What weblogging software?

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

There is something about Movable Type that irritates me considerably, but remained elusive until a few minutes ago, when I was over at Jivha.com. Now I know what it is:

1. The commenting system doesn’t support threading, and because of this, there is no reply notification system like LJ has. If I post a comment, I won’t know of any replies unless I visit the page again. And when using an RSS aggregator that doesn’t put everything on one page (i.e., uses a multi-paned interface and highlights unread posts), I’m very unlikely to revisit a post.

2. I can’t reply to another comment; only to the main posting. If I want to indicate I am replying to a comment, I have to quote context. By placing the burden of establishing context on the reader, MT is likely to be discouraging several readers who would have otherwise participated in the discussion.

3. Even if I visit the main page again, I can’t tell which posts have new comments. On LJ this isn’t a problem because LJ provides the option of appending an &nc=xx tag to the URL, where xx is the number of comments. Browsers will treat this as an unread link and display it differently.

4. The default templates display comments in a new window. I absolutely hate web interfaces that (a) force-open new windows and (b) insist on a custom size for the window that is not the same size as the existing window.

Given these, I’ll warrant an assumption of what type of users each weblogging app/service attracts:

Movable Type is for the “messiah preaching to the masses” types, who would rather not have readers talking to each other.

LiveJournal is for those who value their community of friends (notice: not “readers”) more than the presentation of their journals.

Blogger is dead technology. With their current pace of feature upgrades, in about a couple of years, the only users they will be left with are those who don’t care for better, or don’t have enough of a clue on how to migrate.

Most of the other weblogging services and applications will be roadkill in a couple of years, unless they move on to newer concepts like photo weblogs (a.k.a “moblogs”) or take to serving niche communities.

kalyan — Dec 30, 2003 3:28:17 PM — # ↩

MT sucks
I noticed it.. the comments part is plain horrid without threading support.
evan — Dec 30, 2003 3:53:15 PM — # ↩

yeah, i don't really get it. threading is too easy to implement for everyone to just miss it.
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Dec 31, 2003 12:21:39 AM — # ↩
  
  Quoting Joel Spolsky in "Building Communities with Software" (distributed by email only):
  
  Q. Could you make a feature where I check a box that says
  "email me if somebody replies to my post?"
  
  A. This one feature, so easy to implement and thus so tempting
  to programmers, is the best way to kill dead any young forum.
  Implement this feature and you may never get to critical mass.
  Philip Greenspun's LUSENET has this feature and you can watch
  it sapping the life out of young discussion groups.
  
  Why?
  
  What happens is that people go to the group to ask a question.
  If you offer the "notify me" checkbox, these people will post
  their question, check the box, and never come back. They'll
  just read the replies in their mailbox. The end.
  
  If you eliminate the checkbox, people are left with no choice
  but to check back every once in a while. And while they're
  checking back, they might read another post which looks
  interesting. And they might have something to contribute to
  that post. And in the critical early days when you're trying to
  get the discussion group to take off, you've increased the
  "stickiness" and you've got more people hanging around, which
  helps achieve critical mass a lot quicker.
  
  Q. OK, but can't you at least have branching? If someone gets
  off on a tangent, that should be its own branch which you can
  follow or go back to the main branch.
  
  A. Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it
  doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the
  real world. Branched discussions are disjointed to follow and
  distracting. You know what I find distracting? When I'm trying
  to do something on my bank's web site and the site is so slow I
  can't remember what I'm doing from one click to the next. That
  reminds me of a joke. Three old ladies talking. Lady 1: "I'm so
  forgetful the other day I was on the steps to my apartment with
  a bag, and I couldn't remember if I was taking out the trash or
  going upstairs with the groceries." Lady 2: "I'm so forgetful I
  was in my car in the driveway and I couldn't remember if I was
  coming home or going to shul." Lady 3: "Thank God, I still have
  my memory, clear as a bell, knock on wood. (knock knock knock).
  Come in, door's open!" Branching makes discussions get off
  track, and reading a thread that is branched is
  discombobulating and unnatural. Better to force people to start
  a new topic if they want to get off topic. Which reminds me...
  - birdonthewire — Dec 31, 2003 3:15:21 AM — # ↩
    
    Interesting. When I check LJ on the web, I generally read all the comments. But I have noticed that when I use an RSS aggregator at home (email like interface), I tend not to read comments to posts as much.
    
    Branching i guess is the boon and the bane of slashdot. People posting responses seem to like the idea that responses keep getting off topic, but as a reader I obviously have to self select the ones I want to read.
contentedbloke — Dec 31, 2003 1:34:14 AM — # ↩

Very nice analysis!
irq2 — Dec 31, 2003 3:49:04 AM — # ↩

I absolutely hate web interfaces that (a) force-open new windows

Then you'll love http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in. ;-)
mannu — Dec 31, 2003 3:56:52 AM — # ↩

Watches
I'd love to see a "watch this post" feature on LJ. If I like a post on someone's journal, I'd also like to be notified of every comment on that post, including those that aren't replies to my comments. In addition to "watch this post", a "watch this thread" would be nice (in fact, it should be the same).
premshree — Dec 31, 2003 9:12:41 AM — # ↩

Yes, threaded comments make so much sense...somehow when I created my blog, I didn't give it a thought, maybe I'll redo it when I feel like...
balaji — Dec 31, 2003 4:10:55 PM — # ↩

MTThreadedComments
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~akosut/software/mtthreadedcomments.html

guess all that is needed is this plugin.

-balaji
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jan 1, 2004 2:57:02 AM — # ↩
  
  Re: MTThreadedComments
  And users clued in enough to use it. A feature without users is no feature.
tushar — Jan 2, 2004 4:50:57 AM — # ↩

MT Sucks
Yeah, the threading issue has come up more than once. MT 3.0 is on its way in Q1, which promises moblogging and other stuff they don't want to reveal right now.

All things considered, MT has been one of the easier tools to use for blogging. Others, like Drupal, Neucleus and Zope's CoreBlog either have too much, too little, or are harder to set up. MT is the lesser evil (so far)
frozenaftermath — Jan 2, 2004 6:19:07 AM — # ↩

One thing that everyone seems to ignore is how easy or difficult it is to start a blog and from this aspect it is unfair to compare MT to LJ. You stand a better a chance of making an average blogger install MT on his server than LJ. A fairer comparison would be between Typepad and LJ.

Threaded comments have been an issue for a while, but I have known people who have taken it off after installing it. It should have been a feature that can be turned off or on in the settings as standard, but I guess it will be there in the new release.

Movable Type is for the “messiah preaching to the masses” types, who would rather not have readers talking to each other.

Unfair comparison again with a centrally hosted service.

Blogger is dead technology.

Probably true, but most users have no issue with not having a trackback-enabled weblog. The hard-to-swallow point is that most users don’t care for better. And to be very honest, LJ's template tags often lead me to believe that figuring out kernel code would be easier.

Besides, it makes more sense to have an app server write out flat html pages from a DB for something of the scale that Blogger works out to be in the end and no prizes for guessing where the idea was used last.

I use Blogger for my blog simply because it is hosted at Google's DC and my back up blog is on a server I admin and that uses MT, my requirement is for data integrity and reliability and everyone has a different requirement.

In the end, most things are there only because there is a requirement for it. You don't buy Playboy and complain there are nude pics in it.
- sanatg — Jan 7, 2004 6:38:14 AM — # ↩
  
  "In the end, most things are there only because there is a requirement for it. You don't buy Playboy and complain there are nude pics in it."
  
  Cute :-)