There's someone out there who thinks blogs should die. He says, "the Web is in risk of drowning under a tidal wave of morons who throttle search engines with writing that has no purpose".
No mincing of words by Mr. Joyce either. Here are just a few of his sub-headings:
You (we bloggers) are all pretentious twats
All of your blogs talk about the same crap
You are fucking stupid
You are all sheep
Your blog is fucking up Google
It's that last point that is his real beef with us bloggers, and although his readers give him grief on that particular point, I have long considered telling Google to go away. Not because I'm concerned about Mr. Joyce's surfing experience, but rather because I know the raison d'être of Joe Bloggs. I don't need, or want, people I don't know to read what I write. My audience, and I think the majority of bloggers would concur, is those who are in my email address book (or those that were in it before the last crash!). So Joyce can go screw himself because this goes on. Now where's that .htaccess file?
Posted by Joe at February 4, 2004 09:09 AMROR! Couldn't agree more. In fact, I've gone as far as to require password access for my blog. Which has certainly been successful from the point of view of Google. They don't hit my server and I don't show up on searches for my name.
But there's another issue here: Some blogs have worthwhile information. They need to be searchable. The problem is not the blogs, it's Google. Automated indexing, regardless of the algorithm, does nothing to separate the wheat from the chaff. I often tell the little one: it's far easier to find something in the library than on the internet.
Posted by: DJ at February 4, 2004 09:56 AMOK, I've read the article and he has two points, one of which is more obvious than the other:
Ninety percent of everything is crap. -- Theodore Sturgeon's law
And MoveableType is resource-hungry.
Posted by: DJ at February 4, 2004 10:22 AMLAWKS! Flustered bloggers beating their palpitating breasts.
Posted by: martin at February 4, 2004 10:37 AMLAWKS indeed Martin. When are you joining the fold? ;+)
Yes, his complaints about Moveable Type are well documented and I would consider using something else if I thought this blog had a readership large enough to beat the crap out of the server at FutureQuest (my host). Methinks Joyce is a frustrated webhost.
As for Mr. Sturgeon, I'm sure we've discussed him before. The fact is he got his maths wrong by at least 9%, if not 9.9%. So nothing new in what Joyce is saying there either.
Posted by: Joe at February 4, 2004 11:04 AMTurf wars and the idealogical considerations that fuel them are a fact of life be it in the playground, the neighbourhood, the boardroom or on the net. Their spite often blinds us but without them we would be gaily myopic. Now, where were those spectacles - tra la, la.
Posted by: martin at February 4, 2004 02:46 PMI really don't see the problem, personally. I can tell at a glance if the Google reference is a blog and sometimes (often, actually), the source points me directly at what I was looking for anyway.
Posted by: Lisa at February 4, 2004 05:32 PMoh. Well, I just read it and though ranty, he makes some good points. MT is, I've decided, quite poorly designed actually and the trackback nonsense is absurd. I also get quite annoyed at the jargonese that goes on and at some of the pretentious bloggers who consider themselves to be the "blogoscenti" ;-). Not to name names or anything, but Hammersley, Tom Coates and Burning Bird really think far too much of themselves in my opinion.
Oh dear. I expect that'll now be googled for all eternity. Ah well. Perhaps I'll un-google myself as well!
Posted by: Lisa at February 4, 2004 05:40 PMIt was the robots.txt file I was looking for and, I think, I have un-googled. So you might be safe yet!
Posted by: Joe at February 4, 2004 06:14 PM