The Good Blog

[franceslievens]

One rule for good blogging is regularity. It doesn't matter if you post once a week, every two days or write ten posts every day, all's well as long as you keep a regular schedule. My schedule isn't clockwork, but it does seem I've got one: Posts are somewhat thought through before they appear, and therefore don't appear too often. The blog isn't a chatterbox. Every couple of weeks I try to make a longer post that might generate some discussion, but hardly ever does. And now and then I give you fiction. Regularity builds up expectation. You don't expect me to write up entries about silly things I've done during the day. I don't expect you to be interested in those.
The death of a blog comes with irregularity. People don't loose interest in what is written. People loose interest because what is written is recycled material. There is never commitment on the internet. Even your best friend will hardly notice you stopped reading her blog because you thought she was whining. We are hidden behind our screens, pretending we care.

One thing salon_virtuel lacks is regularity. There are gaps in between posts. The ideas uttered in them are so different, that it becomes difficult for the readers to follow. The liveliness of the community depends on readers and writers equally: the writers provide enough bone for the reader to gnaw on. A writer must seduce her readers, and in seducing those readers she might be able to lure them into writing in the comment section or even a new post in the community.
It is this that we have forgotten when building salon_virtuel: To have a lively discussion it isn't enough to seduce the reader once, to lure her into reading and commenting on the first couple of posts. You must seduce her constantly and unrelentingly. The reader, to become a participant in a community blog, must fall in love. And to make someone fall in love, you must court her, make her feel comfortable and at home with you, make her wanting more. If you want someone to be interested in you, show interest in them first. Of course people prefer playing in their own garden. Of course they consider a community they didn't start as someone else's playground. So you court. You trick them into spreading their word in your medium. You let others make that medium their own, changing it as they see fit. And all the while you are silently and secretly changing them until there is commitment where none previously was. The game of blogging isn't so much removed from the game of love.

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

This might be true for a blog...but did we want to make a blog?

As virtual and made on words as it is, I don't think that a virtual salon is the same thing as a blog.

PS: It's funny that the writers and readers of your entry are of the feminine genre!

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

It's a salon because it's open. Its form is the form of a blog. I am not talking about its content. It is through content and through participation that we can make it work as a salon and not as a blog. If you don't want to look at it as a blog, you can view it as a public broadcast with a live audience that can participate. It doesn't matter how you look at it, as long as you understand that whenever you need participation this will only come through advertising. Not the usual pimping and crossposting, but actively seeking out interesting posts and asking for them to repost. That's what I mean when I talk about courting and seducing. Show your interest in others by asking them to participate in our little adventure, and not by asking it in your own journal, but by asking it in a comment on their journal!

A virtual salon might not be a blog, but we chose to make this particular salon into one, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter, because I don't think you can dismiss what I have to say by stating I use the wrong vocabulary. At the moment there's only one virtual salon I know off, and it has the form of a blog. This discussion is about participation. Discussion about language and the nature of the (web)log can be held elsewhere (http://frances-lievens.livejournal.com/134215.html).

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Well I disagree but please don't take it the wrong way, I didn't "dismiss" what you had to say by stating you used the wrong vocabulary. My intent was to point that there might be a misunderstanding even between the two of us if you equated Le salon with a blog.

If you remember, Kashy and I suggested that the format we chose might be a problem and a mistake. He even said that he would have prefered Le Salon to be on a Voy board. LJ is a blog format but a salon isn't a blog (we were just too lazy and not computer savvy enough to start it by building a website)and I do think that participating to a blog isn't the same as being part of a salon.

Since you posted about blogging but mentioned Le Salon des Internautes as your main example I didn't think I was out of topic by commenting the way I did. No offense intended really.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

But I do understand a blog wasn't the way to go for you for the salon. I still think you shouldn't have thrown all blogging materials away. There is some valid discussion going on on blogs. The LJ-format otoh has the connotation of being very personaly oriented. We only chose it, because of the possibility of having actual conversations. We could have gone for a blogger account, instead.

The format is not a mistake. It's the boundary we must live by and work in. If you state it's a mistake, it's better to call what we tried a failure. We knew what we were getting into. (At least I knew.) We can move house, but I wouldn't do that before we were able to actualy make this community work.

The format is only a problem, if you don't use it, if you want to change it into something it is not and cannot be. I didn't take your comment as an offense, I only thought you focussed on something I wasn't talking about. Blog refers to the form we use, not to the content the salon has, or the reason of its existence. And don't forget salons did have their Madame to invite people over. I think we underestimated the boundaries of our format. We thought we could overcome them more easily. Considering this, I think those boundaries go even further than the medium of the blog. It is inherent in a virtual forum. Had we gone to a Voy-forum it might have been possible it would only survive on small talk, and I don't think that was what you were after either.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I did think you were upset or annoyed when I read your reply, you sounded a bit offended. But I read it just after reading an email that got me into an emotional state so I may have over-interpreted your reply.

I'm not throwing blogging materials away, and I believe that they are very good discussion on blogs but for all I know of blogs (which is little, I'll grant you)they don't seem to work the way I picture a salon should work (so the form should fit the goal)which doesn't mean that a salon would be better than blogs, just different.

As for advertising
or courting, I am not sure that LJ-users would like to be "stalked" or "harassed" on their own journals (yeah that's the psseimist in me talking here), but maybe I'm wrong and they just would be flattered, maybe it's just something that *I* can't do. I would suck at saling things, even myself.

So I'll let you do the courting...;- P

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

for all I know of blogs (which is little, I'll grant you) they don't seem to work the way I picture a salon should work (so the form should fit the goal) which doesn't mean that a salon would be better than blogs, just different.

That's the whole problem with this discussion, isn't it? As far as I know there isn't any social networking tool, or internet feature that actualy is able to achieve that goal, and make the ideal of a virtual salon into reality (in which it doesn't become a house etc., but stays on the computer). When talking to P. about this he said you miss the synchronicity of face-to-face interaction, and I think he has a point there. Whatever format we work in, we always have to work with delays, no matter what*. But according to P. the closest we can come to a véritable salon is by podcasting. He might be right, but I'm not computer savvy enough for that!

I don't think we would be stalking people if we ask them politely if we can link to an essay they've written, or if they want to write a similar essay for us. If I were pessimistic I'd say they didn't want to do that because the audience on their own blogs is way larger than what they can reach in the salon.

*The GMT and DSN actualy were able to get over this and coming close to the ideal of a salon by reaching a large audience over a period of a couple of hours every day.