Useless BLOGS

WoW, is this real. How can anyone put a standard on a blog. Its your space to do whatever you like; however, if you always blog about useless shit people will stop coming. Self-Correcting problem. "And thats all I have to say about that".

I only have one issue w/ the blogs and that's navigating through them. or not being able to. I really think there needs to be a blog list of all the members. or our bookmarks need to show when there's a new blog by that member. otherwise, if a person's blog (that I might want to read) gets bumped off the top 4 or the top 25 then I have to dig through the forum for a post by that person, or go to their profile, to see that blog. it just seems like it would be better to have one centralized area where we can find EVERYBODY'S blog.

LOL - it'd be nice if we could have a rating system where you can rate the blog you read and then as you're browsing blogs, you can choose to only look at those with averages of a certain rating

Man, I love Cheerios. I may never eat them again. LOL

hmmm...how to diferentiate between blog worthy personal insite and off topic content

agreed 100%

Well who says blogs have to be a personal journal? They might have started out that way, but blogs have evolved to cover a wide variety of topics. There are blogs completely dedicated to videos. There are corporate blogs, social news blogs (digg), photo blogs, the list goes on and on. To say that all blogs here need to fit into a certian mold is not only unrealistic, but wrong. There are a wide variety of people here with many different interests and talents. Blogs are there so people can post what they want to, when they want to.

Well, I would have to agree with both sides of the topic. Yes, blogs are for your personal thoughts, and yes, it is a little obvious how people have turned this "Top 25 bloggers" thing into an opportunity to 'level up' as you say; but at the same point if they want to post links to vids and such, then that is their space to do it. I do feel like I miss out on a lot of the good personal topics more now since they do get 'bumped' more quickly. I enjoy the personal thoughts, home life struggles simply because it is a way for us to relate more to one another. We don't get that as much while gaming...

Totally agree. A blog is a "web log." That means it should, IMHO, "log" something. Most of the blogs now are worthless and just another post whore cry for attention. I don't even use the recent blogs bar at the top anymore since it has become a waste of time. Our OMM blog notification thread is the only navigation aid I need.

If people feel the need to blog whore to get a poularity vote who cares. I only bookmark the blogs that deal with the day-to-day. If I want vids I go to youtube, if I want T&A, I go to the NSFW.

I would prefer that the you tube blog links be moved into the forums, as well.

I agree, but i dont think I'll be doing the massive coding work that would be required to limited blogs. People will just have to learn to skip the content that is bad and move onto the good ones. I for one normally read every blog and just skip ones that I know are not going to interest me. For instance, Caesars blogs are never about things I am interested about. This is because he is really into hard core halo 2 stuff (no this is not a diss). Personally I barely play Halo 2. So I know to skip that when I see it. As for the videos, I think some videos are great. Dantes posted his video from the Chicago Lan and others have posted gameplay videos that Im really into as well. A video can easily be a blog and so I dont think getting rid of those is the answer. Oddly enough, the stats you see have not changed the way blogs are posted since we made the figured public. The same people are blogging like they normally did. I think members just want to use the stats as a reason to call foul, but its not the case. The real issue is that many bloggers here are first time bloggers. They never had a blog before and the only posting they are used to is in the forums. So they start out much like a forum post. They post silly videos or short comments, but not much else. As with anything, poeple will either read them, or move on. Eventually they will get board and move on as well. In the end, if other members are reading the posts or engaging in the comments, then I think any blog can be useful. Its a members space to do what ever they want with. The more you post useless crap, the more people will decide to skip over your avatar when the see it. I personally book mark a couple bloggers I like and visit them everyday. If they have nothing new I move on to the sites 4 bar. If a blog is crap, I dont read it. Simple as that.

PS Every blog in the top 4 at the time of this post is actually about daily life.

As Im sure your not surprised I completely disagree with limiting peoples expression in their personal Blogs. In my mind the issue is who had the brilliant Idea of ranking the Blogs?!!??? WTF is the point of that??? That is what is creating the competition and as a result filling the Blogs with allot of pointless crap. I tend to post my Art in my Blog, I would hate to see me restricted from doing that. I also speak my mind political more freely in my Blog, or post up Videos that articulate a political point i want to make. Im more comfortable doing it in the Blog rather then in either my Clan forum or in the main forums because Im not interested in creating a huge flame war. So that is my 2 cents :-) _ BAT

I do not think unranking the blogs is going to fix the problem either. It was a problem even before you got to see how many reads you got on your blog. People want to see their fancy little icon at the top of the page. Maybe there needs to be a page that says, here are all the new blogs for today, not just the last 25 posted.

Hey, I didn't get to say what I had to say because I've been out working in the yard all damn day and just saw this. As a writer, my blogs are always written, always written by me, and generally about things in my life. My life is hardly fascinating, but I get a few reads. it;s more of a journal for me than anything else, so I'm really not that concerned about how many reads it gets. Now, if I write an article (Hey Code, remember when I used to write articles? Summer's almost over! I'll be back!), I do check out the stats, because I feel it is something of a gauge to determine how good the article is. When I write an article, I am writing for the community. When I write a blog, I am writing for me. Now, having said all that, I will admit to a certain amount of irritation if I do write a blog that I think is reasonbly clever, and it's on the Blog list for about 5 minutes before being bumped off. This is espeically irksome when bumped by those who post 5 or 6 blogs a day. However, due to the size of this site, it's unrealistic to expect to remain on a list of 4, or even 25, for very long. Now, as to Rock's intial point, I'm afraid that I have to disagree with him and say that your space is your space - do with it what you will. However, I very strongly agree that it would be NICE if people put more thought, and fewer links, into their blogs. But again, Im a writer, so - surprise! - I support writing. If you are a videographer or enthusiast, your blog probably should include videos. Finally, there's no real way to police this without stifling someone's creativity. I just hope folks think more about being creative, and less about cheap laughs or cheap thrills, when they blog. But, that's up to them.

I think this is one of those sticky things like "Freedom of Speech". It is a difficult line to draw. So if I may offer: if I may try to restate Rock's issue based on reading his blog/comments. #1: I want other people to have a chance to discover my blog. I thought the icons at the top would help, but I'm only there for 15 seconds. #2: I want to explore other people's blogs, ones I may not have seen before... but I constantly dissapointed with blogs that recycle stuff. Rock, I don't think you actually care what people put in their blogs. You just wish you didn't have to painfully sort through them to find the ones you want to read (ones about the blogger). Assuming this is accurate, we need to move the debate to how to solve the issue versus debating people's content... a debate that will never be won. I don't have any actual solutions, just trying to get the discussion targeted correctly.