October 5, 2010

• What’s Wrong With Xanga: Part 3,476

  

  I’m fond of saying Xanga is only a website after all. It’s a platform containing programs which make it easy to present one’s thoughts, rants, artistic endeavors, spiritual epiphanies, and joking asides to a large number of people in a small amount of time, and although there are dozens of other websites which essentially do the same thing, the Xanga site has been on the internet for a long time, and has many longtime users who have, through the years, helped the development of the site into a seeming “community”: “the blogging community” as it states to the right of the logo on the front page (www.xanga.com).

  Besides the many current server outages (one of which is occuring as I type this on Notepad) and updated program embellishments which sometimes do not seem to enhance but instead hamper the “Xanga Experience”, it can plainly be argued that it might not be “Xanga” with which anything is wrong, but the fault may rest with the “community” of bloggers itself. Those who complain the loudest may in fact be the progenitors of most of the “problems” they feel they encounter with the service. Physician, heal thyself! Xangan, it’s up to you to “fix” what you perceive as “broke.”

  The main thing wrong with the Xanga of 2010 is the simple fact that useless, throwaway entries like the one you’re reading right now tend to get instant exposure, lots of recommendations, and dozens of laudatory comments, while the uplifting art and literature entries, which may take hours to prepare, go seemingly unnoticed and unread, perhaps even landing a spot on “top blogs” for a few scant moments, yet overlooked by the majority of Xangans who are trolling their way toward the next useless Xangabashing or “humorous” negative entry extolling how nobody writes quality “stuff” anymore.

  Yes, I’ll admit there are some problems with the website itself. I don’t like the Meebo “toolbar” which seems to crash my browser, and display annoying popup ads like those on the banners at the bottom of television programs. I even turned the instant messenger “off”. The toolbar does contain a feature I like, the “quickbrowse” which displays the pages of recent entries from my subscriptions like on a webring. However, there only seem to be 100 entries selected at any given time, and there will be multiple entries on one sub, but no entries displayed for all subs. I have less than 100 subs, so each of those should at least have the last page they updated on the display. But I quibble. There have been lots of server outages lately, with 503 error message screens instead of pages which tell us what’s wrong. At least when something prevented Xanga from being online in the past, I would know why.

  Xangans seem to read “Top Bloggers” no matter what they post, and they’ll read “top blogs” which are posted by the rest of us which gain exposure, but they won’t investigate the rest of the blog on which an errant “top blog” post appears. I can only speak from experience, and I’ve conducted some “experimentation” in the last few months. Nothing has been fully researched. I’m just going by instinct and past expericence, which may even be somewhat flawed. These are my observations. I’ll post an entry like my recent “Top Blog Comment String” which doesn’t take all that long to prepare. I’ll get comments telling me that “it must have taken a long time to write this”. I’ll get kudos. Recommends. The entry will stay on top of the “top blogs” page for 24 hours or more. I’ll feel good. I’ll get a swelled head. I’ll attempt to (at least) leave comments on the blogs of those who subscribe or befriend me because of the post. I’ll make sure I return the comments of my “regular readers” who have responded.

  For my next post, I’ll select or prepare something more “typical” of my “blogging style”. Although the epithet “fool” is attached to my longtime “signature”, I do not for the most part display humor here on WhenWordsCollide. The next “ElectricPoetry” or “PhotoPost” or “Universal Blog” entry will fall back to my regular “numbers”, getting the requisite 15  or 20 comments from my standard readership. I might pick up one or two new readers from each of the “engineered top blog” entries, but for the most part, as I mentioned above, since I’m not a “top blogger” or “Xangalebrity”, it’s the post itself that was noticed, and not me as a blogger.

  I treat each “comment” equally. This may or may not be a fault on my part. I will “return” the favor by visiting the blogger who left the comment (I used to do this with all comments, but I only do it for people who befriend or subscribe for the most part nowadays) read multiple entries, say hello, give thanks, and respond to one or more entries in my own comment. I’ll do this whether someone writes me a small novel or if they post a smiley icon. I sort of get disturbed a bit when these folks don’t return to my blog. I might even recommend one of their posts, and this doesn’t get a thank you or a notice. It amazes me that for all of the talk about “community” I don’t encounter any sense of community amongst a lot of the Xangans I encounter. If I make the effort to drop by and say “hello”, I at least expect a short return visit. After all, you befriended me or subscribed to my blog. If you’re not interested in “striking up a conversation” of some sort, then why did you subscribe in the first place.

  I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you that if it was because of that Pop up that asked you to subscribe or befriend, you can turn that sucker off, you know, so it won’t ever appear again when you’re on someone’s blog to which you don’t subscribe or have a “friendship” with. Check “disable” under “Supscription suggestions” in you Subscription Manager.

