Blogging

A week? or so ago? I was asked to guest post on Adventures with Kids and I totally forgot to link up when my post went live.

So, if you’re interested in things to do in Tasmania with kids, including some of my neurosis, then head over and check it out.

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When I started blogging, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I know that I loved reading blogs by other women, blogs that meant I didn’t feel quite so alone.

I didn’t expect to make such good friends, and I have. Plus, I’m still making them every day.

Like minut’d’automne who lives in France with her twins.

This morning a box arrived at my front door and I was thrilled. I mean, look how it’s packaged!

(never mind the disembodied hand, that’s Isaac)

Isn’t it beautiful?

I felt like a kid at Christmas actually, rummaging through a box, discovering treasures through the whole thing.

There were books – lots of books.

As well as some french caramels (probably the reason the box was searched by quarantine, however, everything was deemed safe, thank goodness) a pair of pants for Isaac and a lovely top for Amy.

Plus lots of stickers, which Amy promptly claimed and stuck everywhere. Hehe. Isaac still has a glittery horse on his cheek that he hasn’t noticed. I can’t bring myself to peel it off.

So thankyou so so much. I love it and I’m looking forward to immersing myself in books for a while.

Blogging is fantastic. I’ve made amazing friends.

***

While we’re talking about friends, I met with a bunch of Tasmanian twitterers last night for drinks and cheese (or, in my case, mineral water). That was good fun and I’m looking forward to hopefully doing it again another time, so that I can meet those people who couldn’t attend last night. You can see Mum’s recap blog post for that here as well as links to all the twitterers and their blogs.

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Or, alternately titled, Why bloggers who have been around for a long time, don’t seem to comment or visit your blog.

So you start a blog. Maybe you found an awesome blog written by a hugely popular blogger and loved it, or maybe you’ve heard about them and want to try it out for yourself. No matter the reason, you’ve started a blog. Yay!

And so, once you’ve gotten over your ohmygod my blog is only brand new, no one is going to like me nerves, then you start commenting. And you comment on the big bloggers and you comment on their entire blogroll and you comment and comment and….

…nothing. Occasionally a click through if you’ve been commenting on high traffic blogs and said something interesting, but no one comments back.

You feel a little discouraged, but never mind! I’ve read the big blogger’s archives and there are no comments for like, months of posts! It will be fine.

So you write some more and it’s pretty good. You comment some more and someone comments back. You click to their blog because I’m not all snooty like the big bloggers are and you read and she’s lovely and you comment. You notice that she’s been blogging for around the same amount of time you have and you add her to your reader. She’s just as grateful for a comment and does the same to you.

You have connected. You’re doing this blogging thing and you’re making friends.

You do this with another twenty women or so, women whom you email with, you comment backwards and forwards and you’re good friends. You join twitter and you’re not terrified of being alone because there are your girls. Your posse.

Time stretches on and you add more bloggers to your reader, bigger blogs, controversial blogs, I mean, you can’t not be reading what everyone else is reading, right?

And suddenly, you turn around and you’re getting 20 comments a post and you’re getting, while not a huge amount, okay traffic.

Then, one of your posse stops blogging. Maybe something happens in her real life, maybe she gets bored. She stops.

Someone else starts updating only once a month.

You fall out with someone, or decide that they’ve gotten boring. You unsubscribe.

You go through your reader, looking for blogs that are now dead (and wow, you won’t realise how many there are until you start) and you unsubscribe. You stop reading blogs that you’ve been subscribed to for a long time, because meh. They’re still awesome blogs, just, I don’t need to keep up with the controversy, or follow a blog because everyone else does anymore.

You wittle down who you’re subscribed to and one day, you wake up and your reader only has 10 updated items and you’ve got hardly any comments and wonder where everyone went.

****

You see, when you start blogging, you connect with women who started around the time you did. Your traffic grows together and you become friends and follow each other and read and laugh and comment.

And then, as your blog gets older and new bloggers shoot out of the woodwork, you find new people commenting and reading, but somehow, time flies and you don’t get a chance to click over to their blog, or if you do, you forget to comment or subscribe.

You’ve been doing this blogging thing for so long that while every new commenter is a fuzzy feeling in your stomach, it’s not a burning need to subscribe back to them.

Basically, you’ve become stuck in a rut. Reading the same blogs for 2 years and forgetting to add new ones to your reader.

Sure, you’ll add new blogs occasionally, but the writing has to be extraordinary. Like, SixYearMed, or Sweet|Salty extraordinary.

Or you have to connect instantly and want to get to know them better.

