A Meta–Blog Entry
I’ve never quite been satisfied with the way I’ve set everything up here, and consequently I’ve shifted things around a lot (though mostly on the back end where readers don’t notice). I originally thought it would be good to have a regular blog, another blog dedicated to English and linguistics, and a third blog that would actually be for non-blog stuff (other writings, poetry, pictures, what have you).
I eventually scrapped the third blog (which started out as an accident, but I then decided to leave it scrapped). There’s now a gallery there instead, but I have yet to do anything with it. I’ll get to it eventually, I’m sure.
But I still feel uneasy about the division between the English blog and everything else. I post there infrequently enough that I don’t have anything even resembling a regular readership, and part of the point in writing (or so I’m told) is to have people read what you write. So I’m toying with the idea of merging them and then simply using categories to, well, categorize the content appropriately.
And on an unrelated note, I’ve been getting tons of spam comments in the last several months. My filter is rather amazing, though, because only a few out of nearly three thousand have gotten through. Still, it annoys me to have to check the filters and occasionally moderate comments, so I’m considering requiring everyone to register before posting comments.
I’m guessing that a lot of people don’t really care much about the issue of merging the blogs or keeping them separate, but I’m sure that some people will have an opinion about having to register. Would this be a bad thing, because lots of people dislike registering for stuff, or would it be good, because then you don’t have to fill in the comment form every time?
Of course, I’m not even sure it would cut down on spam. It would probably just shift the battle from fighting spam comments to fighting spam accounts, which is currently a problem on the forum, though one that seems to be under control.
So, if you have any feedback, let me know.
COMMENTS
5 thoughts on “A Meta–Blog Entry”
Comments are closed.
Braden
I have autocomplete on, so registration wouldn’t actually save me any time. If it makes things easier on you, though, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest.
I’m in a similar predicament with the programming and video game posts on my blog. My boss, whose blog is very starkly divided between politics and programming, just uses categories, to give you one anecdotal data point. I’d be more likely to tag entries if Blogger offered tag-specific feeds. (I always read your English posts, btw.)
pooka
I think writing whether people read it or not is good for your thinking.
I have three online identities. There are variations of pooka (pooka50 where pooka was already taken) and my pen name Franc Li, and I do have my “anonymous” (12 step) postings which are ironically enough under my real first name and last initial.
rivka
Firefox fills in the slots for me too. But I’m fine with registering if it means less work for you.
Melyngoch
I like the morpheme “meta.” That’s about all the feedback I’ve got.
Jon Boy
Well, it sounds like I worry about these things far more than any of my readers. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. I think I’ll just leave things how they are for now. Spam comments are annoying, but I have a really great filter, whereas I have nothing to prevent spam accounts.
Melyngoch: I gave your mom some meta-feedback last night.