Archives of Reception of the Bible

Past blogging in more ways than one.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Who read biblioblogs?

A number of things make me wonder about who the audience for biblioblogs is:

1) NT Wrong's recent attempt to measure popularity and the potential for cross-referencing this to find out just how conservative our audience is (or their audience because no-one reads this blog anyway :), here, here, and here.

2) Some of the very long - and often off topic - responses to, e.g., James Crossley's posts.

3) Roland Boer's recent and fleeting musing on whether he should filter wayward comments on his blog.

4) I also seem to recall Jim West blocking the odd person :)

Some folk obviously have their pet peeves and can be expected to bend every comment made so that it is about their topic. But others do want to interact more seriously. But then a number of people also keep referring to the limited number specific blogs they actually read, and Wrong's numbers show why this almost has to be the case. So just how are these chosen - accidentally, organically, or ideologically?

What I am wondering is this. Are there many liberals out there reading liberal blogs and the same for conservative? Or are people in these camps mainly reading blogs with opposing viewpoints? Or are people reading a bit of everything? Is biblioblogging - both in terms of bloggers and audence - dominated by those with a conservative or extreme mind-set (and here that means something like Wrong's categories)?

(The nice thing about blogging is I haven't got a cat in hell's chance of working that out, but I can always toss the question out into the ether.)

One final question, do we actually like each other very much? Is there anyone you wouldn't want to meet up at SBL with? Or do you feel that asking that question is just wrong-headed?

Love to all,

John

Now, should I filter any comments....?

1 Comments:

At 9:11 am, Blogger N T Wrong said...

These are all good questions. I suspect that good (punchy, entertaining, interesting, up-to-date, regular, accurate, informed) blogs are the favourites for everybody. It's a bonus if you're already famous. And then, it depends on your specialization. And being more-or-less in the same part of the liberal-conservative spectrum is maybe the next criterion. (This last one is not the most important, but it's also not irrelevant. Anybody who looks at lists of links in a blogroll which more often than not show a similar standpoint can figure out that the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative', while relative and changing -- like all words -- still have some relative meaning.)

 

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