  I honestly don’t think a lot of bloggers know what a link is, let alone how to “make” one. As a blogring leader for Internet Island, I was always “instructing” people how to make links so they could link their topic entry in comments on the Island blog. Sometimes I get the suspicion that there are a lot of bloggers who don’t realize that if text in a blog entry is a different color and is underlined then it is a link to the definition or entry displayed, or otherwise related material to that which they are reading. In point of fact, sometimes I don’t think people even read all of the entries to which they are leaving a comment. I surmise this because I’ll get questions that I’ve already answered in my entry! I litter my posts and comments with appropriate links. I get disgusted when reading a blog entry alluding to something which is not referenced.

  Too many of the “top blogs” and a lot of the blog entries in Xangaland are specific “jabs” at other bloggers with whom someone should be having a “private conversation” in messages and not on the public entries. Yet, these are the “popular” posts amongst the Xangasphere. People seem to love “drama”. I’ve written before that these kinds of tete a tetes can cause even longtime bloggers to become disillusioned and upset. That these kinds of blog entries are repeatedly recommended, and people whom the bloggers invloved in the “fight” or “discussion” or whatever don’t even know drop by to get thier licks in. This seems to be a never ending cycle and I wish somebody could just put a bandaid on this sort of exhibitionism.

  Why don’t more bloggers use “tags”? I write a multilayered blog which references the many sections on my personal website. In my “tags” section, the most used of which are on the main page of my blog, clicking “ElectricPoetry”, “PhotoPost” or even blogs tagged “Xanga” will take you to a page or selection or pages where all of the entires on that particular subject are presented. When I visit a new blog, and I see a poem, I expect I can find a “tag” for “poetry” or whatever, so I can instantly get to that bloggers poetry entries. For the most part, nobody uses the tags, or else they “overuse” them, “tagging” 50 separate words in a 75 word entry. Tags should be used to identify the types or posts or subjects one blogs about.

  I could go on, but I just got into work, and I’ve got a lot of work to do, so Xanga has to go to the backburner of my life for a while. I guess my point, if I have one, is that Xanga puts the tools in place for just about anyone to be able to present their creative side on this service. Instead of complaining (which I guess I just did, but I present lots of stuff on my blog, so as a content provider I can grouse a bit from time to time if I want. To use an oft repeated phrase…..”It’s MY blog, dammit.”) and wasting energy, Xangans can use these tools to become creative themselves. And once the creatiity is unleashed in the Xangasphere, don’t be afraid of interacting a bit. I don’t look for them, but I seem to “stumble” across many blog entries which attempt to describe how newbies here can make top blogs themselves, and almost all of them say to befriend the top bloggers. Seriously, how many fricking “friends” do these top bloggers need to stoke their vast egos anyway? I got a friend request from someone yesterday who has never visited my blog, and has 17,629 Xanga friends. I declined his request, as I have done many times in the past. 

  My advice is moot, because I’m not a “top blogger”. However, the key to longtime resiliance in Xangaland is to develop a coterie of friends and readers with whom you share more than the fact that you just read one of their entries. We used to utilize the blogrings to search for like minded individuals. I still get some hits from blogrings to which I belong. Leave comments. And not just on the same 10 or 15 “top bloggers” no matter what they write. Find the content, and leave comments letting bloggers know that you are inspired, or moved, or enlightened by their work. Develop conversations which are positve, and not negatively inspired. These can go on for years. Your “group” only needs to be as large or as small as you’re comfortable. I interact with about 70 some Xangans on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes I might feel a bit “overloaded” but not usually. I “make the time” to spend on these blogs, and let me tell you, I work over 50 hours a week sometimes and don’t usually blog on weekends, so I don’t let Xanga run my “real life”. I will sometimes overlook those who don’t regularly interact with me, but try to at least drop by my regular readers’ bloghomes about once a week.

  If you visit here, and you see something on my blog which interests you, why don’t you stick around? I invite you to look at more than just the entry to which you might be reading because you saw a comment of mine on another blog you read, or caught one of my “Xanxiety” comics on “top blogs.” Each of we bloggers is a person, with a history, and some of us are creative to boot. I”m noticing some bloggers using the “recommend” feature as they would the “like” feature on Facebook. This isn’t bad. I, for one, love to see recommends, but it sometimes irks me that I’ll get a recommend without a comment. You see, in 2004 I joined Xanga for the comments. I like to write ‘em, and I like to read ‘em. When I see long stretches of time between comments on my blog, that sometimes bothers me.

  What’s wrong with Xanga? Nothing much really. Nothing that hasn’t been said or written about at least 3,475 times in the past. As usual, I’m always tempted to write another of these xangacentric entries because of some useless drama I’ve just witnessed or the dearth of comments on one of the entries of mine I thought would be a lot more popular than it became in actuality, while shaking my head at some entry which stayed at the top of top blogs forever and I didn’t understand why. Yet, I’ll attempt to be positive. I’ve been in full creative mode for a couple of months now, and have seen a lot of my more creative attempts get noticed by more than just my regular group. I’m meeting new Xangafolk all the time. Xanga is “smaller” than at almost any time since I’ve been here, and I hope to meet more and more bloggers who represent the “top” instead of just reside there because they’ve got Xangalebrity status.

  End. Of. Rant.

  • 9:56 am
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