Error-free blogging

One of the things I continue to enjoy about blogging, whether here or over at Monticello Live, is the ongoing participation from comments. It’s not an isolated experience at all. In fact, as far as ML is concerned, a blog formatted community site also helps ensure accuracy and accountability. Most traditional media types don’t understand the immense value of opening themselves up to reader input and contributions.

Tim Challies called my attention to this quote in a recent post. It’s from a book review in the New York Times written by Richard Posner. Posner commented on blogs (of which ML is one):

What really sticks in the craw of conventional journalists is that although individual blogs have no warrant of accuracy, the blogosphere as a whole has a better error-correction machinery than the conventional media do. The rapidity with which vast masses of information are pooled and sifted leaves the conventional media in the dust. Not only are there millions of blogs, and thousands of bloggers who specialize, but what is more, readers post comments that augment the blogs, and the information in those comments, as in the blog themselves, zips around blogland at the speed of electronic transmission.

The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media do; only they are different. … It’s as if The Associated Press or Reuters had millions of reporters, many of them experts, all working with no salary for free newspapers that carried no advertising.

This is another great encouragement for lurkers to comment as well. More participation means better information.

On a side note, do you think that this blog (and others) should feature comments more visibly? As it is, with most blogs that I’m aware of, a person has to click on the title of the post or on the comments in order to read all the comments. Do you think it would foster more interaction if the entire comments were visible somewhere? Or would it prevent folks from commenting? (They may not want their input shown on the main page.)

On this day...

• Wifey's photoblog... - 2009
• Books devoured at DisneyWorld - 2007
• Linkage - 2007
• The never-ending blog (it's done!) - 2006

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