What do you look for in a blog? (tiny rant follows)

When this blog was first aggregated by MXNA, I positioned it as the blog for articles and information about the creative aspect of design of all forms, with occasional references to code snippets or technology overviews. And, ever so occasionally, there’d be a tad bit of self-promotion.

As the blog has gone on, I’ve gotten some inflammatory comments from a select few people because they have felt my posts were “irrelevant to the MXNA community” (paraphrased into much politer language). Once again, from the first day, I positioned myself as a creative blog, not a development/programming blog. I’m not going to write about ColdFusion or advanced ActionScript. In fact, I’d probably post more questions about advanced AS topics than answers. Why? Because, I am a designer first and a developer second.

All that aside, my point is this… I’ve had a number of things that I have thought about posting over the past couple of months, but have refrained or censored myself because of fear of “irrelevancy.” I’ve been trying to cater to what I think MXNA readers as a whole want instead of what I want to write about. I won’t be doing that any more. My posts are amply relevant to those who seek them out.

What do you look for as a whole in your reading experience? Are you a developer who only wants to read about recursion, object oriented programming, etc., or are you a designer that is looking for inspiration and information about how others tackle the creative process? No matter your answer, SOMEONE in the aggregate feed has something for you.

Additionally, there are plenty of off-topic posts that I see aggregated on a regular basis. I find them entertaining. If were strictly on point all the time, we’d lose the insight of who we all are and what experiences we’ve had that make our contributions to this community relevant.

There’s plenty of room here for everyone’s different angles and points of view. I hope in the future those who are interested continue to enjoy mine.

 
  • i couldnt have said it better myself. in fact i tried however this was quite eloquent, and well said!




    peace.


    tw
  • For me I label my OT post as [OT] so readers are fairly warned and that is what I will come back at as my disclaimer when someone sends me a message about how inconsiderate I am for posting an off topic post.




    If we as a blog community get too worked up about what is relevant and what isn’t we’d probably never post because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post that didn’t say something that already hasn’t been said. =)





    -erik
  • Thanks for the comments so far everyone, and thanks for the compliment Josh!




    Abel, I am still in the process of tweaking ths design of this blog whenever I have a little spare time. Since none of my posts have ever really gotten this many comments, I truthfully wasn’t aware of the difficulty in reading multiple comments. That’s an issue I’ll tackle very soon... as in right now.
  • Josh is absolutely right. It’s your site and yours only. Take ownership of your content and be proud man.




    On a side note: I had a hard time sifting through comments. Could you please add something visually that seperates each comment block? :)
  • I was just thinking about posting something like this on my blog as well. Post whatever you like. Truthfully, its the “all flash news all the time” blogs that I tend to shy away from. Your blog is actually one of the few from MXNA that I still read, as it keeps me interested on a number of topics, including Flash.




    I truthfully have never understood the point of a person posting a comment to this effect. Why would someone think that they should have a say in what content gets posted to your site? It is YOUR site.
  • Like the others above, I say post whatever you want. You shouldn’t cater to any one particular aggregator you happen to be listed in.




    Having the ability to use smart categories is nice, but I also like to see off-topic posts at MXNA because it’s nice to visit one site and read interesting things from other like-minded people.
  • You should post whatever you want to whenever you want to. Just because you are aggregated by mxna, doesnt mean you need to change your position or style because of it. Its still your blog. Keep doin what you wanna do.
  • I’d rather see revelant content only in the aggregated blog, and whimsical personal stuff in your own.




    “Aggregation” isn’t quite the right term…MACR isn’t collecting useful and relevant material, they’re collecting a bunch of sources which may occasonally have relevant material.





    It may be more a problem of the whole concept of a ‘blog’ still being developed which is causing the pains….many people have different ideas about what a blog is for, and what a collection of blogs is for, and how to collect and categorize blog entries.





    So no matter what, you’re never going to please everyone…we’re all still fighting about what this thing is. My preference would be that the stuff in my RSS reader from MACR was relevant to MACR, and the stuff someone posts in a political, comedic, or personal nature be in a different blog.
  • mike chambers
    Hi. As far as MXNA is concerned, you can post whatever you want. Because of Smart Categories at MXNA, readers can easily filter out off topic posts.




    More info here:





    http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mesh/archives/200...>



    MXNA is currently aggregating nearly 500 feeds, so if you just watch the main page, there is always going to be off topic posts. That is the reason we created smart categories.





    If we dont have a smart category that you want, then you can use the search function, to create a simple smart category.





    mike chambers





    mesh@macromedia.com
  • Amen.




    I’ve seen too many comments on “off-topic” blog posts that get aggregated ranting about the person being off-topic, or not posting anything useful to the community.





    Not everybody is going to be posting earth-shaking news or techniques all the time. I enjoy reading many of the “off-topic” posts just for the entertainment value. In my case, I’ve posted on things that a lot of Flash developers already know, but since the topic shows up in my search logs, someone out there is still looking for that info. Why not make it available, or add one more location where that info can be found?





    And really, just because it shows up in your RSS reader or on MXNA, you don’t have to read it. If you aren’t interested by the title or description of the post, don’t read it. It’s that easy.
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