And really, you just forget. You love your commenters and you enjoy their blogs, but you turn around and realise that 6 weeks have passed and you’ve forgotten to check their blog back, or subscribe to them.

That kind of thing makes you feel like shit.

It’s easy to continue to read only the blogs you’ve been following for a long time, because you don’t need to learn their backstory. You don’t need to spend time hunting through archives to work out how old their children are, or why they started blogging, or who the hell Danny is.

But, it also means that large bloggers, they’re stagnating a little bit. They forget to link when they find a brilliant new blog, like they did in the early days. They don’t participate in awards or memes, because they know that those posts don’t get any traffic or comments.

And slowly, they notice their own comments dwindling, because that tight knit group of women who all started at the same time, or who connected from the get-go, they start to move away from networking and the community of blogging.

I mean, if I *know* Marylin is reading every single one of my posts, and I’m reading every single one of hers, are we still obligated to comment all the time?

***

I’ve done every single one of these things. Most of my bloggy friends, the ones whose posts I don’t skip if I’m busy, they’re women I either connected with instantly, or who started around the same time I did and we’ve become friends.

Bloggers stagnate and without a huge effort to find new blogs to add to my reader, I forget to. Especially as I’m mostly incredibly time poor.

However, I’m making an effort, to start adding new blogs to my reader. To learn their backstory and make new bloggy friends and to remind myself, if they don’t click back and visit me here, that I know exactly why they haven’t.

And now, I’m reminding everyone who might feel like they’re stagnating to do the same thing.

Make a new friend this week.

Comment on their blog.

Subscribe.

Link.

And if you could have one person reading your blog on a regular basis, who would you choose?

I’d probably pick The Bloggess for Sleepless Nights and Shannon for Veronica Foale.

You?

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Last night I sat on a panel and we spoke about online media (new media) and the ethics involved in using social media, among many other things.

It went really well. I was nervous, of course, right up until we started and then it was fine.

I came away with some things to think about and think about them I did. At 3am. When I couldn’t sleep. Sigh.

Anonymous comments – what value do they hold? Do they still hold value if the person has a differing point of view to yourself?

I think anonymous comments can and do add value to a conversation. People will share things anonymously that for whatever reason they couldn’t share commenting with their name. I think anonymous comments and whether they should be allowed through are always going to come down to the tone of the comment itself.

Of course, I still get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see a comment from anonymous, but that’s a hangover from trolls and such.

Now the conversation was more geared towards why a news website, The Mercury in particular would allow comments from anonymous readers if they’re not adding to the news – and the simple answer is that people like to participate in the conversation. People like to share their views and in my opinion, doing so anonymously is fine, so long as the tone of the comment is respectful. That’s called debate.

Of course, we’re not all going to agree on things all of the time and so at the end of the day, some people will wonder why a comment went through, or didn’t go through as the case may be.

Yet another reason why moderators on news sites are so very very important.

What are the ethics of blogging and new media?

Blogging doesn’t have a code of ethics as such, we don’t answer to anyone else and I think that is a lot of the problem between ‘new’ media and ‘old’ media – or traditional journalists and bloggers. Journalists can sometimes see bloggers as rogues, unanswerable to anyone else, writing on the internet, whereas bloggers see journalists stealing quotes without linking and acting holier than thou. (obviously not the journalists I was speaking to last night, who were all lovely).

We need to bridge that gap and as bloggers, realise that we are part of the media too. We might be talking about our families, or food, or reviewing products, but we are media too and we need to be ethical.

And without a code of ethics, and laws to enforce them, bloggers are going to have to rely on their good sense and their peers to work out what is acceptable and what isn’t. It’s remembering the good manners we were taught in primary school and putting them to use. It’s never nice to bully, or harass and you can disagree with something without turning it into a personal vendetta.

We might be ‘playing’ on the Internet, but we’re all adults here and we need to act like that.

The ethics of blogging are the ethics that we hold ourselves. We need to rely on our moral standards and ask ourselves, does this feel right? Would I like to read this written about me? Because that celebrity/blogger/journo that we bitch about on twitter, or on our blogs, they’re real people too.

Sometimes it’s about saying, yes, I know I can, but should I?

Definitely some interesting things to think about anyway and I’ll be interested to see how media evolves to hopefully embrace bloggers and our online medium over the next few years.

Finally, I’d just like to quickly thank the Walkley Foundation for sponsoring the forum last night and the other three speakers, Philip Young, online editor at the Mercury, Nicola Goc, Senior Lecturer on Journalism at the University and Kylie Eastley, writer and blogger. It was good fun and amazing to meet the three of you. And thank you to Pat O’Donnell from the MEAA for moderating.

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