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programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
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I started out in early 2004 as a blog skeptic. But over the last four years, I've become a born-again believer. In that time, I've written almost a thousand blog entries, and I've read thousands upon thousands of blog entries. As a result, I've developed some rather strong opinions about what makes blogs work so well, and what makes blogs sometimes not work so well.
I'd like to share some of the latter with you today, in a piece I call Thirteen Blog Clichés.
Before I start, realize that these are my opinions. That should be a redundant statement on any blog, much less my own, but I'm putting the disclaimer out there anyway. Just because I run my blog a certain way doesn't make it the right way-- or even a very good way. These are preferences, not beliefs. Please don't be offended if your blog, or a blog you enjoy, commits one of my so-called clichés. I'm not trying to single any one person or blog out here. It's your blog, and you don't have to answer to me. I'm just some guy on the internet. Run your blog as you see fit. These are nothing more than broad observations formed over a period of four years where I've been deeply immersed in blog culture.
You may not agree that these are clichés. You might even feel very strongly that I'm wrong about all of this. That's what comments and trackbacks are for. Use them.
This list isn't in any particular order, with one exception. There is nothing I dislike more than the redundant blog calendar widget. It's like a recurring canker sore we can't quite seem to rid ourselves of.
I can't think of a single time I have ever found the blog calendar widget helpful. My computer already has a calendar function, so it's not like I need another calendar displayed in my web browser. Every post carries an obvious datestamp, so I can easily discern when it was published. But knowing whether someone posted an entry on the third tuesday of the month? Utterly useless.
The calendar widget is the vestigial tail of blog engines, evidence of our primordial ancestors. But we've evolved; it's time to lose the tail. Surely there's something more useful we could put in that space.
One of the cardinal rules of web writing is to avoid large blocks of text. There are plenty of excellent web writing guides that exhort you to break up your text, using bullets, numbered lists, quotes, paragraph breaks, images-- anything, anything to avoid creating an intimidating wall of dense, impenetrable text.
And they're right. That's what you should do. I do it all the time. I'm doing it right now.
But like all good advice, it can be taken too far. For example, when you find yourself inserting random pictures into your writing for the sole purpose of breaking up the text.
In the above snippet, what does that image have to do with the text? As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing at all. I see this on a disturbing number of blogs and feeds that I regularly read. It's probably due to the influence of Philip Greenspun and his seminal book, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, where the text is juxtaposed with random photographs that Philip has taken. It's one of the earliest and best references on web development, and the fact that it's still relevant today despite its age speaks volumes about the quality of Mr. Greenspun's writing. But it's the writing that makes the book a classic, not the amateur photography sprinkled throughout its pages.
As the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But you should no more insert a random image into your writing than you would insert a thousand random words into your writing. I don't care how beautiful your photographs are, it's a terrible, irresponsible practice that distracts and harms readability.
And those of you sitting there smugly, with your stock photo library and your peripherally, tangentially, almost-but-not-quite related images that you use to break up your text, don't think I'm not talking about you, either. Because I am. Think about that the next time you read an article about a "web 2.0 bubble" accompanied by-- you guessed it-- a stock photo of a child blowing a bubble.
Images are not glorified paragraph breaks. Images should contribute to the content and meaning of the article in a substantive way. And if they don't, they should be cut. Mercilessly.
When I find well-written articles on blogs that I want to cite, I take great pains to get the author's name right in my citation. If you've written something worth reading on the internet, you've joined a rare club indeed, and you deserve proper attribution. It's the least I can do.
That's assuming I can find your name.
To be fair, this doesn't happen often. But it shouldn't ever happen. The lack of an "About Me" page-- or a simple name to attach to the author's writing -- is unforgivable. But it's still a problem today. Every time a reader encounters a blog with no name in the byline, no background on the author, and no simple way to click through to find out anything about the author, it strains credulity to the breaking point. It devalues not only the author's writing, but the credibility of blogging in general.
Maintaining a blog of any kind takes quite a bit of effort. It's irrational to expend that kind of effort without putting your name on it so you can benefit from it. And so we can too. It's a win-win scenario for you, Mr. Anonymous.
I'd like to talk to you about your flair.
Blogs work because they're simple. When we clutter up our blogs with a zillion widgets, features, and add-ons, we're destroying an essential part of what makes blogs worthwhile.
I've lost track of all the times I've clicked on an image in a blog and been hijacked by some crazy JavaScript image loading technique, when a simple link to the image would have sufficed-- and probably would have been faster and more convenient. Or when I've moused over an unassuming hyperlink and had an annoying, superfluous image preview of the link pop up when I didn't want it to. And do your readers really want to see pictures of the last 10 visitors to your blog?
Before you add a new "feature" to your blog, consider whether this feature will be useful enough to your readers to overcome the additional complexity it adds to the page. Hint: almost none of them are.
I'm all for linking generously to outside content. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, after all. Although if you look down in today's world, you might find that you're standing on lots and lots of midgets. Large or small, we owe them a debt of gratitude.
Citing your references and influences is a great and necessary thing, but obsessively listing every single blog you read-- the so-called "blogroll"-- is just noise.
If you're really reading this many blogs, you should be linking to them organically in your blog posts, in a sort of natural quid pro quo. Wearing a giant blogroll on your sleeve is an empty gesture. I'm reminded of the distasteful way that blogs in giant ad networks (such as Weblogs, Inc) spam every page with a huge list of internal links to their other blogs. It feels artificial and insincere.
Publish your OPML if you think organic links in your writing aren't telling the whole story, but avoid cluttering up your page with a huge, spammy blogroll.
I'm a big fan of tagging. It's far superior to the old method of placing everything in hierarchical folders. Tag categories on blogs are moderately useful, particularly for bloggers who tend to bounce around among many different topics. What I've never found useful, however, is the stereotypical tag cloud visualization, where the size of the tag word varies with its frequency.
The perception is that tag cloud visualizations are cool, like badges of honor for the tagging club. The reality is that tag cloud visualizations are chaotic, noisy, and unusable. Keep the tagging, lose the cloud. A simple sorted list of tags, along with the number of posts associated with each tag, is much more effective.
Advertising is a fact of life. People need to feed their starving children. I get it. I've even reluctantly entered the field myself. But is it really necessary to make your blog look like Times Square? Does every square inch of whitespace have to be filled with paid links, Google AdSense, and ad banners?
In the process of researching this article, I found a related article on blog usability that's a perfect-- even ironic-- example of how you can hurt your usability with excessive, obnoxious advertising. It's everywhere.
It is almost never in the reader's interest to see advertisements, so my advice is to tread very lightly, and be respectful of your audience. Bad advertising is so prevalent that if you take the time to advertise responsibly, you may find that readers appreciate you for it.
Well, probably not, but it can't hurt to try.
I don't begrudge anyone their right to post whatever it is they think they need to post on their blog. But let's be perfectly clear: your readers aren't coming to your blog to read about you. They're coming to your blog to find out what it can do for them. If you find your blog turning into a diary of your daily activities, you'll have a very limited audience unless you happen to be a real world celebrity. Even my wife isn't particularly interested in the minutiae of what I do every day. Why would I expect my readers to be?
That said, blogs are a place for writers to find an interested audience, and a place for readers to find a helpful peer and a unique voice. It's OK to be yourself; at some level, it is a cult of personality: people are reading not only because your content is useful to them, but because they like you. It's normal to inject a regular dose of yourself into the conversation.
But like Tabasco sauce and other powerful seasonings, a little YOU goes a long way. A really long way. Write accordingly.
If you haven't posted anything new to your blog in a while, don't waste our time with apologies. Just write! The best apology is new and improved content. Maybe with a wee bit more consistency this time, though.
The most important piece of advice I give anyone who asks me about blogging is this: pick a schedule you can live with, and stick to it. That doesn't mean you should post substandard crap, of course, but I find that talent is far less important than enthusiasm. And the best way to demonstrate your enthusiasm-- and to improve-- is to get out there and write. Regularly.
And if you can't muster the enthusiasm for writing regularly, move on. But don't stop creating.
I find meta-blogging -- blogging about blogging -- incredibly boring. I said as much in a recent interview on a site that's all about blogging (hence the title, Daily Blog Tips). I wasn't trying to offend or shock; I was just being honest. Sites that contain nothing but tips on how to blog more effectively bore me to tears.
