Wednesday, March 24, 2004
There is no key .. yet
Lots of you have asked for the key and some of you might wonder why you have not yet had a key cut.
Please relax. There is no key yet. Correction. There is a physical key, but my philosophy has not yet allowed me to turn the key. I am still not convinced a key is the right way to go.
Never resign in the middle of a row.
Never take strong action in the middle of a reaction
So I am bidding my time, letting the days tick and normality return and the questions ponder. Current questions include
1. Can I be bothered running two blogs?
2. There must be a better way to protect my stuff than locking some of it away?
3. If I am a real Kingdom person, surely I should be glad if my stuff is borrowed. Should I not offer two articles to everyone who cut and pastes one?
4. What is author anyway? Am I not a postmodenist who believes the author is dead and the only authority is communal?
5. A blog takes a lot of energy. How can I create re-energising blogging processes?
6. What is the point of a blog anyway?
Good questions. An excellent Scotch whiskey might help 🙂
Comment by Paul — March 24, 2004 @ 5:48 pm
Questions 2-6 are more difficult, and perhaps interesting, to answer but I am afriad that I wouldn’t be able to get past question 1! And not just can I be “bothered” but do I have the “capacity”? If there are keys going, I would love a key but (not wanting to ignore 2-6) I think that you might find yourself throwing away the key cutter before you start.
Comment by finker — March 24, 2004 @ 8:45 pm
You’re showing a lot of wisdom here, in a general principle I could take a reminder on… Must file those thoughts away.
It seems to me that #six is the first of these questions that needs answering really. Or perhaps, what of many possible "points" is the point of this blog? Sometimes bloggers do seem surprised to discover they have an audience, but of course that’s why a blog is published.
I read your blog from time to time and find the material interesting. I would never use your material without appropriate referencing, under terms that I thought you found acceptable. If I was wanting to re-distribute your material I’d be likely to contact you. Most likely though I’ll never be doing that; will just be coming back to read your blog as an outsider to the main conversation.
As such, I’d be unlikely to ever ask for a key to the inner sanctum. I suspect I’d not be alone in that. I want to be a "visitor" more than a "member", though I’d still be interested to dialogue at times. (Like now.)
I’m not in any way against a blogger implementing a locked blog section, if that’s what they want to do. But I would hope they do so having deliberated the different kind of community such a system creates… which brings us back to #six… the others are important, but energy, motivation, and issues of authorship and protection all would seem to flow from a clear vision of the why the blog exists in the first place…
Comment by duncan — March 29, 2004 @ 12:10 am