Sunday morning Cuppa
Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 10:01AMA bit of a chat this morning – so grab a cuppa and catch up on odd bits of news.
Mary Francis of Frequently Wrong but never in Doubt has put out a call for help with the Bloggers who Embellish webring. With over 250 people now in the ring she needs a couple of people to pitch in and help her. If you have time check out her post and contact her.
Mary Francis is also going thought the ring and checking that people are still active. Her definition of an active blog is one that has been updated in the last year! My cut off date for an active blog is 3 months as usually if someone has not made an entry in 3 months they are no longer blogging. Many blogs are started and enjoyed by their authors but in the long run are not maintained because other activities catch the interest of the author. Blogging for some is fun for a while then they move on. That’s fine as blogging is not for everyone.
I really should go through the blogs in my side bar and clean out blogs that are no longer being maintained and add the new ones. Since TAST has started I have discovered a whole bunch of new blogs that I am reading. I think it's important to support other bloggers by linking to them and for everyone to make sure they are included in the community.
To be honest before I embark on this task I am trying to decide if I need to define what an active blog in the textile community is. Links in the sidebar or in a webring are only useful to readers if they lead to other active sites. If I am browsing someones sidebar I know I find it intensely annoying to go to dead blog after dead blog. I am browsing in order to discover new blogs not dead ones. It is actually hard to estimate but off hand I can only think 2 exceptions where someone has stopped blogging for longer than 6 weeks and then resumed at their previous level of commitment. I am thinking that in the textile community a 2 month cut off period is fair and a 3 month cut off period is definitely fair, What do people think? Leave a comment and let me know how you decide when a blog is dead.
On another note but related in an indirect way, as people have requested a post on how I manage my time. I must admit it is something I get asked often. I started to write a post and as it expanded it I had to ask myself questions about what time management practices are automatically implemented in my day – in other words they work and what time management practices I only think I use. There is a vast difference between the two.
As of last Friday I have started to track how I actually use my time I am going to do it for at least 10 –14 days so I can clearly define for readers what I do and how I get things done. Jerry is away this week so how I use my time is a bit unusual. I decided to take a good look at what I do and how I manage my time over longer than a week. A month would probably be even more enlightening but I think that would be too long to log all my activity. As I said there is a vast difference between how I think I allocate my time and what I actually spend time on. I will probably discover I spend way too much time online! So stay tuned for that post.
How does my time management and my question about blog activity levels relate? I do get annoyed at webrings and sidebars that are not updated including mine. I was browsing yesterday and I realised that I was becoming impatient with a sidebar that had obviously not been updated in over two years. I realised that I felt the author did not value their readers time at all. I felt it was a little thing but an annoying thing and I left the site. I value my time and assume readers do to. The combination of thinking about time management and the email from Mary Francis made me add "update sidebar" to my to do list. I wanted to ask when does your annoyance factor click in? Are you bothered by false leads in a blogroll or webring? For me links are to people who are active in the community the key word for me is active. I can't point the finger because my own sidebar has not been checked in ages but do we as a community need a bit of a spring clean? I feel being lazy like this means that new bloggers don't get linked to easily which is not a problem with webrings. Do we need side bar spring clean challenge month? Leave a comment and let me know.
While on the topic of blogging while digging out links for my other blog Mindtracks I found a great list of 101 Blog Tips which many readers here will find interesting and of use.
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Reader Comments (9)
As a webring owner, I try to go through and make sure the sites are all active. With 77+ blogs in the ring, I feel that two weeks of inactivity is enough. But I only do it every two weeks. They are moved to the queue and then notified that if they do not respond to the email, that their membership is removed. It may be a bit harsh, but I don't like wading through inactive blogs, my time is more valuable.
As for my blogroll, I probably need to clean it out a bit, but I have over 255 blogs on my blogroll. Google reader makes it easy for me and will define which ones have been inactive for a while, but I have to take the time to use that function.
hmmm, I know you were at my blog yesterday, so I'm off to check my sidebar!!
I get really miffed (used to, I should say , as I don't bother anymore) at surfing the webrings and finding ones without the button inthe sidebar. Webrings are great for keeping up with a group, but only if the code is actually installed. I felt a bit ripped off.
Sharon,
As a blog reader I agree it is so frustrating to keep finding blogs with no entries for so long thy must be redundant.
Judy.
what really annoys me is people who join webrings and do not post the link so you end up in a dead end alley, a self defeating concept of a webring.
also the ones that do post it, but at the very bottom of the page so you have to scroll all the way down.
neki desu
Thanks for the feedback on this Jo it was not your blog that got me annoyed - so don't worry!
Neki some blogging software (particularly in the early days of blogging) will only allow you to put extra code at the bottom of the side bar - and in the early days of blogging it was a bit of a convention so that people knew where to look for it - - it has never annoyed me and that where I have mine!
A thought provoking post on more than one front Sharon.
First of all, I will have to spend some time getting familiar with the new blogger, updating my links and also my template so that I can put the labels in the sidebar. Thanks for the prompt!
I think you have the inactive time about right, sometimes life can get in the way for a while, and summer holidays for the kids are 6 weeks long!
Maybe you could consider making InaMinuteAgo more like an e-magazine and charge a small subscription to keep it going.
Perhaps it would be possible to make some dosh out of TAST, maybe by having an on-line exhibition and auction of some kind. There has been some fabulous work done so far that could be simply mounted or framed. I am sure lots of people would be prepared to donate a sample or even produce a piece specially. Maybe you could consider levying a small joining fee for a similar challenge in the future.
oh no, sorry for not explaining myself clearer i meant all the way down the page like where it says next page or powered by worpress not at the side bar :)
neki desu
Neki now I see what you mean - yep when its not inthe sidebar its harder to find and thinking about it tht is why I use the list function to surf the ring
Kay I really want to keep the site free - as I think it brings people to embroidery who have never done it or are picking it up again - it is perhaps selfish but half my satisfaction is in seeing new hands try out things. I think if it became a subscription only service it would put many people off or they would never encounter the site by accident. I guess I am into seducing people to try embroidery - So my hope is that advertisiing etc will cover the costs etc and its a case of so far so good but I do have to pay attention and promote things a little more - I am not actually very good at that side of things