Believe it or not, it’s only when I got on the blogging bandwagon here that I realised how trackbacks work. What veteran bloggers have known for years is my epiphany for today — that one blogger’s citation of another blogger’s work serves the double purpose of also promoting the former’s own blog (at least if the latter sets their blog to allow trackbacks).
This eureka moment of mine suddenly makes the style of some bloggers suspect in my book — those who pepper their work with so many links to other blogs. I made the observation yonks ago about how the style of a noted blogger has evolved from making very sharp-edged, highly-focused entries to the ones we see today that have more of the stock-take-cum-shotgun approach of a content consolidator.
I think this is quite relevant today as I note that there has been significant debate about the establishmentisation of blogging. Interestingly, I happen to be in the middle of the book Down and Dirty Pictures – Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind. I draw some parallels to the blogging debate from the difference I now see between Independent (”Indy”) Films — motion pictures created and produced by real artists with real visions, and Studio (”Establishment”) Movies — motion pictures produced with the singular aim of drawing an audience.
Studio movies use formulas — proven cinematic devices that appeal to as broad a range of viewers as possible. In contrast, Indy films are driven by their creators’ visions and passions. As a result, Indy works are far more edgy, risque, and often (the good ones, at least) leave a deep impression on their viewers. The Indy world is the cauldron of creativity that spawned groundbreaking works like Pulp Fiction using styles and stories that no produced-by-committee movie could ever pull off.
For Indy film producers, an audience is a bonus. For Studio movie producers, an audience is the whole point. The latter is driven by credentialism and the former by insight. We all know mass appeal brings home the bacon, whilst edginess and loyalty to vision attracts a far smaller subset — insightful minds. That ultimately is the choice faced by every content producer, be they film makers, illustrators, writers, and — yes — bloggers.
As Web authors, we need to ask ourselves:
Are we seeing our vision through?
Or are we selling out to the Establishment?
This is not a trivial matter as it brings to light the interesting question of where a groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting idea or framework of ideas is most likely to emerge from — (a) work that merely coasts along the mainstream pandering to popular sentiment, OR (b) work at the cutting edge that continuously challenges established sensibilities.
For a basketcase like the Philippines, the implications of the answer to that question spells the difference between a national destiny of merely keeping up or one of actually seeing ourselves competing head-to-head with the rest of the world. It will take giant leaps of progress to bring our country back into the game. Yet we continue to muddle along debating trivialities and exploring options within an already flawed approach.
Albert Einstein once said: Problems cannot be solved by the same thinking that created them.
Benign0, this is the difference between just writing articles, and blogging.. The process of linking to a work is to acknowledge that certain ideas came not from yourself, or that certain individuals are worth reading because they offer a different side, or more in depth thought on a certain issue or a certain nugget of information…
In blogging, linking to others is key because it provides service to your readers..
Don’t conclude so fast, it is in fact by your own words that you have learned about trackbacks just recently, it is no stretch of the imagination, that tomorrow, you too will realize that linking provides a great service to your readers as well..
There is a great divide, I believe, between a content consolidator and a well researched writer, in that whereas content consolidators merely link (and perhaps, quote extensively) merely to echo ideas (and thus, create the “echo chamber effect” of blogging) there are great researchers who effectively quote, present, and ponder upon or enrich linked articles so as to express their opinion.
This is no different from scientific paper writing wherein authors quote and cite scientific papers extensively to provide credible bases for their own work. The fact that the world-wide-web and HTML was originally designed for scientific papers (the creator of WWW is a physicist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee) only proves that this is not a coincidence.
Nick,
I do appreciate the need to link to quoted and cited works. I’m quite a notorious self-promoter who makes liberal use of linkbacks to my own website when commenting in blogs and participating in on-line forums (so i’m quite the opposite as I cite my own work more often than others).
The point I highlight is not about the use of citation and links in themselves but more about the enhanced motivation to do so beyond the service to the readers that you mention. Kung baga there is additional incentive to cite and link. So whereas I used to think “gosh, this guy is quite selfless in his citations”, I now think “a kaya pala…”.
So whilst I recognise and by no means discount the acknowledgement factor which you point out, I go further and explore the motivation beyond acknowledgement.
In my case, i run a traditional website (which i code using raw html). I continue to do so because I like to organise my stuff hierarchically (my “What’s new” page is just a nice-to-have I added later). In the early days – before blogs came along – webmasters used to give each other the nod by manually linking back to one another. Nowadays, trackbacks automate that process. However it had the effect of commoditising what used to be a gentleman’s handshake between Web publishers (kind of like printing “Good morning!” on your T-shirt instead of actually greeting people verbally the old way). I dare say, the Web seems to be particularly good at commoditising human relationships (think the MySpaces and Facebooks of this world).
To be sure, a lot of bloggers are el-primo at distilling and adding insight to their quotes. But as Jon said, there’s a continuum between the two extremes — content consolidation on one end (some websites have even automated content consolidation for the Google Adsense revenue), and extreme creative writing at the other end (i.e. completely original fiction with absolutely no reference to other people’s work). Jon’s suggested other extreme “well researched work” would be somewhere in that continuum. The satires like the script of The Simpsons would fall somewhere between researched work and pure fiction because it makes allusions to lots of past pop culture work.
[...] of the blogs June 6, 2008 si manolo quezon ba ang pinatatamaan ni benignO? one blogger’s citation of another blogger’s work serves the double purpose of also [...]
Blogging should be demystified and be seen as what it is–blogging. hehehe
Benign0’s comments contain many valid observations. However, given the limited time that web readers have, many find a content-consolidated blog quite useful.
Like in the analogy of the movies, many viewers would prefer watching an entertaining blockbuster, leaving the thinking and analysis to the truly learned and erudite.
We can only speculate about the motives of bloggers who cite other bloggers’ works.
Maybe they do it with good, selfless intentions. Which I’m inclined to believe to be the case.
Maybe they do it to promote their blog. If that’s the case, so what? I see nothing wrong with promoting one’s blog by promoting others’.
Nothing wrong too, I think, with blogging to get as much readers as possible. Or using a style that would attract readers.
But I agree, blogs must be judged by its content and not by the number of its readers.
[...] the revealing and thoughtful heckle from Down Under in Establishmentization: I draw some parallels to the blogging debate from the difference I now see between Independent [...]
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[...] is Benign0’s epiphany, on the workings of trackbacks in the blogosphere, and as to how linking to a blog opens a pandora’s box towards the selfishness of some [...]
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i think this issue is a molehill.
monolo quezon calls himself “the explainer” lol. but his “explanations” come from everywhere. even his blogsite. come to think of it, how much personal insight does this guy give in all his “explanations” on his tv program and his blog? i’d say 30-40%. and he calls himself the explainer lol.