Thursday, December 30, 2010

Blog migration, 2011

First of all, a huge apology to those whose RSS feeds turn up these old posts as new information. In 2007, with the help of my colleagues in MPublishing, I started an experiment with CommentPress, a WordPress theme. As I noted at the time, "I hope to address a number of issues here that require a more sustained narrative than blogs typically involve, and I hope to explore the use of CommentPress to allow feedback and commentary on pieces of those narratives." In some ways, the experiment was a very successful. I'd hoped to make it possible to associate specific comments with specific points in longer prose pieces, using the blog form as something between a long tweet and an article. The first piece, on "Metasearch vs. Google Scholar," received a couple dozen very helpful comments. Jeremy Frumkim, in particular, took the time to address specific points in the longer piece. That was both helpful and gratifying. Still, over time, blogs haven't grown to embrace longer pieces and a common method for embedding comments with distinct parts of the narrative. Moreover, I find I'm more inclined to write shorter pieces on pizzas than I am to write about digital libraries! And so I'm abandoning the experiment for the simpler and purer blog form. Before too long, I'll have migrated most of the comments over, though the things they refer to may not always be clear. Particularly to those who saw these pieces once before, thanks for your patience.

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