18.460 blogging Humanist

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 460.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: "Lisa L. Spangenberg" (15)
                 <lisa_at_digitalmedievalist.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

   [2] From: Jessica Perry Hekman <jphekman_at_arborius.net> (27)
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

   [3] From: Ross Scaife <scaife_at_gmail.com> (6)
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 06:46:51 +0000
         From: "Lisa L. Spangenberg" <lisa_at_digitalmedievalist.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

Pat Galloway <galloway_at_ischool.utexas.edu>

>The list is relatively trouble-free
>and simple (or at least Willard makes it look that way) and best of all
>from my point of view as an archivist, easy to archive for the long term
>(though a blog might be even easier), but email may not indeed be the most
>flexible way for all possible participants to access our discussions.

I'm afraid it's trouble-free only because of the efforts of Willard and his
compatriots.

Much as I endorse, and deliberately use web logs and wikis, and would enjoy
one based on Humanist, I fear the evils of blog comment spam would add an
additional burden to Willard's already long list.

Comment spam, even with various controls in place, is actually harder to
deal with than email spam. The various solutions involving identity proof
and log in would both add to Willard's tasks, and reduce the effectiveness
of moving to a blog.

Lisa

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 06:46:28 +0000
         From: Jessica Perry Hekman <jphekman_at_arborius.net>
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

> Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2005 07:13:12 +0000
> From: Pat Galloway <galloway_at_ischool.utexas.edu>
> >
> Taking up after days on Francois's comment on spam leading to a move away
> from email: I suppose nothing much would in principle stop the Humanist
> list from becoming a blog to which all members could post? I wonder if it
> might be worth a try to experiment? (Think of the notion of having the
> Humanist blog pop up as your homepage.) The list is relatively trouble-free
> and simple (or at least Willard makes it look that way) and best of all
> from my point of view as an archivist, easy to archive for the long term
> (though a blog might be even easier), but email may not indeed be the most
> flexible way for all possible participants to access our discussions.

A blog can be on LiveJournal or not on LiveJournal.

If on LiveJournal (which seems to be the default), not just anyone can
post to it, but only people with LJ blogs themselves. I got an LJ account
just so I could post to others' blogs (and now have an LJ blog to which I
never post as a result). To get an LJ account, you have to either know
someone willing to give you an invitation, or you have to pay. This might
pose a difficulty to some humanist members.

Beyond LJ, you can set up your own blogging system (I like MovableType and
WordPress). I assume Willard would hesitate to learn how to administer a
new system, though. The nice thing about LJ is you don't have to install
it on your machine.

I expect there are other free blogging services out there which don't have
the LJ barrier to entry; maybe some people could recommend some.

Personally, I'd rather read this list on a blog than by email, but I'm not
sure the same is true of a majority of its readers. I hope I'm wrong!

Jessica

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 06:47:17 +0000
         From: Ross Scaife <scaife_at_gmail.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

I'd be enthusiastic about conversion of Humanist to a blog format. It
would be a substantial improvement to have RSS feeds for each message,
multiple registered posters, comments, links to other relevant blogs
etc., searchable archives, and so forth.

Ross Scaife
University of Kentucky
www.stoa.org
Received on Thu Jan 06 2005 - 02:37:33 EST