Journals and history

[nibot]

Web journals of all kinds are becoming increasingly popular, to the same level of ubiquity as the humble hit counters and guestbooks that came before. Not only are there quasi-traditional journals like Livejournal (and its clones which pop up daily), but also the various "forums," "bulletin boards," and things like Slashdot. These sites provide ample forum to discuss or post what one wishes to discuss or post, but I fear that the number of these sites and the resulting dilution of the market may prove harmful. For example, it used to be that Usenet was THE forum for discussions, but now, as so many arguably better (=less spam) alternatives exist, Usenet has fallen by the way-side. One cool thing about Usenet is that since it is effectively mirrored by hundreds of sites globally, it provides a semi-permanent record. Granted, some people see that as a disadvantage, but Usenet archives from the last 20 years have become a valuable part of the historial record. With conversation now tucked away in a multitude of nooks and crannies on the web and adorned with all sorts of HTML markup, the conversations from this new era of the web will not be as easily archived and subsequently searched. Here's another hazard: if web logs take the place of paper diaries, then there's a greater risk that those diaries will be lost, for instance when sites go down. Perhaps diaries aren't as important or pervasive as they once were, but I still think it's a matter worth considering. The centralized nature of the web presents a threat of data loss.

It would be neat if database-backed sites could expose their raw content in a universally understood, object-based format, so that the web could be crawled, indexed, and archived kind of like a heterogeneous usenet. This, of course, is part of the dream of XML, but one of whose realization I am skeptical, if only because exposed raw content can earn no revenue.

If I could get straight ASCII Reuters and AP feeds in a nice text interface like I had with Compuserve Information Manager a decade ago, I'd be happy too.

Comments

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

I think livejournal actually communicates through an XML layer. The only revenues they're looking for are users.

The thing I like about livejournal is that typically when I want to record a diary item -- I'm near a computer. If I'm not I can scratch it down anywhere and then record it at any computer at my leisure. I can never keep track of a paper journal.

Paper journals also aren't linkable, searchable, commentable, or infinitely extensible. All more bonuses for lj. And lj is opensource -- any front end you want to put on it, you can. And you do just deal with XML. :)

Ye gods I sound like a convert.