Facibus On Blogging

Experimentation is one of the things I really enjoy about blogging. I can put my crazy ideas to the test - and if they work, adopt them (and if they fail, I get to write about them anyway).

I’ve started a blog debate at On Blogging Australia around the question “Is blogging what we do or who we are?”.

Debates reframed as group writing projects are not new in the blogosphere - but there have not been a lot of them that I can find.

We’ll have to see if this works. There are several variables that I would need to take into consideration before I could honestly say that it did or didn’t work:

• Exposure: On Blogging Australia is a new blog - the first post was on 06 August 2007 and daily readers are around 20 (plus 9 RSS readers). If there is minimal response, will it be because the concept is not valid or because it didn’t get out there enough?
• the topic: is “Is blogging what we do or who we are?” clear enough such that people know what is expected of them? I suspect that readers would have an easier time responding to a debate question on something more emotive - like the future of the current Australian government past the next federal elections, or the state of Australia’s health care system, or APEC Bush Week.
• the concept itself: group writing projects can be fun - but they are also time consuming for all concerned - and this one has a twist to it, in the form of a poll at the end to decide which “side” has put forward the most convincing argument.

To check the experiment’s validity, ideally, I’d fix all of the above variables then deliberately change one of them (topic or exposure), re-run the experiment and see if the results changed. Of course, by the end of the experiment, the blog will have just a little more exposure, so it will not be a totally solid experiment. Good enough for me for the moment though

Regardless of the success or failure of the experiment, I like to write about them - if only so that other people can learn from my mistakes

Experimentation is a wonderful thing - I can heartily recommend it.

PS: the other way to run a blog debate might be to have two sides with three bloggers each, running over the course of a week or so - having writer one for the positive open the argument, then writer one for the negative responds, writer two for the positive rebutts, and so on. An experiment for another day.