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Commentary on `Review: Building with Blogs'

	Title	Décarie	Ness
	Introduction	I received yesterday the last issue of the Linux Journal which is devoted to Blogs and Lists. I didn't read all the issue, but perusing the content, I find it much interesting compared to the previous issue that I read in the last six month of so (its seems that in this period of time, scripting languages where not covered as it was before).	The article was clearly written by a non-native English speaker. In spite of this the writing is quite clear, so I have chosen not to correct the errors---they don't detract much from the presentation.
	Accessibility	There is a very good article by Doc Searl and David Sirfy called Building with Blogs and its very unfortunate that its not accessible online without a subscription to the Linux Journal. But hey, you can buy it too at your newsstand, its only $5 bucks.	I cannot find a CV for David Searls anywhere on the Web, but I believe the `s' is a part of his name, not a possessive. I don't know what his doctorate is in either.
	Packages	I have find this article quite illuminating, and a very good introduction to weblogs for someone that is not a geek. And I'm quite happy that Radio UserLand is part of what the authors call the "big three", i.e. packages designed from the ground up specifically for blogging; Blogger, Movable Type and Radio UserLand.	Perhaps these are the `big 3' of the blogging world at the present moment, but I'm unclear about why this makes the author of this note `happy'. And there isn't much difference between the Blogger, MT and Radio Userland approaches. Perhaps talking about Wikis, Antville and/or Vanilla might be more illuminating.
	Winer's Contribution	I'm also happy to see how Dave Winer is getting recognition for its contribution to the Web (XML-RPC, SOAP, RSS). Apparté: I'm a long time Frontier user (starting with version 4.1), and I learned programming thru Frontier and the UserTalk language, and really lived the transition of Frontier from a Mac scripting system to a multi platforms system that is focusing on publishing on the Web. It was quite a trip!. Another big contributor is Evans Williams of Blogger who created the Blogger API.	I'm not sure that one could claim much knowledge of `programming' from experience with Frontier and UserTalk. But it probably doesn't matter. Winer and Searls spend so much time `pushing back' between one another that having Searls comment on Winer or vice-versa is a bit like hearing a recommendation for a child from a sibling. In short, there's not much content in the mutual backscratching.
	Blogging Tool	There is a very good analysis here on what is a blogging tool and the distinction between different packages that are either built for this task (like the big three) or are, as the authors put it, first generation packages [that] allow you to set up story posting, site membership, comment moderation, topics or categories (...) (like Slascode, Scoop, etc...), or are the second generation tools like PHP-Nuke and PostNuke. Its not clear to me what are the differences between the first and second generation. It seems that the difference lies in the fact that they came later and are based on PHP. These latter packages are labeled by the authors as discussion sites. The authors discuss also blogging tools that comes from content management system, like Zope of from the wiki's galaxy.	It's a little hard to comment on this until the distinction that the original authors make between first and second generation systems is a bit clearer.
	What is a Blogging System?	The authors offer a nice framework to distinguish between pure blogging systems and the others, as a kind of programming eugenism. A system is considered as a "blogging system" if it can answer yes to these questions (and the authors think that the big three are evidently in this class).	I'm afraid that `programming eugenism' stretches my understanding. I can't tell if it is a typo, a malalaprop or simply something that I dont know. Anyway it doesn't seem as though this will detour us from understanding the list.
	Characteristics	Can a user dynamically post to a site? Are posts easy to create, review and edit again after they're posted? Can an administrator limit who posts to the front page? Can a user edit in a browser (at a minimum) or another tool of his or her choice? Does its page format allow blogrolls and other sections outside the daily posting area? Does it produce RSS feeds? Does every post have a permanent URL (or permalink)? Do current posts have unique URLs? Can search engines crawl the archives? Are the archives stable and safe from rot?	This kind of a list strikes me as indicative rather than either necessary or sufficient. A `blogging system' will deal with most of these problems, but I don't think that it is necessary that it really deal with all of them. After all we might reasonably regard a computer language as applying naturally to an area if it allows us to handle a whole set of problems common in that area with effectiveness. It doesn't---and probably can't---make everything easy.
	Problems with the List	Overall, this list is very good but it present some problems too. For example, Radio UserLand doesn't qualify for point 3 if you are using FTP to upstream your posts. And I'm not sure that Radio could be use as a server for multi users. I might be wrong and anyone can correct this statement by posting a comment.	I'm not sure either, but I don't think that it matters.
	Blogrolls	Point 5 present some problems for me. Although blogrolls have their places, and allowed me to discovers other blogs, I had always the feeling that there are a little bit incestuous, some sort of moebius spiral, or are similar to the French expression "Renvoyer l'ascenseur". But the fact remains that blogrolls are very good for building community of interests.	Many things might help build community. Blogrolls are certainly among them, but may well apply much more to the early stages of the life-cycle of Blogging. When there aren't many blogs, having pointers to some of them can be quite helpful. However, if we were to accept Weinberger's estimate that there are now half a million blogs in existence, a `blogroll' that was a few thousand pages long might well not be of much use to us.
	Comments System	And last but not least, I think that a comments system could have been mentioned. I'm not sure that its such an important function for blogging tools (it is at least for me), but I think that all the big three offer this functions and more (like trackback for Movable Type).	It's easy, I think, to overestimate the value of comments. Again, early in the life of Blogs, most of the early adopters were a self-selected group that might well generally have something of interest to say. As time passed, and the number of participants grows, however, the marginal value contributed by each incremental comment gets smaller and smaller. For example, I used to read Slashdot comments. Now there are generally too many of them to be of much interest, to me at least, and I almost never read them anymore. So I think it's easy to overestimate the potential importance of this kind of capability.
	Manila	The article cover also the importance of some services for the blogging community, like Google who is a perfect fit for blogs because the way it rank pages. The authors gave an example of a request with the occurrence "802.11b" which list first WI-FI Newworking News by Adam Engst of TidBITS fame and Glen Fleishman. Here's we see another contradiction. This weblog hosted on Weblogger is using Manila, which is a CMS AND a blogging tool. Does Manila belong in the big three? My guess is yes, and I don't understand why its not included in the big three, because Manila was really build from the ground to have a News page, but maybe at this time (I think 1999 when it was first launched), the word "weblog" was not in great usage.
	Technorati	Other services for the blogging community that are mentioned are Technorati (build by Dave Sirfy, one of the author of the article, which is discussed at length), the Blogging Ecosystem, Blogdex, DayPop and http://www.weblogs.com.
	Blosxom	And finally, Blosxom from Rael Dornfest is also discussed at length. I'm not sure why its not also part of the big three since it was build from the ground up to be a blogging system, and since it qualify to most of all points beside point 3 (which I don't think Radio UserLand qualify anyway) and point 5 (which I don't think should be in this list too). Sadly, the excellent PHPosxom from Robert Daley is not mentioned in the Blosxom family. This site run on a slightly hacked (by me) PHPosxom version and Radio UserLand, which is for me, the best of both worlds.
	More than just Big 3	So in the end, I think the authors should not talk about the big three, but instead of the big five (Blogger, Movable Type, Radio UserLand, Manila, Blosxom and the Blosxom family). Overall, this is a really good read, and I encourage you to buy this issue of the Linux Journal (I wish the Linux Journal put this article online without restricted access, because it could generate more discussion on its excellent analysis).	I'm afraid this is only the beginning of the list. And listing all of the current candidates and comparing their features in an unbiased manner would be a substantial task. The immediate additions to the list would be Wiki's---which themselves come in many different flavors---Antville, Vanilla and perhaps even some of the supporting technology that are responsible for `object publishing' such as Helma.