[H-GEN] software runs the world
Anthony Towns
aj at azure.humbug.org.au
Sat Mar 19 03:46:06 EST 2005
Greg Black wrote:
> My take on the use of lists versus newsgroups versus blogs is a
> bit different. I think Usenet has had its day (and I stopped
> using it in 1995). I think lists still work and are excellent
> for discussions. For me a blog is a place where I get to rant
> about anything that takes my fancy, [...]
I was going to reply to this, but then I realised I'd just be repeating
what Greg already said.
So, some other comments instead. One of the nice things about blogs is
you can be a lot more selective than lists often are; compare, for
instance, trying to follow:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/thrd2.html#00652
and
http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2005/03/16#2005-03-16-mmm-charcoal
But you can only do that because blog's are one person's perspective,
not a conglomerate of lots of people's; providing a /balanced/ summary
of that thread would probably be pretty tricky; no doubt this week's
Debian Weekly News will be a demonstration of just how difficult... :)
But even so, having that thread anywhere but on a mailing list would
probably be pretty awkward, to the point of being impossible. Another
real downside to blogs is that they're not remotely permanent; even just
changing your blog software can make old posts inaccessible to everyone,
which is hella lame.
But then, on the other hand, blogs are much better at linking disparate
things into a single argument -- if you're already just browsing some
random site, having part of the supporting argument be some other random
web site is much more convenient than if you're stuck mid way through
some long discussion. There's also more flexibility in direct content
delivery -- you can inline some pictures, or a movie, or an interactive
flash animation, or just about anything else you think might be interesting.
But mostly, I'm with Greg -- blogs are great for presenting a single
view, lists are great for discussions and combining viewpoints. I like
IRC too, for getting semi-synchronous responses.
ObTech: irssi, blosxom, thunderbird/mutt. Yay!
Cheers,
aj
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