I became interested in the Internet through researching ideas which is what I do even without the Internet, but the Internet has made it much easier and more enjoyable. The first topic I web-searched to a great degree (by which I mean obsessively) was Tarot which led me to MBTI. I was only vaguely familiar with MBTI and was happy to learn more about it as I was already deeply interested in Carl Jung’s ideas.
This search for info led me to an INFP discussion forum (INFP is my MBTI personality type). It was utterly amazing because it was a large group of people who had a similar way of thinking and communicating, but it kind of spoiled me for more general forums I’d later join. I had some truly awesome discussions there, but some of the members I interacted with on a regular basis ended up moving on. I came to learn how informal web relationships are. Most people don’t really want to connect. I do want to connect, but when someone asked if I’d like to meet in person I realized I had my limits on how much I wanted to connect as well. I’m somewhat of a loner and am contented with my few close real-world relationships. However, I look for something different in my on-line friendships that my everyday relationships can’t satisfy.
Anyways, the INFP forum and other MBTI-related forums were just too specific. My mind wanders and my intellectual hunger wasn’t being sated. I went looking around. I’ve since belonged to many forums: Beliefnet, Truth Be Known, some Integral Theory forums, and various Atheist/Agnostic forums. I realized no single group would satisfy and groups took too much effort and time for what usually turned out to be too little benefit. I started considering blogs as I really just wanted a format to express myself without constantly worrying about what others thought. I first tried My Opera because the only blog I was following at the time (Quentin S. Crisp’s Directory of Lost Causes) happened to be there, but I quickly realized that it had too many foreign language blogs for my taste.
I wanted to still be able to connect with people to an extent, and so I looked for places that offered blogging services along with social networking. At first, I considered Ning because I already belonged to some groups there. The problem I saw with Ning is that blogs seemed pretty isolated there. There really weren’t too many other options that fit what I was looking for, but I kept looking and comparing. I was also worried about newer start-ups that might not stick around and so I was trying to determine sites that had been around for years. I finally settled on Gaia.com. It had a good balance. I was initially attracted to the fact that it had a very active Integral community. I did enjoy it quite a bit and participated regularly in one of the groups. I met some nice people and it was there that I developed my blogging abilities. After awhile, though, it too felt confining. It was really a site dedicated to people wanting to improve the world. I have nothing against improving the world, but it really isn’t the reason I spend my time on-line and definitely not what I blog about for the most part. Besides, the cynical side of my personality really grated with the large number of New Age types there.
So, I decided that I just wasn’t going to find a community of people who were similar to me. My interests are just too diverse. It was an amazing experience whenever I met a person who shared even a small percentage of the same interests, but that happened too rarely. I was just tired of trying to connect with others.
I turned to sites that simply specialized in blogging. I decided to instead use the blogging platforms themselves as the standard of my decision instead of anything to do with social networking. I now was simply looking for an easy way to post my writings that gave me enough options to play around and personalize my blog. I looked back at My Opera and checked out my old Live Journal account, but I mostly focused on Blogger and Word Press. I posted the same thing on all of these blogs and compared their specific functions. I did that for several months and Word Press won. That is the story of how I ended up here.
However, I still crave discussion. I wish more people would comment and I wish the people who comment would return a second time. A single comment a discussion does not make. I’m not trying to drive traffic to my blog because I’m not trying to make money or anything. I just figure there has to be other people like me with similar interests, and at least a few of them would be interested in discussion. I don’t know if such people are fewer than I imagine or if it’s that they’re unlikely to find my blog for whatever reason. As far as I can tell, my posts often come up in search results and I definitely show up in Word Press listings. People visit my blog on a daily basis, but why do so few leave a comment?
I suspect most people aren’t interested in discussion and especially not of the deep intellectual variety. Even other deep intellectual types don’t seem all that interested in discussion. Most people seem content to do their own thing in their own blog. The people who seek out places to comment are often spammers and trolls. It depresses me a bit. I comment in other people’s blogs all of the time, but it doesn’t usually lead anywhere. Most bloggers don’t respond back and certainly don’t try to connect in any way such as commenting in my blog in return. This is partly explained by the statistics. I was reading that 96% of bloggers haven’t posted in the last 4 months.
