Creating a Community

There is a big debate going on in the blog community about the format of site syndication. It seems that some are trying to keep the old formats, and there's all sorts of argument about the new (proposed) format. Tig had some good comments on this. I personally don't care one way or the other, but would like to pass on some words of wisdom given to me by a smart guy (don't remember if it was illiad or yohimbe actually).

"If you build a community you can't be a part of it."

So if you are in charge of say, creating a syndication format, you can't expect to be part of the bloggin community. Because by being the creator you are going to keep trying to mold the community into what you want, instead of letting it evolve naturally.

Take the ARS talkback on userfriendly.org for instance. Yohimbe wrote the thing, and figured (like me) that there'd be one, maybe two posts on there a day. Turns out there are hundreds and the system has turned into a BBS system of sorts. I don't understand these people, and neither does he, but he keeps out of the BBS and lets it go on by itself doing whatever it will end up doing.

And that's all I have to say about that. Oh, except that the whole RSS/(n)echo/bignamehere thing is stupid, they are blogs where people put things that they think, nothing more. Geez.