Blog Discussions
January 13th, 2005 • General
Yes, blogs are the new media and they’re doing a lot, they’re emerging like fire and spreading fast. I know that blogs are meant to save a blogger’s “blurbs”, but often they take the form of a distributed discussion, and for some reason, this gets on my nerves.
The Internet has always been about discussion, sharing information, debating matters, it was always (well mostly always) about interaction, like newsgroups, email, web-based chat, forums, mailing lists, and many other forms of interaction. But blogs, being different in their nature, are taking discussions to another level.
This isn’t a rant. It’s an expression of annoyance. I’ve been reading many discussions taking place on blogs and it can be frustrating to follow links from one post to another without having at least some sense of time or order. Debates vary from RSS standards, to Java best-practices, to my-cat-is-cuter-than-yours; but they still can be difficult to follow.
I was thinking FOAF or XFN, but they don’t seem to have
an answer, so here’s a proposal: In each individual entry’s
XHTML code, add a meta tag, for instance in-reply-to,
with a single attribute containing the replied-to permalink.
Each page can have multiple in-reply-to meta tags
so it can be viewed as a reply to many other posts.
This can be useful when mapping a certain discussion. Say
you found a site that’s replying to a subject on someone else’s blog,
you need to know the context in order to understand what’s going on.
In this case, a simple parser can trace in-reply-to tags
from one blog to another and map them into a tree of links, similar
to mailing list or forum threads, hopefully making a discussion
easier to follow.
Well, this might not be the most intuitive solutions, and most current blog tools don’t allow editing the header, but it might help if implemented. So from now on, if I’m replying to someone else’s entry, I’ll add a tag that looks like this:
<meta name="in-reply-to" content="http://blogname.com/link/to/entry" />
6 Responses (Add Your Comment)
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(X)HTML has had a facility for indicating threads like this for quite some time. Check out the <blockquote> and <q> tags, e.g.
In response to:
<blockquote cite=”http://blogname.com/link/to/entry”>
Some entry made some statements about something.
</blockquote>I think the following should also be considered…
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Well, TrackBack involves a certain protocol that has to be implemented by clients, those clients are free to do whatever they want with a TrackBack ping, they can choose not to display it at all, so there would be no way of traversing blog-based threads. I think meta tags are just simpler and don’t need any extra effort,
Blockquotes on the other hand might be a good option, except that blockquotes don’t necessarily have to be replies, since I might quote someone in the context, but the rest of his entry has nothing to do with the subject being discussed.
However, blockquotes and citations can be very useful when parsing a blog-based thread and we need to display related-to information.
What do you think?
Reply ↵ -
I think I would like some e-mail notification of replies or something. :)
I agree with you on the simplicity and grace of the tag, but it’s not as active or instant as TrackBack. I think using both methods is probably the best of both worlds, and the tag can still be used when TrackBack isn’t available. Do you know of any software that does this?
Reply ↵ -
Well, I don’t know if MT supports comment email notifications, but I’ll try to find a plugin for that.
As for Trackback vs. Meta Tag solution. The point of using a meta tag isn’t notification, that’s what Trackback’s for. The point is to be able to view a discussion in full by following these meta tags and displaying a thread for instance. Of course, when combined with Trackback, it’ll give you the best of the two, that is, state that a certain entry is a reply, and notify the replied-to post.
My only gripe on Trackback is that it’s difficult to implement and requires blogging software to be Trackback-enabled, while a meta tag builds over standard XHTML which isn’t going to harm anyone if it’s not used. Think of it like XFN vs. FOAF :)
Reply ↵ -
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Reply ↵
In your opinion, how is this better than TrackBack?