis in plain english of course!

I always used to be behind the curve with things. I never got things “first”. I put this down to not being one of the cool kids in school but, frankly, I never really gave a flying teaspoon for most things that were classed as cool. Still, it would have been nice to know things before other people…

Lately however, I’ve been privileged to start to drift into circles that are responsible for moving the shaking on a bit, instead of watching from the sidelines.

Take memes for example. It used to be that I’d only get tagged when something had been round the houses so many times it had blisters on its feet. Now I’m frequently in the first rounds of people to be tagged (that I’m aware of) and then I get tagged a few weeks later when it comes back round again.

And don’t get me started on Facebook games and the like. One week it’s zombies, then it’s pirates, then it’s vampires, then it’s zombies again, followed by vampires, and zombies, and – ooh! How about zombie-pirate-vampire-ninjas?!

What I’m trying, very incoherently to say is that I am fascinated by how these things travel round the Internet. On more than one occasion, I’ve stumbled across something and had a momentary “ooh, that’s cool” pause, only for my father or other individual who’s life is as equally un-involved in the internet to tell ME about it four or five months later.

There’s a research question in there somewhere I’m sure, not to mention cracking how ideas permeate the internet would make marketing people very very happy bunnies.

Me, I’m just sitting back and gazing at things with a bubbling sense of school-girl excitement.