If you accept the premise that most of your readers are not bloggers, then it's highly likely they won't be amused, entertained, or informed by a continual stream of blog entries on the art of blogging. Even if they're filled with extra bloggy goodness.
Meta-blogging is like masturbating. Everyone does it, and there's nothing wrong with it. But writers who regularly get out a little to explore other topics will be healthier, happier, and ultimately more interesting to be around-- regardless of audience.
One of the most pernicious problems in blogging is the echo chamber effect. Most blog entries merely regurgitate what other people have said or add vapid commentary on top of news articles and press releases. Only the tiniest fraction of blog entries are original content, and only a tiny fraction of that fraction is worth your time. One of my very favorite articles is Chris Pirillo's piece on 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber. Chris has been blogging for a very, very long time and he has the battle scars to prove it. This call to action should be required reading for every blogger. With pop quizzes.
It's always been deeply disappointing to me that we have the whole of human history to talk about, and most people can't get past what happened today. If I wanted news, I'd visit one of the hundreds of news sites that do nothing but news every day. Putting yourself in the news business is a thankless, unending grind. Don't do it.
If everyone knows about it, what value does that information have? Three years from now, will anyone care that Apple released a new iPod on that particular day? My advice here is almost contrarian: if everyone else is talking about it, that means you should avoid talking about it. Switch things up. Seek out uncommon sites with unique information. Dig down to original sources and read the material everyone is commenting (comments on top of comments on top of comments) endlessly on.
If all you can find to talk about is what's already popular, you're not trying hard enough. Form your own opinion. Do your own research. Go out of your way to blaze a new trail and create something we haven't already seen hundreds of times before.
Yes, exactly like this one.
The problem with Top (n) Lists is that they become a substitute for critical thinking, the classic, laziest possible use of Cliff's Notes that every college professor and high school teacher fears. You're supposed to read the book, then read the Cliff's Notes as a companion to the book-- not use the Cliff's notes as a substitute for reading the book.
Lists are a great convention. They make sense, people understand them, and they're a logical way to structure your writing. But don't let lists become a crutch. I'm always taken aback when I see the "most popular" posts on a blog dominated by Top (n) Lists. Shortcuts are only meaningful if you know what it is, exactly, you're cutting. If all you read is whatever Top (n) Lists have managed to float to the top of today's Reddit or Digg homepage, then you've cheated yourself out of the deeper experience of reading a complete book.
If you find that the Top (n) List convention is a go-to tool in your writing toolkit, consider rebalancing your writing portfolio with longer, more in-depth pieces as well. Not everything should be a sprint; throw a few small marathons in there somewhere to complement your short distance skills.
A blog without comments is not a blog. Yes, there are exceptions for massively popular blogs where comments clearly don't scale. But until that applies, the value of the two-way conversation far outweighs any minor inconvenience on your part. Writing is inconvenient. Get used to it, and get over yourself. The sum total of community contributions is far more useful than any one thing you'll ever write.
Besides, It's an open secret in the blogging community that the comments are often better than the original blog entry itself. Would you browse Amazon without the user reviews? No? Then why would you willingly choose to run your blog that way?
Don't be afraid of comments. Embrace them. Moderate them. The community will respect you for it, and your blog will be better for it as well.
This piece ended up being much longer than I originally intended. But I've had a lot of this stuff on my chest for years, and I wanted to do it justice. I also needed to explain myself in a constructive way so I don't end up offending too many people.
I've already broken at least two of my own rules with this very post. How cliché.
Discuss.
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Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions
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And yet it is still possible to follow all these guidelines and still be crap, as my blog illustrates.
JosephCooney on August 17, 2007 03:38 PM... I would disgree with the lists being a cliche: It works because people, by nature, don't like reading lots of text. Lists (done properly) add to the usability of the article.
I feel like writing a followup to this though. :)
Rachel on August 17, 2007 03:43 PMThis post finally got me to write something in the "About me" section of my blog. All three of my readers will be so excited. ;)
Kevin Dente on August 17, 2007 03:49 PMHow about this one: writing a blog with close to 1000 entries and give your readers one way to browse them: sequentially. Thanks for the search box though!
Eric on August 17, 2007 03:51 PMJeff, I'm glad you included Top (n) Lists.... because that's the first thing I thought of when I read the title! :)
Great stuff! I am wondering about the "no comments" one though. I suppose there could be a blog that is there to express one's thinking with no real reason to want any feedback.
I think I would like to turn the feature on/off on a post-by-post basis. For example, if I blog that California Microbreweries make the best Pale Ales, I may simply be stating a deeply held belief and do not want to read anyone else's opinion.
If I blog that "I really like Pale Ales, particularly those from California. Does anyone out there have any favorites from other places (like Kona)?", then yes, comments are welcome.
Then again, the fact that I am writing a comment may indicate that I really believe in them, but do not want the responsibility of reading or commenting on them...
Steve on August 17, 2007 03:51 PMWhile not cliches per se, I have a similar list of blog annoyances that match this pretty close except for one that you missed: no syndication feed. This is 2007 and the bulk (IMHO) of the blog readers hit you with their blog consolidator and not via a direct url browse. There are a couple of really good blogs out there that don't syndicate and I totally space reading them....bummer for all of us.
Nice job...as usual.
Mike Shaffer on August 17, 2007 03:56 PMJoseph-- Shhh! Ixnay on the logbay! the The less people that know about your blog, the better-- it's where I steal all my best ideas from!
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000734.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000818.html
I think you are mostly right. Especially about the points 8-11. I disagree about Top(n) lists though. If you actually add some new content there, you might get something. You can explain a subject (or a few) in a clear way, while the list itself catches the eye. It's a good trade-off. Naturally - it's a matter of balance.
Great list, although I disagree with point #13 (A blog without comments is not a blog). Comments are nice, but not essential.
Mark on August 17, 2007 04:09 PMDisagree with #2, at least as stated. An image -- even one completely orthogonal to the post's topic -- enhances the aesthetic of the page.
Guy Kawasaki, who is one of my top 10 favorite bloggers, inserts an image with every post. Sometimes they are arbitrary.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/08/how-to-talk-to-.html
A somewhat related aside: Personally, I think the text column is too wide on your blog. I read this post in Outlook, and then read it again when I clicked through to comment. I think even *more* use of whitespace (i.e. don't scale out to 1920 horizontal resolution!) would make an excellent blog even better.
PWills on August 17, 2007 04:18 PMGreat List. I agree with most of these except for the tag cloud. I think the tag cloud is okay as long as you limit it to your more frequent tags.
Thanks for some great advice.
Brent
Brent on August 17, 2007 04:26 PMI turned my calendar widget in to a heat map of my activity over a given month, and I think it turned out rather well. I don't have it on the homepage though so the chances are no one ever sees it: http://simonwillison.net/2007/Aug/17/
Simon Willison on August 17, 2007 04:27 PM> "your readers aren't coming to your blog to read about you"
That depends on the blog, surely? It's like saying Mr Book Author, people aren't reading your book to read about you. They are if it's an autobiography.
If you find your blog is becoming a diary, maybe you're just going proper old-school, and expanding the term back to whence it came: web log.
Blogging's just a medium. The message is up to you, and it's the only thing people really care about.
pauldwaite on August 17, 2007 04:28 PM#10 & 11 are exactly why I stopped reading blog by guys like Scoble & Winer.
And #10 also applies to podcasting (podcasts about podcasting) and why I stopped listening to guys like Curry.
Jim on August 17, 2007 04:35 PMJeff,
A good list, I know that I'm guilty of many of these myself at times. However, most of the people who read my blog are my friends, so it does include a fair bit of personal content. I really should start keeping two.
I found it funny that you mentioned the random image thing, something I think your blog is quite guilty of from time to time. I don't really have time to dig up a lot of examples, but here's a recent one:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000929.html
Kamil Kisiel on August 17, 2007 04:36 PMI run a group blog covering local politics, and people in the comments section were so consistently awful that we've had to disable comments entirely. We tried moderation for a couple of months, but weeding through hundreds of illiterate, racist screeds each week just wore us out.
Eric on August 17, 2007 04:37 PM> I run a group blog covering local politics.. we've had to disable comments entirely
Eric, I'm amazed you were able to make comments work that long on a political blog. Political blogging is a far too dangerous hobby for me. I'd rather take up something safer, like juggling chainsaws.
