Research - (II) Bloggers and their blogs

Classifying blogs

The most inclusive classification system of blogs contents I have found is at Wikipedia under, not surprisingly types of weblog. I'm not quite sure which category my two fit in. There is a classification, "Collaborative (also collective or group)" defined as,

"A weblog which is written by more than one person about a specific topic. It can be either open to everyone or limited to a group of people."

However, this seems to be more relevant for the types of blog that have a membership of writers who all blog daily on a relatively equal footing. As I have taken the role of a collator on Finish This and make the decisions about which of the contributors posts are used each day and in what order, I don't think we constitute a Collaborative weblog by Wikipedia's definition. Start This could be classified as "Personal", "an online diary or journal" as each post charts exactly what happened at any given day on the project, but is more of a chronicle of the work in progress than a personal log (I will shortly be looking for other artists who are using the weblog medium as part of my research, maybe we will have to define a new classification of blog to cover working artists and their accounts of their creative endeavors!)

Documentations of previous works I have submitted have always been ink and paper but have always contained a diary element. The format of the blog means that the document is in the diary and that I am able to let contributors and the (internet connected) public know exactly what is going on as it happens. This is creating a very accurate account of the work's life as I am not reflecting on what has occurred but putting it out for discussion in almost real-time. This document is something closer to a live work than the retrospective accounts I have previously handed in. I'm hoping that my assessors will agree that this medium for documentation best compliments the format and context of the project.

Another classification system has been proposed, this time categorizing the bloggers themselves. With the idea that "classifying blogs is almost an impossibility" and that

"portals have their usefulness in categorizing blogs by topic, but I'm not sure that does blogging or bloggers full justice.", "Electric Venom looked at the metaphysics of blogs and broke away from topic oriented classification... thinking about different ways of looking at blogs and how they interact with others."

This system is not as widely recognized as the Wikipedia one but I believe it helps to identify the huge variation in bloggers and their blogs. In this system's view, I'm most likely a "Thinker",

"These folks look to the "big picture" of the web as a whole, with blogs being just one source of information in the massive glut of resources on the web. "Thinkers" running this type of blog tend to link to other blogs by targeting a specific post. If they bother with a blogroll at all, they keep the list limited to ten or fewer sites that they personally visit on a regular basis."

Because this is an assessed document on a structured piece of work, I am only linking to those sites with relevance to a discussion of the works progress and context or to those directly contributing. If it were a more personal journal I would then be more likely to show links to those sites that keep distracting me from working with all their pictures of lovely boots and music I like and all Geof's other sites that I keep getting lost in...

Why blog?

I'm Blogging This - A Closer Look at Why People Blog features an investigation in which;

"We conducted audiotaped ethnographic interviews with bloggers, text analysis of blog posts, and quantitative analysis of posts and blogs."

In answering the question, "Why Do People Blog?",

"We discovered five major motivations for blogging: documenting the author's life, providing commentary and opinions, expressing deeply felt emotions, working out ideas through writing, and forming and maintaining communities or forums. These motivations are by no means mutually exclusive, and can come into play simultaneously."

I typed "why blog?" into Google and found this essay. An alternative classification system of bloggers themselves is offered under Chapter 2 - Why do they do it?, it's a tad negative but a good read (I'm reluctant to look to hard at the list in case I see myself in there smiling back). The essayist admits that it is all a little tongue in cheek but also states that;

"People who are webloggers themselves write to tell me that my essay made them think about why they weblogged in the first place, and made them re-evaluate the quality of the substance of their weblogs. I've gotten email from people who 'got it', and thanked me for being brave enough to be insultingly honest."

It can only be healthy for the medium to have it's detractors.
For a less vitriolic answer to the question I recommend ReasonToBlog, it offers technical and psychological reasons and some possible motivations e.g. "Sharing information - If you've found some interesting or useful information, why not share it with others?". At the bottom of the page it offers possible reasons for the "why-are-people-blogging-won't-someone-make-them-stop explosion of recent years." The problem with this list is that it seems to have been written by someone who hates weblog haters so offers a biased view of the detractors, one classification reads;

"Dis-Association - Since the stereotype of blogs is that people are only talking about making sandwiches and doing laundry, and because I think of those acts as stupid stuff (like going to the bathroom,) I'm going to dissociate myself from those things by saying that I HATE BLOGS! If I'm not feeling quite so radical, I will merely question their utility and existence."

The weblog medium is changing all the time in response to demand from its users, the boundaries between blogs of different classes are blurred as an online journal may also contain elements of one or several other classes and a person may blog for multiple reasons. In a few years these terms may be obsolete anyway and we'll be looking at a different set of rules.