4 ms·

What we now label "blogs" predate the word "blog" by several years. They date back to at least ~1993. A word was added to our language to describe something tha

What we now label "blogs" predate the word "blog" by several years. They date back to at least ~1993. A word was added to our language to describe something that already existed. If using that word to describe examples that came before the word was coined is anachronistic, then surely so must be using modern English to discuss, say, the Roman Empire?

philwelch 13y ago
To me, a "blog" is a particular format of online writing, but not all online writing is blogging. You can tell because newspapers often have blogs separate from their other content, drawing a distinction. I think there's a similar distinction between "essays that happen to be posted online" and "blogs".
- Typhon 13y ago
  Interestingly, my own definition of blogging is not tied to a specific medium. To me, the defining characteristics of the blog are as follows : A collection of texts which are : 1 - Published incrementally as they are written, and chronologically organized. 2 - Meant to be read by a wide audience 3 - Usually not ran past an editor. 4 - Not necessarily sharing any common theme 5 - Usually all have the same author. I cooked up this definition after noticing that the EWDs had been more or less Dijkstra's blog, long before the Web. PG's essays obviously fall under this definition as well.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    I don't think PG's blogs are chronologically organized in any meaningful fashion. I also think that your definition is too broad, as it would include any self-published book series or maybe even the Bible.
    - Typhon 13y ago
      I originally included "short" as a criterion, but I removed it as subjective. And PG's essays are chronologically organized : the topmost are the most recent.
      - philwelch 13y ago
        Again that's so vague as to be meaningless--you have to order them somehow and I don't think having a page that lists them in chronological order makes it a blog. At the very least most blogs show the full content of multiple posts on the same page, or have links to previous and next posts. I think the defining feature of a blog that's absent from Graham's essays is that blog posts can be intentionally insubstantial, sometimes containing nothing more than a link, possibly with comments. The least substantial essay Paul Graham has written is probably the one where he clarifies that he's not a racist just because he thinks having a thick accent makes it hard to be a CEO. I don't think he would consider posting intentionally insubstantial content to his list of essays.

philwelch 13y ago

To me, a "blog" is a particular format of online writing, but not all online writing is blogging. You can tell because newspapers often have blogs separate from their other content, drawing a distinction. I think there's a similar distinction between "essays that happen to be posted online" and "blogs".

Typhon 13y ago
Interestingly, my own definition of blogging is not tied to a specific medium. To me, the defining characteristics of the blog are as follows : A collection of texts which are : 1 - Published incrementally as they are written, and chronologically organized. 2 - Meant to be read by a wide audience 3 - Usually not ran past an editor. 4 - Not necessarily sharing any common theme 5 - Usually all have the same author. I cooked up this definition after noticing that the EWDs had been more or less Dijkstra's blog, long before the Web. PG's essays obviously fall under this definition as well.
- philwelch 13y ago
  I don't think PG's blogs are chronologically organized in any meaningful fashion. I also think that your definition is too broad, as it would include any self-published book series or maybe even the Bible.
  - Typhon 13y ago
    I originally included "short" as a criterion, but I removed it as subjective. And PG's essays are chronologically organized : the topmost are the most recent.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      Again that's so vague as to be meaningless--you have to order them somehow and I don't think having a page that lists them in chronological order makes it a blog. At the very least most blogs show the full content of multiple posts on the same page, or have links to previous and next posts. I think the defining feature of a blog that's absent from Graham's essays is that blog posts can be intentionally insubstantial, sometimes containing nothing more than a link, possibly with comments. The least substantial essay Paul Graham has written is probably the one where he clarifies that he's not a racist just because he thinks having a thick accent makes it hard to be a CEO. I don't think he would consider posting intentionally insubstantial content to his list of essays.