> Guy Kawasaki, who is one of my top 10 favorite bloggers, inserts an image with every post. Sometimes they are arbitrary.
I find GK smarmy and annoying (if he says "bull shiitake" one more time, I'm gonna throttle someone), but I have to disagree with you here. Of all the posts on his main page, almost all had relevant photos and/or illustrations. I was surprised too.
Lots of other bloggers suffer from the Random Images Inserted in Text problem, but I'm not going to name names.
Jeff Atwood on August 17, 2007 04:38 PMI definitely agree about 10-11. I had to chop a few blogs from my feeds because I essentially got four stories throughout the day on the same events.
Metablogging is particularly annoying. That was one of the reasons why I stopped reading Robert Sc()ble (sorry, he's a link whore, I'm not going to give him any more Google Juice than I have to.[scratch that, I'm not sorry]) He'd post an article about something, and then spend the next day putting up posts to the effect of "My post hasn't shown up on any of the blog search engines yet...Oh, it just showed up on google...now it's on Technorati...Techmeme just picked it up...ad nauseum"
"I find meta-blogging -- blogging about blogging -- incredibly boring"
Err... isn't that what you're doing now?
Telos on August 17, 2007 04:50 PM14. SPAM in Your RSS Feed like this:
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juergen on August 17, 2007 04:54 PMGood list - and I found it first after Tara Hunt twittered it. ;) I wanted to point out that I think you meant AdSense, not AdWords (even though your point is very well taken - and I can be guilty as charged). :)
Chris Pirillo on August 17, 2007 04:58 PMFinaly, great post, very true.
Listen to PWills, he's right, lines could be shorter.
Talking about blogs, Guy used to be one of my favourites, but he is so into ads nowdays he
doesn't even need random pictures any more. I got the impression lately that he just throws something in a hurry just to have a fresh page for the ads :(
Good points all, though I like meta-blogs and am a staff writer at Daily Blog Tips. If there are sites about being a better wind-surfer, cook, programmer, why not sites about being a better blogger?
And what about this post? It's great, but it's meta-blogging too.
I wish I could have linked to this article in a piece I wrote a few days ago, 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog.
http://skelliewag.org/50-tips-to-unclutter-your-blog-44.htm
Skellie on August 17, 2007 05:18 PMI think my blog scores 0/13 (or 13/13, depending on how you look at it) on this ... however, I have recently embraced the missing 14th cliché: "loooong time since last post!" ...
Derek on August 17, 2007 05:26 PMJohn Lam (the IronRuby guy) in each blog entry puts an image not always referring to the post content. It's still a good blog. (Here: http://www.iunknown.com/ )
I think you need to come clean and admit that the only reason this was posted was so you'd have an excuse to show off that pretty pink journal you purchased!
Justice~! on August 17, 2007 05:26 PMsome of us want to remain anonymous and infrequently read. not everyone is ego driven you know. some of us write to write.
anonymous on August 17, 2007 05:39 PMAlex is the dog BTW so I don't think he took many pictures. But my guess is your actually seeing if anyone is paying attention. :-p
Brian A. Randell on August 17, 2007 05:44 PMGreenspun's images, although random, were purposeful. He was the founder of photo.net one of the first true communities on the net and the artful pictures certainly attracted people to that community. Also, as he states in the preface he wanted the first coffee table computer book -- because the book looked accessible I bought it. It led to me Greenspun and his free three week bootcamps -- an incredible learning experience that jump-started my web career. Btw, maybe you should allow commenters to post images ;)
Geri Langlois on August 17, 2007 06:04 PMA very thoughtful post. However, regarding #6, I believe that it really depends on the writing style of the blog's author. If the author focuses on one and only one topic in each blog, I think a hierarchical categorization system works fine. Otherwise, tags seem to be a better choice.
Mohammad on August 17, 2007 06:04 PM*cough* Speaking of tagging... With ~1000 entries the old search box doesn't always cut it here. Although your back-linking to old posts relevant to the topic helps a lot (and helps suck up more of what little time I have!).
My other meta beef here is your URI names. I like having the title in the URI such as ../blog/thirteen-blog-cliches.html because it gives me immediate feedback on links that link back to previous posts.
Eddie Groves on August 17, 2007 06:29 PM"...I can't think of a single time I have ever found the blog calendar widget helpful..."
One blog site I go to uses it to make it easier to retrieve articles in archives. Keeping your initial disclaimer in mind, I personally find it easier to use than the standard archive menu.
>>standing on lots and lots of midgets.
LOL, thats funny!!
I would have put a 14th:
- Commanding discussion or reactions at the end of a post.
It comes off too condescending IMO, feels to me like the blogger is saying: "there you go, I've come up with this astounding piece of prose that will inevitably arouse your minds, thus, you should discuss...in fact, you must discuss this amazing topic I've just layed out for you, I'll return to the olympus now, and leave you with your fellow mortals..."
well that was a bit dramatic, but it comes off too cocky.
hectore on August 17, 2007 07:23 PMIronically enough you violated #10 w/ this post ;-). That being said, you rarely metablog so I'll let it slide this time. I've personally learned a lot of these the hard way, and more often than not it was because I saw something on another blog that annoyed me, only to realize I was guilty of the exact same behavior on my site.
jayson knight on August 17, 2007 07:41 PMMan, oh man! You've been reading my mind, Jeff!!
And what is it with people and widgets? The consensus seems to be that if you aren't a WordPress blogger, you're just some kinda moron. And some of the biggest selling factors on WP blogs is the plug-ins, gadgets, and gizmos. Like I need a blog to feature an analog clock when I wear a watch and have the time displayed in the system tray anyway?
Even aside from websites, just look at how everyone is all aflutter over Windows Vista because of its glossy widgets and resource-hogging eye-candy. FireFox is another great example of this - people are so gaga over the plug-ins, widgets, and greasy monkeys that they seem to have forgotten to use the dang app for - dare I say it - web browsing.
Lately, it sures seems that fluff, rather than substance, is the order for the day...
Rob O. on August 17, 2007 08:00 PMI agree w/ everything here except the top (n) lists... I think they serve a purpose, readers eyes like to browse bullets and numbered lists, it gives them something to do.
Mike Panic on August 17, 2007 08:55 PMNumber 1, replicating standard OS functions as widgets, is probably my biggest pet peeve.
If you're at somebody's blog, you're already at a computer and can use your own system to figure out things like today's date. DUH!
It takes up space that can better be used to lay out your content more logically.
Chris Papadopoulos on August 17, 2007 08:56 PMOh, I just love tag clouds. I love how they work exactly backwards. The biggest, most prominent links are the ones that have been applied the most liberally; the ones that will be the *least* helpful in narrowing your search. Genius.
Justin Piper on August 17, 2007 09:10 PMI'm only in disagreement regarding the diary issue. A blog is a blog is a blog. You're only as obligated to your audience as you feel you are. The beauty of the blog is that it's a passive medium. You can express your feelings, opinions, tribulations and it's up to the reader to take the of reading it.
To rule out an entire genre of weblog as a cliche just because it doesn't interest you is going a bit overboard.
Chris on August 17, 2007 09:14 PMI agree with everything but #3. There are various reasons for not providing your real name. In an age in which spock.com and similar sites (stalkerati springs to mind) provide everybody and their dog (potential employers, customers, landlords, whoever) with the ability to gather a rather comprehensible profile on everyone, it sounds like a good idea to me to keep a low profile (no pun intended). After all, the internet does not forget anything, and who can tell what their personal circumstances will be ten years down the road?
anonymous on August 17, 2007 09:32 PM> I've already broken at least two of my own rules with this very post. How cliché.
Rules were made to be broken. (Doh! Yet another cliche in response to a cliche!)
Haacked on August 17, 2007 10:33 PMI'll second the two previous anonymous comments - anonymity can be desirable for many different reasons.
Also, if you discount what is said solely because the author is anonymous, I have to question your ability to think for yourself. If something is written and well supported, it should stand on its own regardless of authorship. On the other hand, just because somebody you trust in relation to certain topics posts something about another topic, doesn't mean you should trust it solely because of authorship.
anonymous (3) on August 17, 2007 11:11 PMAn "About Me" page doesn't have to contain a name and I don't think that's what Jeff was getting at. The purpose of it is to outline your motivations and hobbies, maybe what you do for a living, that sort of thing. It's to give enough background information on the person to really appreciate what they are writing. Whilst a name is nice, it doesn't really add to that depth in any meaningful way and so isn't needed.
