3 ms·

It's a bit of a stretch to call Kottke.org "blogspam". Jason has been a consistent source of interesting content for years. He deserves credit for the service h

It's a bit of a stretch to call Kottke.org "blogspam". Jason has been a consistent source of interesting content for years. He deserves credit for the service he provides: finding and sharing interesting content.

DanBC 14y ago
This link has one single embedded YouTube video, and the text "So we'll just take a picture of the crew. Why I'm holding the thing up to my face like I can look through the thing is beyond me, but here we go. His Instagram feed is available here. (via ★precipice)" It also has some ads. How is that anything other than blogspam? The linked blog adds nothing of value to the raw YouTube link; there's no commentary or critique or links to other relevant content or anything.
- mbreese 14y ago
  For one thing, because it's Jason Kottke. He finds interesting things online and posts them with minimal commentary. He's done this for many years, and is a good source for interesting things online. He is less of an aggregator and more of a curator.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    Just as the HN frontpage. The community is the curator. Giving credit to someone else's curation is good and should be done (eg in a comment), but submitting the actual item is best.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Because Jason found the video (on Precipice) and Charlesmigli apparently reads Jason's site. This is precisely what YouTube allows embedding for, sharing interesting videos. As for not adding any value, I think the link to Instagram was valuable. Almost everyone who watches the video wants to visit that page but it is not linked on the YouTube page.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    It is, you just have to expand the description.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    I don't care what Jason does on his website. I do care when people don't post the original source. Some sites are worse than others. This site isn't bad (I trust the people telling me so) but still, this instance? It's just a YouTube embedded video. I think the added value that I've missed is "approval[1] by Jason K." - seeing it's from his site means people are more likely to clicky the HN submission. That's fair enough. I just need to remember it, I guess. Sorry if I was grumpy! I don't think I was. [1] Approval isn't a great word. "Collation" or what ever fits too.
- bradleyland 14y ago
  This follows a pretty well established format for Kottke. He usually extracts a "hook" from the content he posts. It gives you some idea of what's contained therein, which is often not present at the source. I hate wasting 2-3 minutes watching a video when a simple excerpt could have shown me that it's not in my wheelhouse. Another nice thing about Kottke's site is that he frequently posts updates to previous entries. It's likely that with popularity, more information will be uncovered about the subject matter. Jason posts "digests" with summaries of updates to previous entries, which often contain useful insight you wouldn't gain without allocating a not insignificant amount of attention to this single piece of media. Yes, it has "some ads", but please, let's try to be rational about this. Since when are we waging war against anyone displaying advertising anywhere? The amount of advertising on his site seems more than reasonable to me. I feel a little more inclined to stick up for Jason because I've been following him for so long. He was literally one of the first blogs I ever followed, and I have learned to trust him over the years. I love the fact that he's able to do what he does full time, because I get the benefit of his curation. I absolutely get where you're coming from. I hate when someone posts a link to content that is obviously re-hashed from somewhere else with no additional value, but if you spend some time with Kottke.org, I think you'll see that there are good guys and there are bad guys in this scene. Jason is one of the good guys.
- melvinmt 14y ago
  I wouldn't have watched it without that single line of quote.
aw3c2 14y ago
I explicitely said not to blame the blog but the submitter. There is nothing worth pointing someone at in the submitted link, just the video. There is no value added from watching the video on a site that is not its "homepage." There is nothing wrong with the post on the blog itself. It is an aggregation. HN however is an aggregator itself and we do not need a late piece of a chain of links/via/source tunnels. Linking the source is best.

DanBC 14y ago

This link has one single embedded YouTube video, and the text "So we'll just take a picture of the crew. Why I'm holding the thing up to my face like I can look through the thing is beyond me, but here we go. His Instagram feed is available here. (via ★precipice)" It also has some ads. How is that anything other than blogspam? The linked blog adds nothing of value to the raw YouTube link; there's no commentary or critique or links to other relevant content or anything.

mbreese 14y ago
For one thing, because it's Jason Kottke. He finds interesting things online and posts them with minimal commentary. He's done this for many years, and is a good source for interesting things online. He is less of an aggregator and more of a curator.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  Just as the HN frontpage. The community is the curator. Giving credit to someone else's curation is good and should be done (eg in a comment), but submitting the actual item is best.
jonknee 14y ago
Because Jason found the video (on Precipice) and Charlesmigli apparently reads Jason's site. This is precisely what YouTube allows embedding for, sharing interesting videos. As for not adding any value, I think the link to Instagram was valuable. Almost everyone who watches the video wants to visit that page but it is not linked on the YouTube page.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  It is, you just have to expand the description.
- DanBC 14y ago
  I don't care what Jason does on his website. I do care when people don't post the original source. Some sites are worse than others. This site isn't bad (I trust the people telling me so) but still, this instance? It's just a YouTube embedded video. I think the added value that I've missed is "approval[1] by Jason K." - seeing it's from his site means people are more likely to clicky the HN submission. That's fair enough. I just need to remember it, I guess. Sorry if I was grumpy! I don't think I was. [1] Approval isn't a great word. "Collation" or what ever fits too.
bradleyland 14y ago
This follows a pretty well established format for Kottke. He usually extracts a "hook" from the content he posts. It gives you some idea of what's contained therein, which is often not present at the source. I hate wasting 2-3 minutes watching a video when a simple excerpt could have shown me that it's not in my wheelhouse. Another nice thing about Kottke's site is that he frequently posts updates to previous entries. It's likely that with popularity, more information will be uncovered about the subject matter. Jason posts "digests" with summaries of updates to previous entries, which often contain useful insight you wouldn't gain without allocating a not insignificant amount of attention to this single piece of media. Yes, it has "some ads", but please, let's try to be rational about this. Since when are we waging war against anyone displaying advertising anywhere? The amount of advertising on his site seems more than reasonable to me. I feel a little more inclined to stick up for Jason because I've been following him for so long. He was literally one of the first blogs I ever followed, and I have learned to trust him over the years. I love the fact that he's able to do what he does full time, because I get the benefit of his curation. I absolutely get where you're coming from. I hate when someone posts a link to content that is obviously re-hashed from somewhere else with no additional value, but if you spend some time with Kottke.org, I think you'll see that there are good guys and there are bad guys in this scene. Jason is one of the good guys.
melvinmt 14y ago
I wouldn't have watched it without that single line of quote.

aw3c2 14y ago

I explicitely said not to blame the blog but the submitter. There is nothing worth pointing someone at in the submitted link, just the video. There is no value added from watching the video on a site that is not its "homepage." There is nothing wrong with the post on the blog itself. It is an aggregation. HN however is an aggregator itself and we do not need a late piece of a chain of links/via/source tunnels. Linking the source is best.