When a blog isn't a blog

I WOULD have hoped that by now most people would know a few of the essential features that need to be included on a blog for it to be called a blog.

I was reading the Mancubist website, who mentioned that Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese had set up a blog.

Called The Leader's Blog, not very touchy feely that, it goes from bad to worse with no RSS feed, although hiding in the footer is reference to the council's press release RSS feed.

It also needs to be updated a little more often, and if Sir Richard is really keen to blog and connect with the people of Manchester get a comment facility up and running - you can easily moderate messages.

It's unfortunate that many see a comment form as a problem, as they can be used to spot potential issues very early and if people are posting similar messages you have a super efficient tool to gain focussed feedback.

I would follow Sir Richard's writing to hopefully report back on any changes to the site, but he's just not making it easy for me to do so.

A quick look over the Mancubist website, and those listed under Others I Read in the right hand column, and you will see the essential elements that make up a blog.

Comments

[Mike Power]

Your observations on 'The Leader's Blog'are perfectly valid, up to a point. I think 'political blogs' whether run by politicians or activists, should have comments and permalinks enabled. But you go too far in declaring the site not a 'real' blog. I've had this discussion over and over in other places (particularly with Tim Ireland) so I won't rehash it here, except to say that the definition of a blog was laid down many years ago and persists in all major blog awards. It does not include RSS feeds, trackback, comments, blogrolls, email links or social bookmarking tools. These are things that have been added to blogs as they developed and are seen by many to enhance blogs and make them more effective and more interesting.

'The Leaders Blog' is still a blog, it just isn't as effective or interesting as it could be.

If I were one of the early bloggers like Kottke, Barger (who coined the term weblog) Drudge, or other leading bloggers like Reynolds, Dooce, Geras or Sullivan (to name just a few) who do not have comments enabled I'd be getting pretty cheesed off at being told I wasn't running a 'proper blog', especially given the fact that some of them were blogging before many of the critics had heard of the word 'blog'.

[Craig McGinty]

Hi Mike, many thanks for the comment and as you highlight each to their own.

But I do think the comment facility on blogs is a very valuable resource which can be used to help readers as much as the articles they are attached to.

As I stress to others though, blogging software is just a publishing tool, how it is used and what it hopes to achieve can be as diverse as all the sites out there.

All the best, Craig

[Simon Wharton]

The tokenist pseudo blog is a disease of the higher echelons it seems. Consider this one for a lack of activity

http://marketingmanchester.typepad.co.uk/marketing_manchester/

I made a comment maybe a week ago. Perhaps it was dismissed as spammy but I don't see a lot of commenting going on either way.