As for writing Top(n) lists, one related problem is that everyone then seems to refer to them by their number. Surprisingly enough guys I've not memorised the list (yet :S) and so am having to jump back and forth. A simple "I agree with the one about meta-blogging" rather than "I agree with 10" takes you a small amount of time and saves everyone else a lot.
[ICR] on August 17, 2007 11:24 PM"This Ain't Your Diary"
I completely and utterly disagree with this point. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. In fact, I feel that if you really want to build a "loyal" readership, you *should* include some details about your life and inject some of your personality into your blog posts. Otherwise, you're just writing magazine articles.
Unless you really *are* boring. Then you should steal quotes from "The Big Lebowski" and "Animal House" to spice up your posts.
And could you call this the "Top 13 blog clichés"?
Scott on August 17, 2007 11:45 PM> I feel that if you really want to build a "loyal" readership, you *should* include some details about your life and inject some of your personality into your blog posts. Otherwise, you're just writing magazine articles.
Isn't this what I said? Search for the term "cult of personality".
Jeff Atwood on August 18, 2007 01:04 AMMy own blog pet peeves:
- No search, or search that doesn't work well if at all. Solution: Use a Google search box that searches your site.
- Difficult or impossible to page back & forth. Once a post is off the front page, you can't find it.
- Posts with no date. Because sometimes you want to know if an article is 5 years old or 1 day old.
Chris L on August 18, 2007 01:05 AMJeff, great points.
I agree with all of them except lists maybe. I find that they are a very nice way to make the content scannable.
Regarding meta-blogging, I think that this niche will somehow merge with web-design and web-development.
Blogs are merging with websites after all, they are no long the online diary of 17 year old girls that want to share how the ballet class went, as you pointed out.
Daniel on August 18, 2007 03:22 AM"This Ain't Your Diary." ?? Well, pardon me, but maybe it is. Although no one may want to read a blog that someone is using as a diary, I don't agree with your suggestion that using a blog as a diary is a bad thing. No one wants to read my paper journal but that's okay, because I don't write it for anyone else. Yes, I know, a blog is public so it would seem that someone writing one expects some others to read it but not necessarily. Which brings me to that calendar widget...
Maybe, it's not there for the reader. If an author uses the blog as a diary, the calendar may be a useful tool. It is a quick and easy visual reference to determine when posts were made.
Other than that, I agree with your list...even though it IS a list. :>
inknpaper on August 18, 2007 03:31 AMOops! #10. You fail it!
Aleksandar on August 18, 2007 03:35 AMI have always assumed that "blogroll" was the product of an English mind, coupled with a suitably scatalogical sense of humour. (Not uncommon over here).
You see, "bog" is a colloquial term for "toilet". So "bogroll" is a roll of toilet paper. A sprinkling of pun powder later...
Which puts the thing firmly in its place, I'd say.
Mike Woodhouse on August 18, 2007 03:57 AM#14: Open Threads. "I can't think of anything to write, so how about you write for me?"
Al on August 18, 2007 05:04 AMAddendum to list: Embedded objects or widgets that grab keyboard focus on load.
A. Fountain on August 18, 2007 05:44 AMJeff, you might want to use em-dash html entity (—) instead of using double dash --, this what I learn from John Gruber of DaringFireball. Your blog has been my favorite all time insightful writings, I don't know how actually you keep up with your writing and work, and of course your idea streaming engine.
I have seen so many sites sprung up with all top (n) listamatic tantamount points, which I believe it to be one of de facto ways to get to the top social digging sites like digg itself. Though it is highly excessive information overload, probably one of the top productivity killers, and people likes it. Which I find it weird. It is unclear whether to put these top (n) list stuffs under blogs that works or blogs that doesn't work so well.
Fred on August 18, 2007 05:47 AMI laughed my ass off when I read the point about meta-blogging. You have a very dry humor ;)
fran on August 18, 2007 06:03 AMAgree with pauldwait and Scott about #8. It's a good rule if you're trying to be a "professional blogger." But most people who write blogs aren't. They're interested in providing an update on the big things in their lives (not the minutiae), and the flow and progress of their thoughts, to a probably quite limited audience of their friends, family, and a few random fellow-travellers. Reading "planet" sites (aggregators of the blogs of people within a thematically-defined community) like Planet Gnome and Planet Emacsen, I'm actually quite glad to read diary-type posts. It gives me a window into the lives of people with whom I have something in common, even though they might otherwise be very different from me. Yes, posting diary-type stuff makes you a "commodity blogger." But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing for most bloggers.
I think #9 (pick a schedule and stick to it) is bogus, too. Most people who read a blog read it via its feeds, and so will be notified when there's a new post. You don't have to stick to a schedule just to make sure that there's new content when they come back to it -- this isn't 1999, and people aren't checking their bookmarked sites manually. Of course, it's also pointless to apologize for not posting regularly, for the same reason. Just post when you have material.
There should probably be another one added -- if you're trying to make your blog your job, don't make it obvious. None of the blog cliches above are as annoying as a blogger who has specifically adopted advice like "don't be a commodity blogger" or "always stick to a schedule" because they see that as the way to make money or to be an A-list blogger.
Cowherd on August 18, 2007 06:06 AMYou mention inserting images and breaking up text as a way of improving readability for a blog. There's a third way to improve readability that you should have mentioned: limit column width. Lines should not run on endlessly, and, for many readers, having to do that manual carriage return on long lines can become a pain since it is easy to lose your place. Newspapers have known this for a very long time, and I see many blogs now picking this up as well.
Mark on August 18, 2007 06:14 AMI am the developer of the Blogger Calendar [java version]. I use my calendar often to tell me what I was doing when provided a reference date. I tend to blog everything.
I have found a great many uses. The link I provided demonstrates one of the installations of the calendar. I hope you will check it out.
Regina Thomas
QiSoftware
Great, absolutely great article! I especially liked it because I have followed all of these practices from the beginning, for carefully thought-out reasons just like you wrote.
The only two I violate is (11) and (3). (11) because sometimes an event is newsworthy and my site is partly devoted to tracking current events and developments within my niche. Most of the time, however, I do "blog for the ages".
(3) is more of a pet peeve. I don't mind so much if an author doesn't say who they are. I DO hate it when the author is this egotistical, overbearing jackass who includes a blown-up head-shot of their ugly puss in every single post and their name is the biggest thing on the page and repeated twelve times. People like this are trying to make celebrities of themselves, to the point where it is assumed that their content is a nil consideration. Yes, I'm looking at you, professional bloggers posting under the umbrella of some mega-corporation.
So, I've been avoiding including too much data about me, because I don't want to turn my audience off with too much egocentric posturing. I assume people are there for the content, not to kiss my feet.
But thanks to your insight, I will resolve to include one (1) tasteful "about me" link to a simple bio, for people who just gotta know.
Love it. Especially meta-blogging.
Thanks for the great read.
Tod McKenna on August 18, 2007 08:59 AMDéjà vu! I could have sworn I read this exact list before. The part about the top(n) lists and comments seems especially familiar. Have you posted this before ?
J. Stoever on August 18, 2007 09:05 AMI remember taking the default calendar off my blog thinking:
"Well, it would be helpful if someone missed a week of posts and wanted to quickly navigate back to them, but, that's not going to happen often enough for me to leave this otherwise useless component on the page."
Then I got to the arbitrary images part; I was fairly certain I only included vaguely witty images, but there was a small fraction of me that thought the image of Sherlock Holmes was pointless. Upon further inspection, I'm pleased to say that Sherlock can stay.
Actually, now that I look at everything for a third time, it seems that I don't break any of the "Atwood Guidelines of Taste". My 4 readers had better appreciate it!
Aaron Forster on August 18, 2007 10:37 AMIf blogging about blogging (meta-blogging) is so boring, yet you wrote about it! I suspect you find it at least a little intriguing or else you wouldn't have made this post.
joshua on August 18, 2007 11:31 AMThe problem I find frustrating with blogs is that many just generate too much noise. If you are posting more than once a day, I would take a serious look at how useful each post actually is to your readers.
I read a dozen or more blogs each day, and really don't care for your "daily links" or other superfolous posts. I think Coding Horror is great in this respect with its one post per day and each is usually of high quality.
