I think it was the great Scottlo that underscored the “Always Be Commenting” mantra while teaching ds106 in Japan, and it’s something I’ve returned to constantly over the last 10+ years—even when not living up to it’s eternal truth. So this blog is not only an ode to blogging, but a peaen to those folks who take the time and energy to share some love in the comments. Back in the fall of 2010 I was teaching my second ds106 course and trying to figure out what made an online course community work, and from the very beginning it was all about the “art of commenting”:
In my mind commenting is key to such an experiment as DS106, it’s a sign of both engagement, distributed sharing, and relationships outside of some central discourse of learning. With every comment, there is the possibility of a whole new conversation. It’s not always the case, and not all comments are equal, but the expectation has to be established immediately in my mind. Be part of the community, even if somewhat forced and arbitrary as we often find in any given class at the beginning. We all have to move beyond the impulse to remain unengaged and do the minimum, without the willingness to explore and discover how we learn out in the open you can not truly be a part of this course. The whole enterprise requires that we feed off each other’s ideas, we think hard about how we create for others, and both offer and respond to feedback regularly.
Damn, that kid was locked-in in 2010! Laying down truth like it was his job: the blogosphere was hot!
In fact, Twitter was where a fair amount of those comments went, and they resulted in a networked community for the course starting in 2011 that was pretty much pure magic. But comments on the work still happened in droves, and the idea of the students being engaged with each other’s work was still paramount. Twitter was like a portal to the world beyond UMW (although the course was the context) and there were some students who stepped through, but others that didn’t. With the fall of Twitter came the diaspora with folks decamping to Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn (lord bless their souls!) while others headed for the hills preaching the coming federated rapture on Mastodon. But as I’m feeling more smitten with the blog than any one platform these days, I idealistically wonder if a return to commenting might help re-focus the vision of a distributed community. I know commenting is far from perfect, and amazing bloggers like Audrey Watters turned them off on Hack Education given all the bullshit an open form on the web can result in. This is why we can’t have nice things!
So acknowledging the definite limits of commenting to save the world, I’m still making a commitment in 2025 to spend a lot more time commenting on other folks work than I have in a long time. I may be overthinking this, but I have gotten the sense that folks might be planning a return to the blog. Aaron Davis is back at it, and uses a quote from Audrey Watters’s recent post to frame the title, “But here I am, blogging on my own domain. Silly me.” If Audrey’s back, why not? I’ll join that club.
My number one guy of all time, Timmmmmmmmmmmyboy, is absolutely owning the blogosphere, as he is wont to do when he gets something in his head. I’ll ride that train to its very last stop. All aboard the blog train!
But it doesn’t stop there, Tim Klapdor’s been way down in Adelaide blogging the hell out of the Southern hemisphere for some time now, and more recently he has figured out how to get his static site to ingest comments from Mastodon for specific posts—bridging the federated world and his blog, which is quite cool. I’m telling you, there is something in the blog water.
I think there’s something in the water
And of course Maren Deepwell has rung in the new year on the blog with a personal tech stack review series, that’s one I still need to comment on.
Kin Lane, the mighty API Evangelist, is always blogging and recently he made an apt analogy between AI and automobiles as he thinks out loud. I still need to blog/comment on this, there is so much awesome here. And I found it thanks to Kate Bowles on Mastodon, so how about those networked apples?
And was it my blogfather D’Arcy Norman who essentially wrote an abbreviated 30-year history of edtech on his blog like a boss? Yes indeed!
Maybe I’m just delusional, but something tells me blogging is gonna be hot in 2025! Hold all my calls, Rowan, I’m blogging (and commenting)!
Dr Mr Groom, your words are must entertaining and inspiring. I am deeply motivated to try this “commenting” activity. Also, can you give me some advice on getting a “blog”?
Steer clear of CogDogBlog and stick to the bava road, and you will be gold! Also, more comments!
BBBB- Better Blogging By Bullying!
I would comment, but I don’t have time because I have to figure out why Apple Podcasts doesn’t recognize the RSS feed from my self-hosted Castopod install, and respond to my Reclaim Hosting ticket about why YouTube failed to “fetch” said RSS feed (does Felix work for Google now?), and finish my Ghost post about the latest “Talking with machines” podcast with Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes, and play with Sora ahead of tomorrow’s StoryCenter.org workshop I’m facilitating with Joe Lambert, “Voices from the Future Present”, which utilizes “AI” in digital storytelling, and make lunch and wash the dishes…
Wait! Did I just blog? 😉
I see what you did there! It isn’t easy being a content creator, now is it? But that’s alright, just don’t let Alan bully you on your road to enlightenment.
Nobody loves the tease play with the bava more than the CogDog. We might just bring up this crusty old theme of this blog?
And Mark, there’s a tradition of blogging in the spaces of comments for sure! Also? Google does not have enough dough to afford Felix. I do t know anything of Castopod, but have you tested its RSS with a Feed Validator? In the olde days of FeedWordPress we sometimes had to rinse a blogs feed with FeedBurner.
Jim, when I first saw the title, I thought it was going to be about the eighties pop group ABC.
“In a way, ABC were doing what Roxy Music had done ten years previously, which was create a shiny pop environment, slightly at odds with the times. In ABC’s world, men wore suits and women were grateful – before breaking their men’s hearts. The defining quality of their music was its intelligence, driven by a desire to elevate the pop genre rather than simply turn it into a commodity.”
Source: Sweet Dreams – The Story of the New Romantics by Dylan Jones
To play on Jones’ description, maybe the ABC of Blogging might be something like:
“In a way, bloggers were doing what the creators of zines had done ten years previously, which was create a shiny pop environment, slightly at odds with the times. In this world, bloggers wrote posts and readers were grateful – before then leaving a comment. The defining quality of blogs are their intelligence, driven by a desire to elevate ideas rather than simply turn it into a commodity.”
Wow, that is damn good. That is the definite look of blog love! And their videos actually sell that idea quite well. They look like they are enjoying themselves, and not afraid to be goody. I all for it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNEdxZURTaI