I have often been asked, (as was again in this morning’s email), why I make conversational reference to the point being made on someone else’s blog, without making a full explanation of what it is the other writer is talking about. The resulting text takes on the appearence to some, like that of a closed circuited conversation, of which you are only hearing/reading one end.
One example, that nobody’s asked me about yet, but it’s handy, is the reference to a magic marker wielding twelve year old in the previous post.
My answer is this:
I am firmly convinced that I have some of the smartest readers on the web, visiting the site regularly. The e-mail conversations that I’ve gotten involved with, as a result of BitsBlog are testimony to that intelligence.
There are some people who will try to reinterpret what they see on the web, make their pronouncements and go their merry way. This seems a little high handed, to me.
Frankly, this amounts to a style difference. There are, however, reasonings behind that style difference. The reasons are rather simple; I prefer to link to what I’m talking about, and let the reader decide what it is he’s seeing, and whether or not my comments makes sense in that context.
When I link to something, I expect you, the reader, to go read the thing for yourself and digest it, for yourself. That’s the very purpose of cross linking. If I expect to carry the entire functional narrative of the conversation myself, I’m not going to bother taking the time, and trouble linking the anybody else’s site; it’s pointless. I get wordy enough, around here, without trying to do that.
Here it is; I am firmly convinced that I have some of the smartest readers on the web, visiting the site regularly. The e-mail conversations that I’ve gotten involved with, as a result of BitsBlog are testimony to that intelligence. On that basis, then, I consider that the readers of this blog are smart enough to do their own investigations, and their own reading… and come to their own understanding of the material… Particularly the simple ones were all you have to do is click once and read the result. So, I refuse to spoon feed this stuff. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by attempting to reinterpret everything on the web that I make even a casual reference to, and I would hope that you’re not going to insult mine, by telling me you don’t know what the links I do put up, are for.
I assume that when you come here, you’re looking for something interesting to read. That invokes a matter of trust in me and my ability, and those of my very capable co-writers. If I link to something, it’s because I think it’s worth your time to look at. Frankly, if you can’t live with that, you’d better find someplace else to go. If I do have to spoon feed this stuff to you, to get you to understand it, it’s a waste of both my bandwidth and my time, and a waste of your intelligence, in my view.
I simply won’t do it.
Tags: BitsBlog