Partly to satisfy my need for discussion, I’ve been commenting in the online version of my local paper. That is somewhat more satisfying as I actually know some of the people commenting and the subject matter is a bit more personally relevant. However, I’m not much of a news junky and so I just enjoy the interaction and I even partially enjoy the stupid debate. There are a couple of intelligent posters which comes close to offseting all of the opinionated ignorance.
I did recently connect with some fellow bloggers here on Word Press. I’m feeling inspired to make my blog more interesting and new-person-friendly. I wrote up an extensive ‘About’ page, a ‘Favorite Posts’ page, and finally got around to adding the blogs I visit to my blogroll. I was thinking I should clean up my categories because they’re a bit of a jumble. Also, my theme is rather mundane. I picked it for practical reasons as I liked the way it was set up, but I should look at other options again. If I ever feel extraordinarily motivated, I might add a picture to my banner. It was only recently that I even got around to adding the icon of my kitty. It sure is a lot of work. If I was a motivated person, I’d probably be doing something in the real world rather than blogging. lol
To further break out of my isolated slump, I joined Technorati and Blog Catalog. I’ll see how that turns out. I doubt it will make much difference. Blog Catalog looks like it could potentially be a place to connect, but there is a lot of crap to wade through.
I’m happy to have a blog anyways with or without regular discussion. I used to journal which got boring after a decade of being my own audience. Blogging forces me to be more thorough and careful in my thinking process. It’s good practice to have something that motivates me to write on a regular basis. I enjoy writing and that is the important part.
Filed under: blogging | Tagged: blog, blogging, blogging platforms, comments, connecting, discussion, discussion groups, forums, internet, online, online communities, social networking, web, writing | 6 Comments »
Marmalade
Access: Public 
Permalink
Print
Email
Marmalade said
My experiment began just now. I posted a blog about blogging on each site.
Live Journal actually was more confusing than I expected. I posted or thought I did, but couldn’t figure out if it actually posted or not. It showed as posted. Nonetheless, when I looked for it,I couldn’t find itwith my previous posts. Maybe there is a lag for posts to show. I’ll have to check it later.
Word Press was also confusing. Both Live Journal and Word Press were very cluttered. On Word Press, I couldn’t even figure out how to place a title on my post. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure it out, and ended up posting it without a title.
Blogger was easier. The page did freeze up, but that might’ve been connection issues unrelated to the site. I opened a new window and it seemed fine. One significant problem was that I wanted to remove a paragraph, but was unable. The “cut” option seemed to be disabled in my IE7 browser. So, I had to manually delete it using the “backspace” button. I’d hope that a major browser would work with a major site like that. I have some problems with Internet Exploerer here on Gaia, but I have lower expectations for this site.
The last site was My Opera. It was simple and easy. It has many options and yet isn’t cluttered. It felt very intuitive and posted without a single problem.
My Opera wins the first round of the experiment. Its hard to say who came in second, but offhand I’ll give second place to Blogger.
Nicole said
it will be cool to see how the experiment progresses!
starlight said
LOL…you’re a trip Ben…i was wondering what you been up to…joy*
Marmalade said
Nice to see you both. Happy Happy Joy Joy
Because all of the praise I read about it, my guess is that I’ll like Word Press if I ever figure it out. I’m not sure why I couldn’t find the section for the title. I downloaded the new version (2.7 I believe) and maybe I was just experiencing a glitch. I’ll try it again. Someone from work brought up their Word Press page for posting and it looked entirely different. It might also be browser related. I’ll try my other browsers as part of this experiment.
I checked back with Live Journal. I still couldn’t find the entry I tried to post with the other previous entries. I kept the window open, and I was able to go back to the page that showed the posting. It seems to be posted somewhere. Its possible that Live Journal has the capacity for posting on multiple pages and somehow I unintentionally posted it on another page. If so, I need to learn how to control which page it posts to.
Marmalade said
Second Round:
I used Google Chrome this time. I didn’t have any of the problems I had last time. I like Google Chrome. It seems to have less compatability issues with the blogging sites.
Its strange with Word Press. The appearance of it was the same. I put the title where I tried to put it last time, but for unknown reasons it allowed the title to appear this time. I do like the Category option Word Press. The closest thing I had to a problem was that I couldn’t sign into my Word Press blog on the page of my blog. Instead, I had to go to the main page to sign in.
