A newspaper is a collection of factual events. Only a Liberal would define a newspaper as a collection of opinions.

OT: Your gravatar sign up code doesn’t seem to work.

There are articles that make you nod your head all the time you’d fear getting stiff neck. I just read and reread one an hour ago. It’s by Bob Cauthorn and it discusses blogging by mainstream media. The article sums up, in an acerbic tone, how mos…

pinoy muna bago blog…

That’s the reason why it’s pretty hard to define what is a blog and what isn’t.

For our own purposes, I think we have to define a *pinoyblog* (not just “blog”) as a blog which has *all* the following characteristics:

1. It has the technical characteristics mentioned in the definition of the term “blog” in the Wikipedia.
2. It is authored by a Pinoy individual or members of a Pinoy community.
3. It is *not* a corporate blog.
4. ( Add more criteria here… )

Then we go further and declare that only *pinoyblogs* (not just any blog) are allowed in the Pinoy Top Blogs. (And maybe rename it to “Top Pinoy Blogs”).

When I started Pinoy Top Blogs, I had the individual Pinoy Bloggers interest in mind. With PinoyBlog.com, we were successful in making the pinoy bloggers’ presence felt. With Pinoy Top Blogs, I hope we can make our numbers matter and our cummulative traffic something to reckon with.

If we concede on a technicality, almost every site there can be, in the minutest sense, considered a blog.

Thus, I’d like to return back to my original intent and exclude those that does not seem to fit with the goals of this project.

I have started off by removing Pinoyblog from the Community/Group blog category.

OT: counted ba yung mga Friendster blogs? hehe jk

Authors meaning, does the content of the blog have to be written by the blog authors/publishers? What if it accepts contributions from the general public, should it be categorized differently?

And, yes, this thread was borne out of a controversy in “Pinoy Top Blogs”. Yuga said so in the entry.

A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of “blogging”.

John C. Dvorak’s primer on blogging also describes a publishing format http://www.dvorak.org/blog/primer/blogprimer1.htm

In answering the question “What is a blog?”, I suggest we take it at the same level as answering “What is a Wiki?” and not “What is good music?.” In short, let us do away with subjective definitions such as content but definitions that immediately help differentiate a blog from, say, a website. What definitions differentiate a blog from a wiki?

In my opinion, what differentiates a news website from a news blog is that a news website arranges articles in order of importance based on the media outfit’s news valuation. A news blog on the other hand, arranges postings chronologically.

Issues on content are answers to the question: “What is a good blog?”

Without even reading a publication, you’d know whether it is a newspaper or a magazine. After reading it, you’d know whether, in your opinion, it is a good one or not.

But, as I said earlier, the question really is on the listing. Yuga can, for example, limit listings to individual bloggers and bar institutional blogs if the site wants to promote only individual Pinoy bloggers. Yuga can also reject listings of blogs that were put out mainly to advertise one product or service.

Something like
1) Personal
2) Professional

Or
1) Entertainment
2) Technical
3) Personal
4) Mixed
5) Religious

Just to remove the complaints some may have about certain high traffic sites not really being appropriately in Pinoy Top Blogs?

Personally, I don’t really mind if my blog never goes higher in rank. I just like the fact seeing my rank now does encourage me to try and come up with more interesting articles in order to cater to a growing audience base.

I used to be very selfish, writing only about things that concern me. Now I try to write about things I want others to consider being concerned about too. Or about things others might want to know about. Its helped widen the horizons of my blog.

I think it’s hard to qualify blogs based on those three factors. While it will describe some of the blogs out there, it will unfairly classify a million more sites that don’t share the same qualities as the prescribed ones as “non-blogs”.

Format - if it looks like one of those MovableType, WordPress or Blogspot templates…or if it has the post-comments-trackback-sidebar thing going on it’s a blog? What if I don’t use any of the blog publishing services out there and (egad) create my HTML one static page at a time and host it in some God-forsaken free web hosting service like Geocities.com…does it still count as a blog?

Content - if it’s angsty, personal, fresh, interesting, opinionated, or thought-provoking it’s a blog?

Author(s) - I don’t understand this part. Does it mean if it’s by someone who has the gift of web gab it’s a blog?

I think coming up with a univerally accepted blog definition is an excercise in futility.

Question to the group: did the definition dilemma come about because “non-blogs” are “polluting” the PTB results? Are we coming up with a definition to exclude perceived “non-blogs” from the PTB results?

To weed out non-desirables, PTB could come up with a screening committee which will have absolute authority to decide which sites qualify in the PTB. Since it’s a voluntary service, all who participate in it should abide by the site’s rules. In the end, it really won’t matter if it’s a blog or not in the general sense of the word. PTB should be the sole arbiter here, not us.

Peace.

1) format
2) content
3) author(s)

Do we consider just one, two or all of them?