Doug on August 18, 2007 11:39 AMAh, my tag cloud has been forever immortalized on coding horror. ;-) I actually agree with you, I never cared for tag clouds. It was only until 2 weeks ago I started playing with WordPress trunk and its built-in tagging support which I used to turn my categories into tags. But yeah, I should find a better way to display them.
Paul Stamatiou on August 18, 2007 12:25 PMRegarding:
The Useless Calendar Widget: I couldn't agree more. I actually author a blogging application (Google Battle Blog if you're curious) and made a point to specifically avoid the calendar on the very premise you assert. I can't remember the last time I've actually been interested in the month and day someone posted. A calendar is a left over from the days when the novelty of the blog was the daily accumulation of content and not its substance. Blogs have since evolved. Nowadays people who hit a blog and bother to delve into it beyond the latest page of postings are far more likely to be topocentric about it.
Random Images Arbitrarily Inserted In Text: I disagree with this one. By contrast I absolutely cannot stand a text-only blog. Text-heavy blogs are a waste of the medium. A text-heavy blog is basically a web based e-mail message one might as well send to my inbox. Random images are better than none at all. However, I will agree that in every post a random image becomes mechanically obvious. Plus, its total mitigation also depends on what the blog is about and/or who is doing it. As always relevance of content trumps presentation.
This Ain't Your Diary: Not so fast. Again, it's about who's doing the blog and why. What if the blog IS a diary? I think what you really meant to say was that most of us have mundane lives and shouldn't be attempting to build an audience parlaying every detail of it to the public. Again, the author and context matter. "I got up, brushed my teeth, and jogged around the block" is uninteresting if I blog it today. But if an astronaut on Mars blogs it next week, well, that's pretty damn interesting. :) The diaried lives of exceptional people in extraordinary circumstances can be extremely compelling. But even then, blogging isn't necessarily about building an audience so much as it might be about self-expression. Blogging for money and audience are actually relatively new motivational trends, but far from the original.
Sorry I Haven't Written in a While: Could not agree more. However, I would also disagree that the way to correct this is to "write more". Writing to fill a blog can lead to thin content. Every blog has its own pace and it is completely valid to only post when something interesting happens - depending on the purpose or reflection of the blog. RSS in particular, which helps to effectively forget about a blog until it updates, helps with this logic.
Mindless Link Propagation: I agree with this one, too, but also only to an extent. Propagating actually has two useful functions. One, to, solidify the philosophical viewpoint of the blog's author without re-inventing content. And two, to push a viewpoint across the internet that may not otherwise get pushed by the mainstream media. We haven't really had our "Pentagon Papers" of the blogosphere just yet, but we will eventually, and propagation and mirroring will be critical to making sure that information is provided with redundancy. We don't want to fall into the trap of such a thing as a "blogging leader" because, really, that deflates the medium and returns our mindset to a sort network television comfort zone. Be wary.
Dave on August 18, 2007 12:41 PMGreat list! For the most part, I agree about allowing comments, but some blogs serve different purposes than others.
Many blogs, such as Daring Fireball, are a one-way microphone for opinions. DF reveals Gruber's perspective on things... and people still come. His is an "answer" blog.
Others, like my own blog, are meant to be "question" blogs - we seek input and throw out ideas to be torn apart like meat to rabid dogs. Here, comments are key.
Jason Swadley on August 18, 2007 01:15 PM
I think there is a SEO rationale for some of the things you point out, such as the calendar widget.
@Stephane Rodriguez:
Doing something simply for an "SEO rationale" isn't explicitly on the list for the same reason that drive-by downloads aren't.
Anyone who makes a bollocks of their page's UI to place higher in Google deserves whatever's coming to them.
It probably won't come as a surprise, then, that I agree totally with Jeff "The Last Cowboy" Atwood about tag clouds. I'm glad someone finally pointed it out.
Eam on August 18, 2007 02:06 PM"That's what comments and trackbacks are for. Use them."
Sorry, Jeff, I couldn't find a trackback URL for this post, so I'll just provide the link here:
http://www.chipsquips.com/?p=907
Sterling Camden on August 18, 2007 02:20 PMHmmm... I recognize that calendar snapshot from somewhere... Isn't it from one Mr. Hanselman's blog?
Vaibhav Gadodia on August 18, 2007 03:22 PMOK, my opinion now.
There are two types of bloggers: the first is the journalist type of blogger, who writes concise pieces of information and lets his/her users know what's new on his niche. These people are organized, have an About Me page, a calendar, and a moderate blogroll.
The second type is the blogger, the simple blogger. There are two types of the simple blogger. Money-oriented blogger and information-oriented blogger. What do you want to do with your blog? Earn money like everyone is doing, or just write information, useful information, and thus, good content?
I agree with you regarding these cliches. The tag cloud will go away, will fade with time. It's a Web 2.0 feature, overutilized.
Chip on August 18, 2007 03:33 PMSome good tips here. Some that had already bored the crap out of me, and some that made me think. The list thing... Yes, long lists with questions are fun to answer, but to read? I don't read them, so why would my readers want that? (And shamely enough, a list is my latest content!)
Joshua_Tree on August 18, 2007 03:55 PMI highly disagree with your comment about tag clouds. I think it's an easy way for a new reader to grasp what topics the blog is covering. You can say whatever you want in the "About Me" section, for instance, write that you are interested in C++ and philosophy, but your tag cloud might show that the biggest topic is lolcatz. What to believe? I will conclude that you have a higher opinion of yourself. Tag cloud show what are your results, and what you ultimately produce and interested in. For me, it's the best invention in user interfaces for a while. Information Architects have also adopted it.
heri on August 18, 2007 04:08 PMI have to say I totally disagree with number #8. Just do a define:blog on google and you'll get a load of definitions that say a blog is exactly an online diary ;)
- Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.
- An online Journal.
- A weblog or internet diary.
- A personal journal/diary that is available on the web.
- Blog (originally weblog) is a diary or history.
- Online journal of a website owner.
GREAT POST! Back to basic with the obvious.
It made me change my position on blogging, and I am off to change a few things on my BLOGS.
Thanks, Larry
Larry on August 18, 2007 06:11 PMThis was a good read. I disagree with what you said about tag clouds though (perhaps because I don't want to admit that the tag clouds my site heavily rely on aren't actually poor design). I think some clouds are easier on the eyes than others. The one depicted in this article is indeed horrible. On the other hand, I find sites like Flickr have it right.
Also, as far as #8 goes, I think it has a lot to do with your target audience. If you're trying to attract a large portion of the internet then writing about what you bought at the supermarket isn't very appealing. But if your blog is something you share with your friends, then they might be interested in your day-to-day life.
Eleo on August 18, 2007 06:24 PMWhat i don't like also, and this happens sometimes in different kinds of articles on web pages, not just in blogs, is putting more than 1 link with the same destination very close to each other, just like you did in "Mindless Link Propagation" paragraph: 2 links to the same "http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/18/10-ways-to-eliminate-the-echo-chamber/" page.
Adrian on August 18, 2007 07:51 PMYes! Yes! Yes! I agree with all your points. Except for no.8. If it's a celebrity blog, then as a fan would lap up whatever you talk about yourself.
I have been making satirical swipe at meta-blogggers and meta-blogging in my blog. Making jokes at bloggers and bloging is my niche. I find them a BORE. Yakking the same useless, no-brainer tips post after post. Of course there are some new and useful blogging tips, but that's far and few.
You don't need comments to have a successful blog. You don't need comments to have a successful blog. You don't need comments to have a successful blog.
Who reads a blog where the comments are more interesting than the content!? Not me. Not anyone. That's silly talk. Come on now.
Smarmy on August 18, 2007 10:04 PM@Heri:
Not sure you actually read Jeff "Silent But Deadly" Atwood's comments about tag clouds. His suggestion to include a simple, sorted list of tags and their frequencies addresses your concerns without using some terrible widget from the "Oh look! A shiny object!" school of UI design.
I would have liked your article had you titled it “Learn how to blog Jeff Atwood style!”
Though you make a humble start highlighting that these are “your” opinions, the tone of your article does not reflect it.
Ok, so I want to display a random picture because I came across it and found it brilliant, or say I created it myself. Do I have to write a 200 word blog that suits the picture to share it with my audience? You are stifling creativity.
