Martin Spedding's Blog

The Longhorn bloggers site will operate very much like the .NET bloggers site does. Just tell Robert McLaws what your Longhorn-oriented blog will be, and it'll be aggregated, but it must be a category or feed that is totally oriented toward Longhorn.

As Mike said on Larkware:
Do we really need a site for Longhorn Blogs already? No. Stop the hype machine at the next exit, please; I want to get off.

I said "
Amen. I almost threw up seeing it. What a waste. Maybe in 1-2 years yes but now its just "look how cool I am"

As to the low signal to noise ratio on dotnetweblogs, and the bigger problem of people constantly giving totally incorrect advice or answers to .NET issues, not to mention that narrow focus of not being able to see much beyond ASP.NET and VB.NET, this is a known problem and one that many in the community get quite fustrated about. Result? Many people have written off the whole site or given up blogging altogther.

People can do what they want. Me, I'm getting tired of the constant whining, incorrect info, childish rants and narrow focus. I'll make my blog try to stay with the essence and totality of what I feel .NET is and try to write at a level that reflects well on me and the community as a whole.

This is not directed towards your excellent post Martin BTW but to the general issue that I feel this Java blogger had every right to call these blogs on. More power to him. As you said there is *no* .NET community (it certainly is in no way dotnetweblogs, we had one on the DM CLR list a long time ago that meant something) and "but you soon decide which blogs are worth reading and which ones are not."

I'm following 150+ .NET related feeds for aggregating to PDCBloggers. There certainly is a .NET community and DotNetWebLogs is an important part.

I don't think a Signal-Noise ratio is a good analogy for the quality of communication in blogging. What one person considers noise might be another person's interest. Improved filtering and categorization will help people drill down to the information they value.

The most important thing is that people are making new relationships and connecting with others who they may not have had a chance to connect with otherwise.

I think LonghornBlogs will be interesting too. I am interested in seeing how people will deal with more than one blog per person. Nonetheless, I appreciate Robert McLaws efforts to counter the misinformation on Longhorn that will no doubt increase over the next months.

And how many of those 150 say anything new and not regurgitate more PDC hype? How many time do you have to have posts that say "cool" and "can't wait?" I'm not thrilled with that site either but whatever. There is *no* info on Longhorn until PDC. Until then those Longhorn sites are just a waste of bitmaps and idle rumors. I'd rather see people write about real technology instead of reposting tons of idle rumors. Boring and useless.

You don't think that Signal-Noise ratio is important? Well that explains it. I can tell you that the outside world does and the way this site comes off in Redmond as well as many other places isn't positive. Do you or not understand the difference between a blog and a chat room?? If you want low signal go to a damn chat room, don't spray it on a blog. Thats what chat rooms and mailing lists are for. Geez.

I agree as well there isn't much to be said about Longhorn at the moment until PDC. What would be more interesting is getting information (blogs) from those who have actually been working with Longhorn (architects, developers, etc.) rather than one more person who says its "so cool" that Longhorn will be here one or two or more years from now. That kind of information, as has been indicated here and elsewhere, won't be available until after PDC.

Just look at the main dotnetweblogs feed over the last week:

(1) How many obligatory posts with the "I'm headed to the PDC 2003" graphic were done?

(2) How many posts about hotel rooms in LA for the PDC have there been?

(3) MS announced their 2004 MVPs yesterday. How many posts either expressing their gratitiude of congrats to someone who was awarded this were there?

(4) Now, for things completely OT - and please note I won't speak of Mount Everest climbs, which I found fascinating, only of the completely OT _and_ trivial _and_ meaningless to anybody but the poster ones - have we all announced what Matrix and Simpsons character we are yet? Have we all found out exactly what style programmer we are yet?

Signal.... noise.... nothing interesting.... not about presetn nor future products.... purely personal in content and completely meaningless to me.... HIT THE DAMN DELETE KEY.

On other items you are correct. There is a community and many here are not directly affiliated with MS. There is alot of pretty good info that helps me learn to use .NET in better ways. But... this is also a large amount of S/N too.

First of all thanks for the all the comments. I think that the problem is simple to solve . Rigidly enforce categories. Define a set of categories such as ASP.NET, C#, P/Invoke etc. Only place blog entries in the main feed that in the appropriate category. I really think the dotnetweblogs feed should be similar to the pdcblogers feed so that only relevant blog entries are in the feed. That way people can subscribe to individuals rss feeds or to the main feed. If people regularly miscategorise their entries so it appears as they are writing about .net but it is really a private entry then simply remove them from the main feed. That way everyone is happy.

I thank you Martin for your post and email. I think the problems go far deeper than that and I am trying to formulate a response that reflects all that in a way that isn't a rant and perhaps reflects what some of us blogging "elders" have learned to do and *not* do during our two years of .NET blogging from people like Sam Ruby and such. The important thing to remember is that your blog reflects you as a person, your company (especially if you are a Consultant) and the whole .NET community. Do you want to be percieved as a person who writes well written technical writings on .NET and other subjects or a person who just whines and posts rants and such? Thats what people have to ask themsleves. I am aware that many people are not yet familiar with the customs of blogging and they may have come here from the world of chat rooms, mailing lists, and ADP.NET forums. Blogging is none of these. Its a one to many conversation, not a many to many like a chat room and such. Its about writing meaningful content that people want to read and following good blogging customs like attributing your sources, respect for others, learning when NOT to post, staying away from rants, staying away from .NET Vs. Java, VB vs. C# and just functioning as a citizen of a greater whole - building a positive .NET community that others can be proud of. More when I can assmble my thoughts into a coherent post.

Thank you guys for all your comments. I really appreciate the amount of input I've been getting regarding LonghornBlogs.com

Sam, you're right. There isn't that much info available before PDC. I disagree that this is a PDC hype thing. it's not. LonghornBlogs.com will be around LONG after PDC. It was not launched before PDC to build up PDC hype. It was actually launched at the same time as my MVP announcement to show people what I've been up to over the last several months. I also launched www.patchdayreview.com that day, as well as my new company website at www.interscapeusa.com.

In regards to categories, we're planning some pretty extensive modifications to the .Text engine to be able to support everything we want to do. First off, we're going to be implementing a "default category" architecture, where people will have specific categories that are global to any blog. Because we expect to have literally thousands of bloggers on the site, from all walks of life, we want people to be able to see posts from just developers, or just developers about Avalon, or just the Media, or anyone about Avalon, etc.

Because ScottW is in the middle of the 0.95 coding cycle, we'll wait until that version is released to officially fork the codebase.

Also, we will be aggregating Longhorn-specific feeds from other blogs too. It is almost a necessity if LonghornBlogs.com is to become the resource I want it to be.

Now, in regards to blog content, Sam I gotta say I'm kinda disappointed. I thought we talked about this already? Blogs = ranting. I hate to disappoint you, but I have a lot of people reading my blogs because I post thoughtful, well-written rants. PatchDayReview.com is a rant about Microsoft Security that gets 3,000 visitors (not hits) a day. Part of the coolness of the blogsphere is that you have so many dynamic personalities with so many varying opinions. And I agree 100% with Drew. It's ALL about the relationships that are built, and I've meet so many cool people across this awesome world of ours that I would never have met without my blog.

Having said all that, I respect all of your opinions, and that's what blogging is all about. Keep sharing your opinions. It doesn't matter what anyone else tyhinks, because they're YOUR opinions. That is why I enjoy dialog with such larger-than-life characters such as Sam and Scoble and Dare. And of course I'm a big fan of Martin's ;).

But hey guys: Most of us are new to blogging. I've only been doing it for 7 months, and I'm still learning. We all are. Don't be mad at us for being new, instead gently push us in the right direction. You've been doing it with code for a very long time. Do it with the social aspect of programming too. You'll be surprised at the response you'll get.

Oh yeah, and let me know when you have a Longhorn category feed, and I'll make sure it gets aggregated on LonghornBlogs.com (probably sometime in November) :).

And thanks for posting such dynamic content.

Just read this Robert and I must say I am impressed with your response. Good job. Actually what I have seen so far is quite good. Yes, you may see me soon-)