I was disheartened to read one of my favorite druid blogs today, which strayed completely from the type of content that made me want to follow it and link to it, but instead wandered into a thoughtless, unhelpful, uninformed, unneeded and most unkind mire of off-topic and offensive "tripe" (to borrow from one of the comments). The post first upset me, but then enticed me to step back and try to salvage something of worth from my initial reaction.
Many years ago, a dear friend advised me to "THINK" before publishing any written work, and to be certain that the written piece was:
- Thoughtful
- Helpful
- Informed
- Needed
- Kind
I've tried to live and to write by that standard ever since.
In light of that fact, the point of this blog is not to "entertain" a daily audience or to "stimulate" any readers that find their way here during their search for relevant content on playing a druid. Our readers don't need mere stimulation--we have all of Azeroth to excite our senses.
The point of this publication is to provide relevant and useful information for druid tanks. My promise to you, the reader, is that I will not waste your time by forgetting this. When I have nothing useful to contribute, I will not write. When, as is the case today, I have more entries in 'draft' state than published, it is because the entries can all benefit from revision.
I look forward to seeing more on-topic, useful content elsewhere in our community of writers, and am happy to wait for quality. Finally, I hope that the wayward writers I look up to can find their bearings and get back to basics soon.
"Many years ago, a dear friend advised me to "THINK" before publishing any written work [...]"
ReplyDeleteAgreed 100% with this sentiment, and it should be extended to almost all forms of written content, from blogs, to emails, to comments, to forum postings, to IMs (aside from the flippant variety). All of this stuff forms a permanent record of who you are, and with sites like the Way Back Machine, there is literally no way to scrub anything you publish off the Internet.
I always re-read EVERYTHING I write at least once, and usually twice, before publishing it on my site.
I've kept posts sitting in draft overnight if I thought I was being too off-the-cuff or edgy.... and that usually results in me coming back and re-writing things.
Regarding on-topic: sometimes the allure of higher readership numbers forces people to think that "more posts = better" .... but often that's not the case. What I like is a site that meets it's stated goal and updates with a somewhat predictable frequency (once a day, a few times a week, bi-monthly, or whatever).
For some people, the purpose of their blog is about providing theory, facts, and/or numbers and I admire you for wanting to stick to that purpose. However, for some people, off-topic posts can still meet your posting criteria. I mean, Think Tank (known for being one of those places) got 30-something "congratulation" posts when they posted up about their new baby a few days ago. That kind of post, while off-topic, doesn't necessarily break the rules you listed.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, off-topic posts can be really great for community building purposes, which some people (social WoW players) care about - and thus consider necessary and informative. That is why silly things like "honest scrap" come up: Some people treat both the game and their blogs as part of a larger gaming community, and thus participate occasionally in off-topic connection-building exercises with people. For some people, being able to acknowledge and draw attention to the work of others (or revealing a little bit of the person behind the characters) can still actually be informative, even if it is presented in a "fun" sort of way.
Since writing my blog is what I do for "fun," the goal of my restokin blog is to be informative in a way that is sometimes less formal than it could be. I give people the information they are looking for when they come to my blog, but I still treat my site as part of the interactive and entertaining gaming community. That's just the way some of our sites work.
People can, however, have off-topic posts that don't meet the "kind & informed" criteria, which is where I would consider the post to not be appropriate (except on April Fool's day - where uninformative "jokes" are still okay for me). In the end, it's really up to the blogger to decide what type of material to provide to their readers, but the hope is that good, quality information will still win out at the end of the day.
I appreciate that you hold your blog up to such a high standard of quality posting, and you do have some really excellent points in your post - that we should be clear about what the purpose of our blog writing is. I agree that we should be careful about how far off-topic we let ourselves go. We don't want to post things that could be needlessly hurtful, upsetting to other people, or just provides the wrong information for no reason.
I think that definition of what meets your criteria is really up to the blogger, since I feel that "fun" is still sometimes a necessary & helpful thing on my blog. I could see how it wouldn't be for everyone, and that's what helps define what people's individual posting styles are all about.
A (looking back it it, not so) small reaction.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I agreed before too. I reread my post, I even let my girlfriend read it before posting. To me it was so obvious it was a bullshit blog with bullshit arguments, purely intended as a comical entry.
I have nothing but respect for all players, everyone, unless disappointed by them in game.
I am sad not many people got that. There are a couple (to me) clear statements in there, reflecting to the kind of person writing it if it was really meant, that should make it clear it the whole post is intended as bullshit.
Maybe I am the only one who got the humor, because it would have been written by an asshole, and I, knowing myself know that I am not, though that might be hard to understand.
Maybe it is a culture clash. Dutch people are fairly liberal and others might be very conservative. One of the best Dutch comedians acted out on stage how he would orally satisfy the Dutch queen. Not in a very respecting way if I may say. It offends some people but is still intended as humor, as was my post.
Through it all, I stand by my post. It is my kind of humor. Though I am sorry for everyone who felt offended and was unable to see past that. Not my intention.
PS on the multitude op posts. I don't want to write that much, I just have so many idea's I want to write about. Now that I have done a lot of those I will post less frequent.
I only recently found your blog, but I like it. I've got a baby bear and I'd like one day to tank with him, so I suck up everything I can find about theory, strategy, talents, gear, you name it. I'll be delighted to see more of that here :)
ReplyDeleteBut it's also your blog. If you 'choose' to take it in other directions, to stray occasionally from your chosen remit, to write about unexpected things, that's fine too. Some of the best blog entries are sometimes a complete surprise.