Nobody wins first place this time. This round is a tie, but I’m thinking I’m going to learn to like Word Press more and more.
Marmalade said
There is one thing that this test is making clear. Gaia competesfairly wellwith the otherblogging sites. There aren’t as many choices here in terms of functions, but there is still plenty one can do. Gaia is very simple and intuitive. I’ve never had any major problems in blogging here.
Nicole said
that’s good to know, about Gaia and Google Chrome. I have the latter but haven’t used it much yet, force of habit.
Marmalade said
Yeah, Google Chrome seems decent. I haven’t had any major issues like I had with Internet Exploer 8 which made my virus scan non-functional. It took me a while to realize there was a problem. I hope I didn’t pick up any viruses. IE8=BAD!!!
The problem with Google Chrome is that it has compatability issues with playing videos. Whereas I’ve never had problems with videos with Internet Explorer. You just can’t have everything. I guessI have to choose whether you like blogging or watching videos more.
Annemieke said
“I couldn’t sign into my Word Press blog on the page of my blog. Instead, I had to go to the main page to sign in.”
Yes, very strange indeed. I mostly stay logged in, but when for some reason I have to sign in, I always wonder where I have to do that again.
“Gaia is very simple and intuitive.”
Totally agree with that. No matter how good I find WordPress, intuitive would not be a term to use. Although I am more and more ‘getting it’ lately.
I also like Google Chrome and at the moment I use it together with Internet Explorer. For some reason I like IE still best for bookmarking sites. But I noticed it is good to use other browsers to see how it all looks, because sites can look rather different with other browsers sometimes.
I so like that you share this kind of struggles. I am going through the same processes at times. But I totally love it.
Marmalade said
Its getting close to bedtime for me, but I shall comment first.
Yes, Annemieke, I prefer Internet Exploer overall. Maybe its because I’ve used it the most and I’m familiar with it. I never had major issues with it until I downloaded IE8.
You like that I share this kind of struggle… is that you’re way of saying you don’t want to hear me share my struggles withchanging my cats’ litter box? Sadly, neither Google Chrome nor Internet Exploer is compatible with the litter box. I should get a virtual cat with a virtual litter box. It would immensely simplify my life.
Centria said
I love your analysis here. I was convinced blogger (blogspot? are they the same thing?) was going to be the best option. But within a day of posting there, I switched allegiance to wordpress. Even though some of the layouts are confusing, it seems easier for others to find your work through the categories and tags. No one has even found the blogger posting. But wordpress has proved more visible and likeable. Gaia, though, is simple and intuitive. It’s still preferable in many ways….
Marmalade said
Blogger and blogspot are related but not the same… both relate to blogging with Google. Its technically more appropriate to say blogspot I suppose, but for some reason I was using the Blogger name instead. I was meaning the same thing anyways.
You seem attracted to Word Press for the same reasons as I. The category and tag system will be very helpful as I gather more blogs. I’m glad they also help others to find my blogs. That will be part of my comparison experiment. I’ll see which of my blogs get the most comments and what kinds of commenters they attract.
Marmalade said
Third Round:
This time I used the Opera browser which is related to the Opera blogging site. It was a very easy to use browser except for one factor. When I tried to copy and paste from my Gaia blog, it didn’t carry over the hyperlinks. Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer carry over hyperlinks.
I ended the third round at that point. So, none of the blogging sites were a winner in this round, but the Opera browser was the loser.
Marmalade said
For the time being, I take my conclusion back for the Third Round. The hyperlink copy/paste problem seems to be failing on all of my browsers. That is very odd because it was just working. Is it something to do with my computer? Or are the various browsers somehow causing problems for eachother? I hope I can figure this out.
Nicole said
oooh, that’s a very annoying problem. really odd!
Marmalade said
I’m bringing my experiment into a less formal mode. I decided to drop LIve Journal from the experiment just because the set up is somewhat confusing and not aesthetically pleasing. I’m going to continue to use the other 3 for a while. At the moment, I can’t say I entirely favorany one of themover the rest.
Nicole said
ok. i see you’re still having that words running into each other trouble!