Why do you blog?
Anna Kushnir
Saturday, 23 February 2008 17:49 UTC
What are the underpinnings of our blogging community? Why do we take the time to sit and write about science in a public forum? What are the rewards?
Why do you blog?
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I guess I should give a serious answer (even if the other one is broadly accurate).
In addition to the “I just want to EXPRESS!” sentiment we all have, I sometimes find blogging useful for getting my thoughts in order – writing stuff down just for yourself feels pointless (and I never looked at my hits anyway, so I could convince myself I was being read).
A couple of times I’ve done some small work that is interesting but couldn’t be made into a paper. It can be valuable to blog it, and telling the relevant community.
Does anyone else find that The Blog Monster gets hungry, and needs feeding with a post?
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I like both your answers, Bob, both of them resonate with me.
In answer to your question, I initially found my personal blog to be this wonderful and positive therapy
- it opened up opportunities for me similar to those described my Matt (except the TV appearances!)- just by doing what I enjoyed doing (writing book reviews mainly). I have an introverted personality and it is just a perfect fit with that. But as I am also a compulsive workaholic perfectionist, I found that gradually the blog was controlling me — I felt that I had to post, I started thinking about how to generate traffic, etc. So over an enforced vacation off-internet (probably a summer family holiday) I had a think about all of this, and decided that I didn’t do blogging for these reasons but purely because I enjoy it. So now I am much more relaxed about it and like the whole thing more. I have also met some really good friends in the 2.5 years since I’ve been blogging. (In reality, that is, rather than on the aether.) -
I started to write my own weglog to vent my feelings about a particular issue. I was rather angry about a review process of an article of mine I simply had to vent in a semi-public way.
Now I write bits in my weglog which I tried to keep very positive about really lovely pieces of work. I sometimes write to folk I know telling them I like their paper. Science is such hard work these days, esp with funding pressure. I think it is nice to send good karma.
I have cluster maps attached to my own weglog, and am curious as to who reads it, and why. I will probably never know.
http://cagedcalcium.blogspot.com -
A lot of good arguments for blogging. Interestingly, writing about the science we do is motivation just for a few bloggers. We have the urge to have other people interested in our words (as Brian put it), and we care a lot about the science we do, but we rarely combine the two.
Is this because science blogging is still fairly new? Or is there a line we do not cross with material that we reserve for peer-reviewed manuscripts?
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@Graham E-L,
Hi Graham. Graham here.
What is ‘weglog’? Anyways…
Cluster maps are great in geographic terms but not in greater detail.
The best open source tracking blog/website app that I’ve found/installed so far is Sitemeter.
As per the norm, you have to £££’s to get the deluxe model, but the free version is damn good.
Go check.
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This is the story of how I started blogging:
I was unemployed and trying to refine my CV. I found that it was impossible to say everything that I wanted to say in two pages. One way around this was to include a webaddress that I could refer people to for further information. I did not know how to do this so went off to have a coffee at the local coffee shop. I then wafted about the library where I saw a book called something like “Blogging for Dummies” and flipped through it. I noticed the website blogspot.com and the description in the book looked so idiot-proof that I did not need to take it out of the library. I went home and created:
http://brondekkerhome.blogspot.com/I messed around a bit with a few ideas, but when the Nature Network started, I thought “this sounds like fun” so emailed Matt.
I don’t have a good reason really other than that I am more comfortable communicating electronically than in real-life and it allows me to feel part of the community.
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Speaking as a journalist, I’m finding that my blog is a good way to come up with story ideas. People leave comments or send me things that make me think about something in a new way or tell me something I didn’t know about before…the makings of a potential story!
I attended a really great conference last week about the future of science journalism, where several journalists talked about why they blog. They gave examples of the stories they did for ‘traditional’ media that first took root as blog posts.
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Anonymous
The reason for me is quite different. I started blogging just few months back because I like to express my thoughts and I like to discuss in a group but unfortunately I am the only girl researcher in a Dept. of Physics and I am foreigner and the guys here in japan do not interact with foreigners and specially with foreigner girls (I heard that they feel shy because of language problems). So I do not have any outlet except I talk with my husband (the only friend and family member in Japan with whom i discuss). So when I feel a need to express some of my new thoughts when I am at workplace (my husband works at different place), I sometimes blog for last few months. I feel like to express my thoughts because earlier when I was in my country, I used to be in a group with almost no gender-bias of any kind.
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I’ve been blogging in one way or another since 2000. First to tell my family how a four month internship was going, then a completely random blog about everything and anything. Eventually I grew tired of the pointless blog and wanted to focus on writing about science. I have a lot of friends outside of science who always seemed to think that science is really hard and something they couldn’t understand. So I started blogging about science of coffee, music, art, food, and other things that might appeal to anyone.
On my NN blog I try to write about the same type of things, but I sometimes veer a little more towards the research part of things, because I have a different audience here than on my other blog. (More peopel who have a background in science themselves)
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I used to find the blogging activity rather foreign..but not really so for the past one year where i`ve been a regular frequenter of ppl`s blogs AnD espl`y. those of graduate students and have infact even started doing it myself :) i strongly feel that blogging helps u communicate all ideas, thoughts,life, for which u don`t need to go looking for the right target audience ( cos they just come along,in search of someone like u ).
With me, science blogs helps find different views to a similar situation and also realise that PhD. is not a bed of roses, no matter where in the world u are.
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