I think I've burned out a little writing in my journal, maybe it's just that the holidays are over. I'm still pretty conflicted about the women in my life, but whatever was compelling me to write about them seems to have abated a bit.

I had started to write a journal piece about "Bobbing for Blogs" then decided to turn it into an Askslashdot piece. It got rejected, but is included here. Maybe it will still get some good responses.

I have put "Tin Can Dad" up in my writing area on the web. I may futz with it more later, but is essentially done. I have cheated and edited this journal entry to add this. I didn't want to bump "Bobbing for Blogs" down quite yet.

Bobbing for Blogs

For the last couple of years now I have been hearing that blogs or weblogs are the next big internet thing or that everybody is doing them. I have also been reading and contributing to Slashdot for over a year now, and Slashdot is itself a highly visible blog. But what pundits are clamoring about I believe are personal blogs, maintained with loving care by individual blog enthusiasts. So herein lie some basic questions about blogs and blogging for the Slashdot community.

I did a google searching for blogs and found some sites devoted to blogs, BLOGGER being at the top. Some blogs are very slick, their professional layout and coy graphics however, hiding the fact that they have little content. Many have or were blind links, or were structured in a jumbled, obviously unintended way. There just seemed to be a lot of clutter out there.

I myself recently started posting frequently into a Slashddot Journal with some kind of forlorn hope it would lead to micro-celebrity -- it hasn't (maybe nano-celebrity). I was surprised that Slashdot seems to have no ranking mechanism for Journals. Other blog sites have blog rankings, but I haven't encountered any that use a user based feedback ranking mechanism. My search was short and shallow however.

Having settled on Slashdot as the home of my self aggrandizing blogging effort I decided to do some random reading of various Slashdot Journals out there to get a feel for style, patronage, and average quality. Most have only one or two entries of the Hey-I-Started-A-Journal variety then sit unused. Just clicking on Journal links attached to article comments was slow going to get to recently used (or interesting) Journals. I soon realized I could do a slash-search of Journals which gives the mother load of recent User Journal entries. I was rather surprised to find that only 50-100 User Journals were being written to a day, at least with User Journal as the topic. Granted Journal entries may be submitted under other topics, but I would think "User Journal" would be the most common Journal entry by far. I was able to submit quite a few "First Post" messages with this "Random Drive By Reading" method. But still my search for blogs of merit was random and unstructured. Perhaps Slashdot Journals are not really a good choice for the main repository of ones blogging, and serious blogging should be done elsewhere.

With all this in mind, here are some questions for the Slashdot community:

What is the best Blog site out there for personal blogging?
(Sure Google.com shows dozens, and they all claim to be the best)

What is the best Blog site out there for ranking and reading personal blogs?
(Hey, call me over competitive, but I want to know where I stand)

Are there any Blog sites that have a ranking mechanism based on reader feedback similar to Slashdot's?
(BTW if anyone wants to build such a site, I notice slashblog.com and slashblog.org are not taken)

For the really serious blog enthusiast, is it necessary to procure your own domain name?
(Doing so does implies complete creative control and no training wheels)

To what degree are slick graphics a necessity to be taken seriously by Blog Readers?
(In in an ideal world only the content of ones ideas would matter, but I too like a polished look)

I have a personal bias towards Slashdot, so what is the best way to search for interesting blogs on Slashdot?
(Maybe the Slashdot editors can add a blog ranking mechanism for Slashdot Journals)

As a Slashdot contributor, what is the best way to get my Journal entries out to a wider audience?
(My not so hidden agenda)

What simple extras could be used to beef up the look and feel of Slashdot Journals?
(And still avoid bandwidth hogging graphics, though maybe not forbidding offsite graphic inclusion)

Are Blogs really the next, or possibly current, big thing? (Or has this trend been totally overblown?)