Besides, who are we blogging for?
In the genuine artist the desire for applause, while it usually exists strongly, is secondary, in the sense that the artist wishes to produce a certain kind of work, and hopes that that work may be applauded, but will not alter his style even if no applause is forthcoming.
- Bertrand Russell.
Anything works so long as it adds value to someone and that someone can be just you.
Preeti Edul on August 19, 2007 12:16 AMWhat does Jeff use to run this blog?
And if you, Jeff, are reading this, I am curious as to what you think of wordpress for effective blogging (assuming that the clichés you've listed are avoided during the wordpress usage).
I agree with Jeff's comments on the blogosphere intuitively, but I am more interested in what he has to say - due to his blogging experience - about the technical side of running his blog. Software, tips for long-term management - I see Jeff has changed several things in codinghorror since the beginning.
Pen Name on August 19, 2007 02:39 AMYou raise some wonderful points. And you negate the value of raising those wonderful points by letting your ego get in the way of otherwise good writing.
Quick quesiton: Is this list a conscious critique of your own blog methods? Or a glaringly hypocritical self righteous attempt at externalizing your own flaws? Either way, congrats on attacking the work of others while turning a blind eye to your own faults. Job Well Done.
Ahem -- #10 - you find blogging about blogging incredibly boring? then wtf is this article about? This point was great for a nice laugh at first, given the nature of the post, but the sene of humor quickly gave way to bittersweet pity when it became clear that you were trying to be serious.
also, dude, lose the thesaurus!!! you will seem much more intelligent the moment you stop trying to sound intelligent with clunky, often misused obscure words. your readers will stop suspecting that you're really compensating for something else when you erroneously substitute 'vapid' for 'boring' or 'pernicious' for 'harmful.' Reflect for a moment on your position on visual clutter, which is spot on by the way. Now think of the verbal equivalent - using teacher-PLEASE-notice-my-essay words is not so different from adding lots of stickers, banners, etc. to a visual composition. You should really talk to yourself about flair, if you insist on co-opting jokes from Office Space.
Lastly, your writing will benefit tremendously from your purchasing (and utilizing) both of these books:
A) Strunk & White's Elements of Style. In it, you'll find lots of useful tidbits to strengthen your own writing, such as avoiding useless lead-ins ("One of the most"), etc.
B) Dale Carenegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People - you'll win a lot more people to your way of thinking once you hang up the "I's" "Me's" and "My's," and stop insinuating that your readers must be at fault if they disagree with the almighty You. Alternatively, check out Brian Regan's 'Me Monster,' - the subject of this joke should strike a familiar chord with you.
Once your writing is somewhat worthwhile, your attacks on the faults of others will seem less like an unintentional punch line.
i think two of the reasons for your own success are:
-only post quality. (you don't ever post unless you've written something good)
-keep doing it over time.
people who say "i only have an audience of 3" are needlessly pessimistic: you only had 3 readers at one point. i remember only having one reader initially. so i wrote hard for that one reader, and now there's... dozens ;-).
lb on August 19, 2007 03:56 AMI just deleted a bunch of ads from my blog. I've been researching whether a personal blog is commercial or noncommercial if it has ads on it. I'm starting to think that the answer has something to do with profit motive, but am continuing to research.
I actually feel better now that some of the clutter is gone.
I'll be doing more...
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2007/08/coding-horror-thirteen-blog-clichs.html
steve garfield on August 19, 2007 06:03 AMJeff,
You really nailed a bunch of the "no go" issues for blogging. The one item I will push back a little is lists (#12) only because lists to be among the most-read things on the blogosphere. This inspired my brother and I to start a quirky, list-driven blog - fourreasonswhy.com.
I disagree about calandars. You say that you already have a calendar on your desktop - correct - but it doesn't tell you or link you to the days' posts on a blog, does it?
The useful blog calandars only highlight days in the month where posts were made.
There certainly is a lot else I agree with you on though. Too many clicklets, huge blogrolls (use OPML instead). Tag clouds are good though.
There are simply different people in the world, and you only appear to see one side/opinion : yours. Which is fine ;p
But some people like to navigate to discover, some like to search. Some browse. etc. Some know exactly what they want.
Ads ARE EVIL though. Why would you create a site to lose the visitor by provide links to irrelevant othe rplaces to something totally differnt : ie : read blog -> buy crap.
hmmm.. :) Good post!
Kosso
Kosso on August 19, 2007 08:46 AMExcellent post, Jeff.
I have a simple solution to the Giant Blogroll eye sore: I publish my Google Reader Shared Items feed. My readers can see what I'm reading that I think is important without having to sift through noise.
Keep enlightening us!
Ian Lotinsky on August 19, 2007 02:07 PMDisclaimer: this is purely my own worthless opinion and isn't meant to offend.
I think that you're taking things way too seriously. Blogs are by their very form trivial. You toss some words together and be done with it. The push to write something every day results in a weakened form of quality. Blogs are for people to sprout of their unfounded ideas and thoughts. The daily format also prevents a person from creating a consistent structure to their site (as blog ideas can arrive in a random order).
The blog style doesn't translate well to serious writing. Serious writing can be seen (as an example) in the process of writing a technical book - say on programming. An author (most likely more than one) writes a book over several years. Editors and technical reviewers then tear that book apart looking for faults and ways to improve the work. Draft after draft are written until the book is finally considered acceptable.
To repeat my point: you're taking blogging way too seriously. If you want a serious medium then enter the world of technical book writing. Blogs are a joke and will remain as such.
Andrew on August 19, 2007 05:39 PMMy favourite cliche, as demonstrated about 15 minutes ago right here at codinghorror.com:
I went to http:://www.codinghorror.com/ and saw the :discipline makes strong developers" article. Nothuing new? Oh well. Visit reddit, see a link to a post here, take a look. Realise it's new. Go back to the main page, hit F5, oh, lookie, there's two new posts!
I'm guessing something got stuck in a cache, but it could be anything.
Also, there's the ever-popular calendar showing a post in every second month, and 6 months ago the post ended "this was the problem, tomorrow I'll blog about the solution" and no more posts ever appear. (Even if you bang away on the F5 key all day.)
"Isn't this what I said? Search for the term "cult of personality"."
Yes, but I think we disagree about the degree you should involve your life in your blog. If you look at a lot of the bloggers that have been around for a long time (Winer, Pilgrim, and others), you'll notice that they include political views, happenings at home, and recounts of vacations in their posts. Newer ones often just stay on topic, writing what seem to be magazine articles rather than personal insight. I think including things like that goes a long way towards building a "personal brand" than just including pop culture references like "Man that band Boston sure could play a mean tune" or small personal opinions. I understand targeting your content for your audience, which often means putting up multiple blogs.
Scott on August 19, 2007 11:05 PMWhat’s Next after Web 2.0?
I do not like those buzz words like Web 2.0, Business 2.0 etc., however in order to communication, you have to conform to their protocols, otherwise they might think you are speaking in a foreign language. So far Web 2.0/Internet 1.0 lead by Youtube, FaceBook, same Amazon, New Yahoo! and New Google is successful, though at not successful as Web 1.0/Internet 0.0 led by Old Yahoo!, Ebay, Amazon and Old Google. Why? Not a big surprise anymore when from Web 1.0/Internet 0.0 to Web 2.0/Internet 1.0 as opposed from nothing to Web 1.0/Internet 0.0.
I believe the next after Web 2.0/Internet 1.0 is Web 3.0/Internet 2.0, however we’d better to call it Internet 2.0, since at that time, Web is not that important any more. Why?
Web 1.0/Internet 0.0 - Informed, you as a reader
Web 2.0/Internet 1.0 - Inform, you as a writer
Internet 2.0 (as opposed as Web 3.0/Internet 2.0) - formation of Information, you as a reader, writer, and much more
- BTW I am writing this post while I am watching a lecture C++0x (yes, C++0x) on at Univ. of Waterloo made by Prof. Bjarne Stroustrup - Prof. Stroustrup, think about C++ 3.0, borrow somthing nice from Ruby, the world is way too different now as opposed to 1980s
Frontier Space - http://www.hwswworld.com/space
Frontier Blog - http://www.hwswworld.com/wp
> How about this one: writing a blog with close to 1000 entries and give your readers one way to browse them: sequentially. Thanks for the search box though!
True. I just fixed up the archives page, and I'll be linking it from the main page as well.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives.html
> There's a third way to improve readability that you should have mentioned: limit column width.
Agree (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000618.html). I need to adjust my stylesheet, which currently expresses line length as a percentage of width. This works OK up to about 1600x1200, but is probably too long if the browser window is larger than that.
Jeff Atwood on August 20, 2007 02:28 AMI hate blogsites with no way to comment. I do have Top (n) lists from time to time; it helps with one of your other points, regular posting. Since I've posted every day for over 2 years, it's helpful. I've done far less posting of previous links over time. But I like my blogroll; the idea of the blog, one longtime blogger told me when I started, is to please ME.
Roger Green on August 20, 2007 03:44 AM"Who reads a blog where the comments are more interesting than the content!? Not me. Not anyone. That's silly talk. Come on now."
Err... I do, This one has comments that are often as interesting as the original article and Slashdot where the original article is quite often boring but the comments are (sometimes) interesting and largely the whole point of reading it
An example of this was mentioned above, I go to Amazon for the comments it gives a better idea about the product than many review sites that are more likely to be biased
Jaster on August 20, 2007 05:08 AM>When I find well-written articles on blogs that I want to cite, I >take great pains to get the author's name right in my citation.
Just link to the page you cite, that would be enough.
>obsessively listing every single blog you read-- the so-called >"blogroll"-- is just noise. If you're really reading this many >blogs, you should be linking to them organically in your blog posts, >in a sort of natural quid pro quo. Wearing a giant blogroll on your >sleeve is an empty gesture.
I’m using blogrolls (aka “friend’s feed”) as a kind of a social network. If I’m interested in what you write and you are interested in reading those people I may be interested in them also. So a blogroll is not a noise.
I thought my blog was just kind of un-hip (my blogroll is so short!), but it turns out that it's actually just un-cliched! Thanks, Jeff!
Susanna on August 20, 2007 07:38 AMThis list presumes all blogs have some common purposes, which I believe is a false presumption. For example, some blogs are intended to be diary-like archives primarily for the author's small circle of interested people, and gawkers do so at their own peril. And some blogs are extremely nichey (is that a word?), and strictly for news/analysis about a very specific topic, at topic about which news occurs at only very irregular intervals in time.
cat on August 20, 2007 07:42 AMOne of my blogs had a calendar. It was part of a default style. It was a handy way to get a link to a single entry. There must be another way to do this, because i didn't notice that it's gone.
I might get inspired to write a blog entry that breaks all of these rules. Should be fun. I could start by talking about how my computer has been down for the past week, then apologizing for not producing new entries anyway. It could have a custom calendar showing the dates and times when it went down, and how it came back up. I'd piss and moan about how much work it was getting it going, and how some stupid thing brought it down again just before i was going to start my backups. Maybe an image of my car, half dismantled could go in the middle. I could disable my "about me" link, and while at it, shut down my RSS feed, disable comments. I don't currently carry ads. Maybe i could make up some fake ads - you know, like Saturday Night Live. "Super Colon Blow cereal", or something. A bullet list pointing out a dozen blogs that haven't had content for at least a month... it would take some research.
OK, so i've given away the plot. Maybe i won't.
Do you ever get tired of reading so many comments? Okay, so maybe I'm just jealous. ;o)
This is an insightful list, and you provide us with good reasoning and advice; even tough I don't agree with all topics - for example, I think tag clouds are really useful and interesting as a means to provide a quick glimpse of what a blog is about, and I don't suppose there's anything wrong with writing a dear diary-like if that's what you're going for. Consistency is the key to success, IMO.
I commend you on writing a great article, but I pity the users who will blindly follow every single advice. (what was bullet #3 about, anyway?)
Slice of Life on August 20, 2007 09:06 AMGuilty on lots of these - you've seriously made me re-think calendars and Blogrolls. But blogging about blogs - mea culpa but I try to do it with home made comix does that exempt me?
PS that unecessary photo looks to me like the entrance to the Gents public toilets at the corner of Aldwych and The Strand in Central London - are they taking the piss?
Clive on August 20, 2007 10:11 AMORANGE!
Anybody already point out that Jeff is breaking #10 with this post?
mcgurk on August 20, 2007 10:22 AMVery good points, Jeff! I really like your posts about blog and site optimization!
David Chen(ITSkyline Blog) on August 20, 2007 10:36 AMGreat post, keep up the good work. Think I learn or read something new every week on your blog. Glad to see you learned something since the #000001 & #000002 entries.. :D
Still can't find a rss reader I like, so you site is still viewed the old way. :)
/happy reader since 2005
Peter Palludan on August 20, 2007 10:38 AMRe. #8 and the rest - don't forget there are people who blog as an outlet, or just so their friends can keep in touch. They're not trying to get famous, "find an audience", or get anything else out of a blog.
Blogging isn't a religion.
My personal Pet Peeve, though? Right-click blocking scripts, with messages like "OMG teh kontentz be (C) me! Donut steelz!" - they both keep me from doing useful things like open links in a new window/tab, and don't stop me saving your precious images. Stop it, people. Just stop.
Sigivald on August 20, 2007 12:05 PMCalendar widgets are ok if you post only occasionally and have no tags. Otherwise, I agree, they are a waste of space.
For #8: This ain't your diary. I'd change this to Pick a subject and Stick to it. Online diaries are fine, just don't advertise as a technical guru, and post your personal stuff. Take The Fat Cyclist. Pretty straightforward blog about a guy losing weight to do cycling. It was pretty popular. There was also a blog about lists; it was funny and that's all it contained.
Tim on August 20, 2007 12:06 PMAll of those are minor compared to
(1) Posts that are undated. Strangely enough it seems to be the MSM that do this the most. Whole classes of posts are just worthless without the date.
(2) (Related to (1)): useless cutesy differential dates on comments like "3 days later". The reason nobody was doing this years ago is NOT because the Rails helper didn't exist yet.
I find rather...amusing.... the way people likes to point the "mistakes" of the author of this post. One of the most recurring ones ive seen is the "you say metabloging is boring yet you do it WITH THIS POST" well yeah, hes metabloging right now cause it IS the reason of the post.
What i "think" he may refer to is to metablog as an "habit". i agree with the top (n) lists, it indeed is a good tool to direct people's attention to something BUT it also "prevents" them of reading what is NOT in that list. tag clouds are annoying unless they are well designed, which regretably doesnt happen very often.
Calendars.. yeah... i like better a search function and an Archive.
About the random, arbitrary images... yeah, they are a burden, because they often distract people from the original content thinking "hmm,... what could be the relation of this image?" then they are more interested in the thinking of the relation than on the original purpose of the post. and well, after all, how long would it take you to find a proper image to post?.
I dont quite agree with the Diary cliche. indeed, some people may not like it, but some people may do. dont remove it or encourage it. just set it as an additional feature among your contents.
"World Conquering 101"
"why cars collide?"
"my Diary"
"subatomic particles FAQ"
etc.
im tired. ill stop writing now.
im fully aware of the ortographical and gramatical mistakes. i DONT speak english and dont feel like IMPROVING right now.
Excellent, again. If you ever write a book, I'm buying it.
John Pirie on August 20, 2007 01:32 PMYeah, sorry, kiddo, some of us are going to keep on running blogs without comments.. because they're *ours* and we can do with them as we wish.
Joe Clark on August 20, 2007 02:55 PM>I'd like to talk to you about your flair.
The better (and probably more effective) line from the same movie: "You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair, but they made the *Jews* wear them."
> There's a third way to improve readability that you should have mentioned: limit column width.
I recently redid my blog layout to be fixed-width.
Article/text-based sites are simply hard to read (and look crappy) in high resolutions. Plus, with the ubiquitous acceptance of widescreen displays, the number of users who may be reading your site in a disproportionately wide resolution is ever-increasing.
http://zinknation.net/Zinknation+Redone++No+Longer+A+Liquid+Layout.aspx
Kevin ZInk on August 20, 2007 09:37 PMGreat list. I'm sure I'm guilty of a few!
Lotta on August 20, 2007 09:56 PMRegarding anonymity, I have one friend who blogs under his real name who has become unemployable in his field due to his rather strong opinions on politics and use of hyperbole to express them. Another frined ended up getting death threats for something he posted on his blog. Not the Bevis & Butthead grade threats via comments, either. He was actually contacted by the FBI about specific, credible threats that had been made regarding his life. I'll stick with semi-obscurity, thanks...
