I have been reflecting on the topic of blogs: what they bring to their audience, how they work to transform popular mindset about whatever subject at hand. The subject at hand is infinite. Anything goes, in a blog. And therein lies my problem with blogging. I have started and stopped blogs many times in my life, to document and share my travels, as a private journal when I struggle with an issue and lately, to discuss with peers, topics related to learning, research, technology. The list goes on.
I have read some very insightful blogs, presenting interesting information, points of views or debatable topics which provide food for thought. Blogs provide a new, innovative way of creating communities of practice, bringing like-minded individuals together to ponder critical questions on subjects of common interest. But I have also read seemingly scholarly blogs, which are rather tantamount to the proverbial soap box, where the author expounds endlessly on a topic, in a disorganized manner, with, to boot, sentences fraught with spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Blogs provide these folk with a forum, where they might not be afforded this in a better framed environment, say, a scholarly journal. Truly painful to read.
With the open access of the digital age, it seems that everyone is an expert. It is truly challenging to find, in the blogging world, what is truly credible and worth the read. Unfortunately, the good blogs get diluted with the bad. Blogs are not moderated, they are not peer-reviewed, as are reputed journal articles and there are no hard and fast rules or guidelines by which to publish a blog. This certainly adds to the challenge of establishing the credibility of blog content.
What got me started down this path, I can admit, which is a bit of a rant "à la Rick Mercer", was one of the blog articles for assignment 5: "Giving up Control in the Era of Open Business" by one Luis Suarez. Maybe I completely missed the point of his post. That was not really hard to do: the text was not well structured, I could hardly follow the train of thought and it left me puzzled. Maybe I am a stickler for a well written piece, that must be due to my upbringing. My mother was a newspaper editor. Maybe it was the content. Regardless, the debate about the use of blogs in the academic world needs to be further developed, studied and discussed.
I will now get off the soapbox...
Suarez, L. (2013, September 3). Giving up control in the era of open business [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.elsua.net/2013/09/03/giving-up-control-in-the-era-of-open-business/
I completely agree with you, that is why I am not a fan of blogs nor do I actively search or partake in them for information. I would just as soon not be part of that world. If I do use a blog, I use due diligence when I read through it, and if it is poorly written (as many are) I move on. Some post are written wrought with errors both spelling and grammatical which if it is coming from a scholar leaves you to wonder how scholarly are they? Sometimes the initial post is well written but to read the replies can be extremely painful. Thank you for standing on the soapbox and sharing, I too like a well written post.
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