Yog on Online Moderation

James D. Macdonald, SF author and exceedingly experienced online moderator (remember Yog Sysop? That’s him) offers some rules for moderation under the heading:
Here’s what moderators need to know:

a) Sure, there’s freedom of speech. Anyone who wants it can go start their own blog. On Yog’s board, Yog’s whim is law.
b) Yog is an […]

Blogging as Conversation

Tor, my favorite fantasy/sf publisher, has just gone public with their new Web site, one that has been re-designed with community engagement with content as a core principle. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor, and one of the founding bloggers at Making Light, has a fabulous essay on blogging.
In the blog post Nielsen Hayden […]

Hello World . . . Again

Yes, I’ve changed blogging tools.
Again.
I began this blog in January of 2002, using Radio Userland; I eventually moved to MovableType, and now, I’m using WordPress.
I’ve also changed the location; I was over here, at digitalmedievalist.com, but I’m finally realizing I need to distinguish the scholarly me from the geek me, because it’s awfully confusing to […]

Online Communities, Women, and Misogyny

I’ve posted already about the hateful way Kathy Sierra was treated by other bloggers. The reaction has been interesting. Yesterday Chris Locke and Kathy each posted, collaboratively, their takes on the specific incidents, and the larger issue of hate speech and threats in the blogosphere.
The core issues are neatly summarized by Ross Mayfield […]

Death Threats are Not OK

Blogger and UI expert, Kathy Sierra, had to cancel her talk at the Etech conference, because of really really nasty death threats, and threats of sexual assault. You can read about it here.
There are fairly well-known “A-list” bloggers skirting the outskirts of this. And there are certainly quite a few people who know who’s […]

Bloggers As Public Intellectuals

I’m blogging another panel I heard at L.A.Con IV; this one was on blogging.
Speaker(s): MaryAnn Johanson, Phil Plait, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Kevin Drum, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Cory Doctorow (Moderator).
H.L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, I.F. Stone, Germaine Greer, Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt all gained prominence as American public intellectuals through newspaper columns and books of collected essays. […]

Podcasting Resources

I attended the World Science Fiction Convention, L.A.Con IV, where, among other things, I listened to a panel discussion on pod casting on August 24th. Here’s the official description from the program guide:

Podcasting Science Fiction Speaker(s): Stephen Eley, Evo Terra, John O’Halloran, Paul Fischer (Moderator)
Is there a market for science fiction and fantasy via […]

On “Serious” Blogging

New Kid on the Hallway drew my attention to this article in Inside Higher Ed by Jeff Rice.

Rice has two central points, I think, in his initial article. I say “I think” because the argument is less than coherent. Rice begins by referring to the “Ivan Tribble” articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, asserting […]

Weblog Usability

Jakob Nielsen posted an article on the top ten web log design flaws. Most of his suggestions were things I’ve been doing from the start, but two of them were new to me. He suggests a list of the “top posts,” or most popular posts; I’ve added a category on the side for that purpose, […]

More Academic Blogging

Henry Farrell, professor and contributor to the academic blog Crooked Timber, has an interesting essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas.” He makes a number of good points for and against academic blogging, and, just as on his blog, is rational and specific in his argument.
Well worth […]

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