Cybrludite on August 21, 2007 03:38 AMI'm curious: what about tag clouds that are implemented as more of a weighted list? There are still varying sizes for the more popular tags, but they're all in a list form.
Luke on August 21, 2007 07:15 AMWhile I agree with the majority of comments, I disagree with the calendar one, if that calendar indicates what days posts are made on. When I first come to a blog it's usually through a search engine or link from another blog. I'll get the nugget of info I came for, then look around.
At this point I've already determined if the contents of the blog are interesting to me. So how do I determine if a blog should be added to my reading list? It's whether or not the blogger produces that content on some sort of consistent basis.
By far, the quickest and easiest way to determine that is via the calendar control. A quick glance at it, over a 3 month time frame should be sufficient to determine the blogging pattern. If it's on some consistent schedule, weekly, daily, etc, then I'm more likely to look closer. If on the other hand the blog posts are seemingly random and sporadic, the browser tab gets closed and I go on my way.
The second area I agree / disagree is the tag cloud. I find the tag cloud visually disorienting. However it would be nice to have some indicator with the number of posts per tag. Either the ability to sort by number of posts, or the actual number in parens () out beside it.
Arcane Code on August 21, 2007 11:47 AM"I can't think of a single time I have ever found the blog calendar widget helpful."
I don't have one in my public blog, but in my Confluence newsblog on our internal wiki, I have one (well, everyone does), and it's essential for my bosses to find the status report for such-and-such a day.
It's doubly useful because I'm the manager, so my daily status update contains our velocity, code coverage metrics, and a recording of our daily stand-up meeting.
But no, I don't have one in my regular blog.
Susan Davis on August 21, 2007 01:07 PMI think your list, particularly points 8 and 11, is targeted at a particular subset of the blogging community. Specifically the rather vocal "I feel my opinions are important and should be listened to but nobody's paying me" subset.
There are other types of blogs out there though...
For example there is the private blog used to communicate with friends and family who may or may not be geographically isolated from you. For these people the blog IS their diary, so point 8 is moot.
And then there's the journalist-blogger who's job is to report on what happened TODAY, and to them point 11 is rather moot.
But otherwise a good list, even if the post does violate half of its own rules (particularly numbers 10 & 12)
apparently my trackback didn't work, so here's my post about this post...
http://nstryker.com/blog/2007/08/20/stereotypical
I already keep all these tips with my exciting innovative and up to date blog. I think I am so stereotypical that I might try breaking some of them just for a laugh...
mutleythedog on August 23, 2007 03:48 AMI know Blog services (one or two) that do not commit any of these errors. Do you now what heppens to them? No onen joins, users COMPLAIN that those are NOT a blog or that they wouldn't be "professional" - as if they would know! Mostly gangs of teenagers talking of pets lol.
Of course, the issue is that once a blog has made one of these errors, and had the venture to be among the first ones, and is therefore successful because it sowed amidst dearth, we have a diligent herd of sheep that replicate what the other blog did in order to emulate its success.
Therefore, those errors too replicate themselves as viruses, get installed on every machine, and do you know what happens then? That also our audiences got irretrievably MISeducated to consider a bad paradigm as good design and an error as a... feature.
You can give all the good counseling you may want, and all your points here are exceptional. You missed one though: tiny fonts: all blogs have tiny fonts, normally light colour on white background, and all leave about 50% of the page blank as "margins".
Successful NONSENSE.
But no matter how good your points are: they will all break against the obtusity that says: we have been used that a blog MUST look like this, if you make a blog look not like blogs ARE but like they OUGHT to be, then... they are not blogs! Do not look like one!!
That's how folks reason. Now, try to change their minds, the minds of folks who have problem even changing route to go to work!
Alberto on August 23, 2007 06:35 AMMy favorite, by far, was the over-advertise ridden article on usability. I couldn't find the text of the article when I initially brought it up. I spend about a million dollars before I learned a think about usability.
Alas. Goodbye calendar!
Matthew Moran on August 23, 2007 12:40 PMThe problem with relying on comments for more discussion is that a large number of readers will never continue on to them, and will never get that benefit, especially if they show up early when few exist. In aggregate, comments become a giant solid wall of text, regardless of their individual merits. This page is a perfect example of where it becomes too time-consuming to even skim everything - so I mostly read the orange ones. ;) Still, I only read the chaotic opposite end of the spectrum, Slashdot, under duress, so it's not all bad.
Bloggers like Larry Osterman do great jobs with this - either an unintended follow-up post is made summarizing the most interesting comment threads and expanding on them, or that's quickly done at the start of the next related entry. Either way, you get the best of the discussion without needing to spend the time reading everything.
Pure blogs probably aren't the best way to do this, but there's still ways to help without ceding some front-page space to Anonymous.
Foxyshadis on August 23, 2007 04:48 PMam I the only one who sees himself in everything Jeff posts about blogging? :)
engtech @ IDT on August 23, 2007 05:04 PMLemmings, the lot of you!
You should do something new instead of simply rehashing stuff. Shit can only be kneaded and formed finitely. It also doesnt pay to polish shit as well. I can't count the number of times I have "red x'ed" a website.
Do something outrageously insane. Steve Jobs released the Macintosh only when it was insane.
"I am going to rip my head off and shit down my neck!"
How many people do you think said the above line? See, number one right here!
Stop making love in the dark. Watch your honey, get close and feel the pulsations.
Observe. Think. Scramble.
Mark Tee B.
Mark T.B. on August 24, 2007 08:38 AMJust ran across this list, and it's one of the most cliched pieces of blogging drivel I've ever read.
Just kidding. I agree on most of your points, especially with the calendar widget.
Matt Robison on August 24, 2007 03:15 PMWow. I just started a blog today, and I follow 9 of your 10 rules!
Except. I turned comments off. Call it not a blog then. I don't care what my readers have to say.
Peter Shickele on August 24, 2007 08:14 PMGreat article, I'll definitely bookmark this and try to work on changing things up in my blog. Hopefully that will attract more discussion to my blog (one of the main reasons I blog is to have these discussions with others, but alas, I am apparently a bore).
Joseph A Nagy Jr on August 25, 2007 11:30 PMIsn't this post "blogging about blogging"? :) (which breaks rule #10)
Simone Chiaretta on August 27, 2007 09:29 AMit is blogging about blogging AND a top (n) thingies, Showing that no rule is universal, including this one...
renato on August 28, 2007 08:24 AMTotally agree with all points, but you forgot one of my biggies: the tiresome, faux-modest, faux-self-effacing tagline: "random ramblings", "random nonsense", "brain droppings", "mindless random etc. etc.". (If YOU really thing your blog's content is crap, why are you blogging??).
Jeff K on August 29, 2007 08:19 AMI agree, Meta Blogging is the biggest waste of space, especially when the bloggers aren't business people, and more like homebodies craving easy dollars. Annoying, mindless and boring.
Anastasia on August 30, 2007 01:38 AMInteresting, Jeff, Thanks.
Actually a mini-epiphany of sorts, may even wind up changing my perceptions of blogs... It was both surprising and refreshing to find someone putting some real thought into the publishing aspects. Know I'll prob'ly be flogged for that somewhere in absentia.
Till now I considered blogs as belonging to 2 categories: Tech articles called blogs because To Blog is popular, & Rants. One of the chief good points was/is bloggers know about spell checkers and use decent grammar; something that on a good day can't be said for many, many pro journalists. I'm terrible at spelling and grammar so I watch for it.
At the end-of-the-day maybe you'll have wound up changing my perception. And while that tidbit won't matter to anyone but me, it is just cause to say Thanks once again.
Homer on September 6, 2007 11:51 AMI'm guilty of a couple of these things so I see you avoiding my blog. My blog is a personal blog. Somedays I share the fact my daughter wants a tattoo and other times I blog about blogging. It is those blog posts that you call annoying that brings me traffic.
Rose on September 6, 2007 01:36 PMMy reply (9/5) to this post: http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2007/09/metablogging-about-someone-elses.html
Roger Green on September 6, 2007 01:54 PMUh-oh, I'm on my way to the back of the class, then. Give me a couple of months to improve my postings and we'll see if my blog is any better...
Sarah Whittaker on October 27, 2007 03:39 PM| Content (c) 2008 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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