2007-10-22

RE Anthonys “some fun” post

Posted in Personal, PlanetDebian at 13:56 CEST (+0200) by sven

I really dislike posts like (sorry AJ, you are just one example) AJ Towns blog post
“Some fun”. What I dislike? Well, the post lacks critical information: Which slashdot post inspired him? What data is he talking about? How did he turn the data into those graphics?

Sorry AJ, your post is just the latest example of this style of post, and I really got frustrated over such posts, this is not meant as a personal attack.

Edit:
So to make my wish clear: Please, fellow bloggers, don’t assume that your readers are following your favourite web resources as closely as you do (and with the same specific interests). Explicitly say what you are writing about, reference resources needed to understand what you are doing, at least give readers a chance to find out what you did.

In AJs case, it would probably have been enough to reference the /. article or comment which inspired him.

7 Comments

  1. Anonymous said,

    October 22, 2007 at 15:15 CEST (+0200)

    However, if you follow /. you will immediately know what he’s doing =)

  2. Anonymous said,

    October 22, 2007 at 16:29 CEST (+0200)

    Oh god, I was thinking exactly this. Hell, I follow Slashdot religiously and I still don’t get it. Is it server log visualisation? It looks nothing like the application featured on Slashdot. What is it? PASSIVELY INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!

  3. sven said,

    October 22, 2007 at 16:52 CEST (+0200)

    Well, yes, probably, but does he really expect all his readers to follow /.?

  4. sven said,

    October 22, 2007 at 17:26 CEST (+0200)

    BTW: I just returned from browsing /. back to Friday, 19th, and I didn’t find out what he is doing.

    So please, dear fellow blog writers, please don’t assume that your readers are following your favourite web resources as much as you do.

  5. Anonymous said,

    October 22, 2007 at 18:48 CEST (+0200)

    maybe http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/0453229

  6. michael schurter said,

    October 22, 2007 at 19:19 CEST (+0200)

    The problem wouldn’t be so bad if so many Planet Debian blogs didn’t lack the ability to post comments.

    Planet Debian seems to have a corner on the esoteric blogging engines market.

  7. sven said,

    October 22, 2007 at 19:34 CEST (+0200)

    Michael: You are so right. Many jusitfy not allowing comments with the burden of handling comment spam, but to be honest: I spend less then 10 minutes (usually not one) a day deleting comment spam. And that even though my blog attracked no less than 12,400 spam comments since my first post (i.e. in about half a year). Akismet works wonders in wordpress blogs. Plus a fairly conservative settings requiring moderation for any comment which has a link in it.

    Anonymous: That might be the right article, but from a quick glance, I can’t see how it inspired AJ to create the graphics he created.