One of the reasons I haven't created a linkblog yet is because, as I usually do, I do lots of deep thinking before I act. I've had to do lots of deep thinking in the past about the convergence possibilities between a wiki and a weblog, until I found the "disunifying principle" between them that implies that they should be separate.
For wikis and weblogs, it's that weblog entries are fundamentally timely, and dated, while wiki entries should always be current. That implies that weblog entres should have dates in their URLs, while wiki pages should only have a name.
However, given the different styles of blogging I've identified before, what's the best way to organize different styles within the context of one weblog?
Yesterday I had three different "bunch of links" posts. Given the reverse-chronological format of a weblog, it seems a little odd to update a post -- to add new content -- if it isn't at the top of the page anymore. So when I was ready to post another batch, I created a new post.
Two options of weblog organization I'm considering now are to have a "stream" style section that would always appear at the top of every day beside the normal flow of weblog entries, and to have an option, when editing a post, to have it "bump" to the top of the day if a significant edit has been made. For the first option, while there's always a question of what belongs in the stream and what belongs in its own post, it's mostly a simple judgement call, which I can live with in the absence of a better heuristic. The second is a violation of expected weblog behavior, though it's a much better way to call attention to an important edit than just letting it sit there buried by older content in posts that were created after it.
Maybe it's not really a violation of expected weblog behavior, if expected weblog behavior is "the most current content should be at the top". Given this second option, having a separate "stream" alongside the rest of the weblog would be unnecessary, as the stream would just be a normal weblog post.
I already have a "precedence" field in my weblog table I put in there a long time ago for a similar purpose. Posts with the same precedence are ordered by their creation date, while posts with a higher precedence get displayed first. I used to manually set the precedence number through a simple form in a hacked place in my old weblog software, but I now don't even have an interface for it without going to phpMyAdmin. I could simply add a "bump" option to my weblog editing screen that would make my software automatically increment the precedence for a post that's being updated (not created). I wouldn't always "bump", but only when there was a significant edit, such as adding new links or comments to a stream-style post.
What do you think about significantly updated posts being bumped to the top of that day's entries? Only downside I can really see is that someone might visit the weblog and not think anything had changed because an "old" post was still at the top, while there'd be new posts under it that go unnoticed.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
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What would be interesting is a wiki and weblog front-end to the same data. Because the problem with a wiki is finding the new stuff, the juicy comments etc. With a weblog at least people know what I've added, and it's presented right there for them to read.
Yet I know from the stuff I post in my weblog that it really isn't suited to a weblog. A wiki; a content authoring tool - I don't know what, but there's a gap for some other kind of tool.