What about content quality?
I have a (purely cerebral) question. I'm fairly new to Indiblogger, but I have been writing for a very long time. While there are plenty of really good blogs listed on Indiblogger, I've seen countless blogs that are poorly written, barely coherent, and badly punctuated. While I agree that a blog is a form of self-expression, isn't there some way of monitoring the quality of content? Surely Indirank can't perfom that task - or can it? Just because a blog gets a lot of traffic, does it make it a blog of quality? And even if it contains stunning ideas and thoughts, isn't the basic premise of a blog based on the concept of good writing? Any thoughts?
Hmmm.. interesting subject .. I guess Indiblogger should reaearch into NeuralNetworks to get this done :) "badly punctuated" nice one .. reminds me of my blog LOL
Neural Networks??!! Nah... just some proofreaders, methinks. The odd missed apostrophe or comma here and there doesn't bother me. A bloggin platform isn't meant to be a grammar class.
It's just that I'm tired of reading sentences like "Hello my friends welcome to my latest blog. I have been blogged for past four month and am enjoying each and every entries and each and every comment of your. Now, to your kind eye, my new entries is come. It is on the film of New York." And so on...
My point is that if you can't write well in English, you should probably blog in the vernacular. If you choose not to exercise that option, I'm curious about whether there's a way for aggregators like Indiblogger to weed out well-written content from the likes of my over-the-top, but all-too-commonly-found example above.
Pawan, like I said - a blog is a from of self-expression. Far be it for me, as an individual, to characterize someone else's blog as "the worst" or to tell someone to "stop blogging in English". I'm asking whether a system can be developed that does that for you. For example, I find the Amazon rating system pretty reliable when choosing a book. Similarly, in the food space, Zagat is a reliable rating system, because it employs several parameters of judgement. These are user-generated, self-correcting rating systems that are balanced by weighted expert reviews. Are they flawless? Of course not. Do they help separate the wheat from the chaff? I believe they do.
You missed a point there. Books and Food are things with mass appeal. Millions of people might have already read the books mentioned in Amazon and so with the case with Zagat. But when it comes to blogging, the traffic is only limited to a few people (I am talking of small time blogger's not the professionals).
And also there are voluminous number of blogs all over the blogosphere and some of them are stubs and hence filtering them could be quite difficult. So i guess it wouldn't be possible to do this filtering job, atleast in the coming year or two!
as long as i understand what the blogger is trying to express i dont really mind the typos or 'bad punctuation' ... if there is any system which separate wheat from chaff which a lot of people (intellectuals) would love to have it would spoil the idea of blogging without having to worry about all that stuff and just put your heart or mind out on an online platform to express yourself.it would take away the soul.
Hi arun...
No noooooo... don't get me wrong, it isn't about intellectualism or about punctuation. I've read stream-of-consciousness novels which don't give a toss for punctuation. If you read my original post, I was cribbing about blogs that were "poorly written, barely coherent, and badly punctuated." I agree with you (said it before, and I'll say it again) - a blog is a form of self-expression. Am not suggesting banning or censoring badly written blogs. I'm just mooting a means of measuring quality of writing (in any given language) - since that is the very basis of blogging.
@ Pawan: Good point. However, if an aggregator like Indiblogger can develop a system like Indirank (which gives small blogs or niche blogs with low traffic their due), perhapsa similar algorithm could work to measure quality of content. Sorry to harp on a single point - but as a writer, it gets to me that content is measured by standards that exclude basic writing skill. Other parameters are important - frequency of update, incoming links, images, concepts - but what about the writing?
@ Arun: On further thought, yes, I do agree to some extent that if you've understood what someone is trying to say, the purpose (of "communication") has been achieved. However, I also feel that it often detracts from the quality of the reading experience if you have to struggle to figure out what someone means - or worse, if after grappling with clunky language, you discover that he/she doesn't really have anything interesting to say at all!
I think acute grammatical errors cannot be distinguished by any algorithm. As you yourself said, the indi blogger's indi rank solely depends upon the freqency of updating, concepts et cetera. But, for judging the writing part only Human intelligence can make it out and for a computer it is all gibberish. If you still didn't get me I'll give a detailed explaination.
Pawan: no, I gotcha.
Agree with Gursimranjeet abt Chetan Bhagat (LOL!!) syndrome. Would never want to stifle someone's attempt at self-expression. However, I wish there was some tool/reference/meter/measure that could help me cut through the crap to get to the blogs that are well-written (as opposed to highly popular. A blog with pics of naked women on it might be very popular, even if the writing was crummy).
Agree also with Hemal- to my mind, content needs to be readable and credible. Blogs are now being used as an important source of information. I notice an increasing laxity in that respect too. For instance - people are quoting lines from great works of literature and attributing them to the wrong authors with impunity. When you point out the error, you're told to "lighten up" and "get the spirit" of the post.
Sigh. I'm off to get a life.
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