Sunday Stealing: The Third Meme About Blogging

This week’s meme comes from Belle at Scat­tered and Ran­dom. She dis­cov­ered it at squadratomagico, which is main­tained by a blog­ger known as squa­dratic equa­tion.

The Third Meme About Blogging

1. How did you come up with your blog title OR what does it mean?

The word “col­lo­quium” just popped into my head one day as I was dri­ving along, pon­der­ing a name. So I picked up a dic­tio­nary and found that one of the mean­ings of “col­lo­quium” is “an infor­mal meet­ing for the exchange of views.” It seemed perfect.

2. What are your gen­eral goals for blogging?

To live up to the mean­ing of “col­lo­quium,” i.e., to exchange ideas with my read­ers. And have some fun in the process.

3. Do peo­ple “in your real life” know that you blog and do they com­ment on your blog OR is it largely anonymous?

Most peo­ple in my “real life” are com­pletely obliv­i­ous to the fact that I blog. Big­Bob and the kids know, of course, but are not read­ers. Only a cou­ple of my friends are aware of the site and visit it. I may have men­tioned it in pass­ing to a cou­ple of col­leagues, but I’ve never pro­vided them with the url, so I doubt if any of my pro­fes­sional asso­ciates have ever read any of my writing.

4. How often do you post (x per week)?

Gen­er­ally, due to time con­straints, I post a cou­ple of new entries per week, on average.

5. How often do you read other blogs (x per week)?

I read a few blogs each day. Typ­i­cally, I devote ten to 15 min­utes each morn­ing scan­ning new entires via a reader.

6. How do you select blogs to read (do you pre­fer blogs that focus on cer­tain top­ics or do you choose by tone or …?)

Qual­ity con­tent pro­vid­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion inter­ests me, so I am sub­scribed to a num­ber of blogs cov­er­ing many dif­fer­ent top­ics, includ­ing sev­eral that focus on the art and mechan­ics of blogging.

7. Do you have any plans to copy your blog entries in any other for­mat, 0r do you think that one day, you’ll just delete it all?

I have no plans to pub­lish my entries in another medium, nor do I plan to ever delete my work. It is all backed up and securely stored.

8. What are the things you like best about blogging?

I enjoy writ­ing in an infor­mal man­ner about things that I care about. In my pro­fes­sion, the abil­ity to write well is essen­tial, but requires tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, adher­ence to a spe­cific for­mat, and a par­tic­u­lar style. It is refresh­ing and relax­ing to write in an unre­strained man­ner about per­sonal issues and experiences.

9. What are the things you don’t like about blogging?

I love it when read­ers post com­ments in response to my writ­ing, but only if they con­tribute to and advance the dis­cus­sion. Com­ment spam is really annoy­ing, but I have found ways, includ­ing use­ful plu­g­ins, to reduce the num­ber of com­ments that must be deleted each day.

10. How do you han­dle comments?

As men­tioned above, I love com­ments that are mean­ing­ful, thought­ful, and respect­ful. I do not hes­i­tate to delete com­ments that I deem inap­pro­pri­ate either because they are generic and do not con­tribute to the dis­cus­sion or con­tain lan­guage that I deem offen­sive. Dis­agree­ment is wel­come and embraced. Dis­re­spect is not, whether directed at me or my readers.

11. Do you have any burn­ing thoughts to share on blog etiquette?

1. Do not pro­gram music to play auto­mat­i­cally when the page loads.
2. Do not pro­gram pop-up win­dows to which I must respond, even if just to close them, in order to see your site.
3. Do not pro­gram pop-up win­dows that are acti­vated when I close the browser win­dow, ask­ing annoy­ing ques­tions such as “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” Trust me — I’m sure. I’m leav­ing. And I won’t return.

12. Any desired blog features?

Clean lay­out with art­ful typog­ra­phy that is easy to read, suf­fi­cient white space, and beau­ti­ful graph­ics that enhance a uni­fied theme. I con­stantly re-evaluate my site and elim­i­nate clut­ter, update the graph­ics, etc. in an effort to keep it visu­ally inter­est­ing while main­tain­ing the over­all theme.

13. Have you suf­fered blog addiction?

I’m a lit­i­ga­tor. My career is extremely demand­ing. I don’t have time to be addicted to any­thing, includ­ing blog­ging, which is all about fun and relaxation.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Sun­day Steal­ing, The Third Meme About Blogging

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