Analyzing a Blog

BLOG ANALYSIS - NEUFELD - JANUARY 21 2018

In his blog post ‘Because Reading Is Fundamental’, Jeff Attwood discusses the idea that members of the blogging community are more concerned with increasing post counts rather than actively reading them.  He likens this trend to the act of speaking rather than listening, and says that the value of conversation is decreased when bloggers do not take the time to fully read and understand posts.

The intended audience of Attwood’s blog is not gender-specific.  Though his blog ‘Coding Horror’ is about programming and software development and would likely appeal to others in his field, this specific piece could be of interest to anyone who is part of an online community seeking a richer, more educational experience.  His post is written in language that is mildly colloquial but still polished in tone, and would be appropriate for an audience likely 18 and older.  The audience does not need to post-secondary education to understand and enjoy the post; however, as it implores the audience to consider reading more thoroughly, individuals who have sought college or university degrees may be more receptive to his message.

In order to bolster his stance that the blogging community does not spend enough time reading, Attwood cites two “experiments”.  The first of these is the ‘Ars Banana Experiment’, where readers of a post by Ars Technica were instructed, in the last sentence of the seventh paragraph, to include a reference to bananas in their response to prove that they had read the entire post.  It was not until the 93rd comment that a reader first made reference to bananas.  This rather cheeky example clearly backs up Attwood’s claim that the majority of readers are not reading posts to completion.  Attwood’s second example, “The Slate Experiment”, however, hardly seems to be an experiment at all.  He shows us a chart of analytics data gathered by Farhad Manjoo, which is less an experiment than a collection of data.  To call this an experiment is somewhat sensational, and the chart itself is overly simplistic and could even be misleading.  Still, the information does seem to support Attwood’s stance.

Attwood proposes providing incentives to reading- namely, removing pagination, measuring users’ read times, rewarding reading with badges, and updating online conversations in real-time to emulate live conversation. 

Attwood’s post does give credence to the idea of reading/listening more than talking, but there are factors which he does not consider.  For example, a blog post may be dry and frankly, arduous to finish.  Conversely, it may spark emotional response early into the piece which a reader may feel compelled to respond to immediately.  (This could be comparable in “real life” to clapping or booing during a speech.)  “Incentives” for reading defeat the purpose of pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  And finally, those who come to a blogging community for interaction with others, particularly if incentivized by real-time updates, are simply eager to engage in conversation.  Attwood has an almost utopian idea of a community of informed readers huddled in polite discussion, but for those who come to the internet because they need someone to talk to, this would not be enough.  His idea is thought-provoking, but fanciful.