Persistent conversation among people I trust
I recently went in and cleaned up the more than 900 items I had starred in Google Reader going back to 2006. At least half of them were on recurring topics — personal finance, literary criticism, social media tracking, economics, food, etc. — that I like to follow closely (thus why they had been starred). But I had no trouble letting most of them go because, well, the conversation has moved on and things change and, to be honest, part of me was saying “hey, they’re only blog posts.” Don’t get me wrong — I love form and have been reading blogs since Instapundit just started out and have regularly blogged since 2004. But although blogs are a good way to generate current conversation, they suck when it comes to persistent conversation across time. Digging into archives can be very hit or miss (and tags and categories only take you so far, especially with a blog that has been around awhile). And even if comments aren’t closed on an older post, chances are the conversation is not going to be re-ignited. Also because of the semi-casual nature of blogs, both posts and comments don’t focus on real tight writing on thought.
On the other hand, Wikipedia is excellent for persistent content over time. Entries get updated, refined and fleshed out. Changes to the page are tracked and made available to the casual reader. But the problem with Wikipedia is that it’s only an encyclopedia. It’s tone and scope is focused on factual, relevant content.
And finally, scholarship, as it is made available in academic journals, and public intellectualism, as it is made available in magazines and newspapers, can often be great and producing polished work and work that is in conversation with others in the field. But you often have to slog through a lot in order to get to what you find interesting and conversations get off track and some of it is just too specialized.
So here’s what I want: a way to read a persistent, focused conversation on specialized topics I’m interested in undertaken by people I trust, admire, tolerate, hate or whatever but at least am willing to listen to that is set up in such a way to occur over days, months, years. I’m still mulling over what form this might take. More later when things have fully coalesced.
Wm’s Twitter stream- morriswm: RT @fakebaldur: This: http://t.co/NTaIPRJx “Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time” February 5, 2012
- morriswm: RT @Nobilis: I figured out why I don't like Tumblr: There's no room for conversation. It's a place to put up billboards. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: @ImaginaryZina @mel_leilani Yep. That's what I do. But I only do it on 1 out of the 4 times that I would normally click. So. Lost pageviews. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: @HeidiTighe 3/4 of the time I will just forget it. The other 1/4 I'll just Google the headline. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: RT @stacylwhitman: @morriswm The thing that drives me most nuts about it is that it *appears* to be a link to the newspaper itself. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: @stacylwhitman Exactly. February 2, 2012
