No likes, no stats, no problem: birming.com
@birming
Replying to:
Replying to:Like
The first part of this post is a reply to Robert. I do have some basic analytics on my site, and I do look at them perhaps more often than is healthy.
I’ve been thinking about the like button on my posts. I was thinking about it already, and this post has me thinking about it more. I have mixed feelings about it.
It’s useless, really. Likes on my posts don’t feed any algorithms. I could write an algorithm if I really wanted to—but I don’t want to. It does not fit this site at all. I don’t even look at the likes. There isn’t any real reason to keep them around.
On the other hand, the way things are set up here, there’s also no real cost to having the likes. Getting rid of them would not meaningfully reduce the complexity of this website. I can just as easily say “Why bother getting rid of them? Maybe someone likes them.” In my first draft of this post, I described the uselessness of the likes as a “problem,” said I had “doubts” about them. But that’s not really true. They aren’t a problem, and I don’t have a definitely negative opinion about it. But I feel primed to talk about it in those terms by default.
I do pore over the views a little too much. I don’t think I really need to check how many vies I’ve gotten every single day.
I’m on my own custom made website, so there is no system of following or being followed other than RSS (by which I actually mean Atom). Sometimes I do feel some little bit of frustration that I can’t see how many people are following me that way, but maybe that’s for the best. I don’t think having that number would really benefit me in any way.
DislikeAnd now we get to the part of this post that’s about zucchini. By which I mean I’m going to talk about a different sense of the word “like.”
“I don’t like zucchini,” should be a simple, true statement, except that it doesn’t mean what I want it too. Because it doesn’t actually mean that I don’t specifically like zucchini—which is true—it means that I dislike zucchini—which is not (though writing this is giving me annoyance at the spelling. It’s the “c” that’s doubled? Really?). My feelings are neutral. I’ll eat it without complaint. But I just won’t get excited for zucchini season, or for some dish that includes it.
But it’s surprising hard to say that. “I don’t love it,” “It doesn’t appeal to me,” “It’s not to my taste” all have the same problem. The connotation of all of those sentences jumps straight from a positive to a negative valence, completely ignoring the space in the middle. It feels like a gap in the English language. There are so many expressions for like and for dislike, but where is the neutrality?
FoundAfter this talk of missing words, I’m going to turn around to one I’ve found.
How would I describe my blog? What is the topic? It’s not a tech blog, not a food blog, not a travel blog, etc. The closest category I generally see in blog lists is “personal blog.” But how personal is this really? I don’t talk much about my personal life. I’m shy.
But recently I was introduced to Amin’s website after he emailed me about one of my posts. He has titled his blog “Musings,” and the [latest post] talks a little about the writing process for that. I found it largely relatable. That’s my writing process here. I take something I’m thinking about or something I saw and I just muse about it for a little while. Coherence here is mostly maintained only because I find that I’m more of a “splitter” than a “lumper” so shifts in topic end up as separate posts more often than as sections in one.
ConclusionWhat’s the conclusion to all this? That words are tricky, slippery things I suppose. They don’t mean what you want. They aren’t spelled how you want. They shift from one sense to another without warning. Oh and also it’s probably best not to worry too much about whether your blog “does numbers.” It doesn’t do you any good.
If this were an essay, I suppose my grade would be in trouble finishing like that. But the thing about the musing method on a casual blog like this is that sometimes you get to wrap things up in a neat bow, and sometimes you just write straight off the edge of the page.
PostscriptSometimes I think about adding a “soundtrack” section to my posts with whatever music I was listening to while writing. In this case I was writing outside, in the company of a very chatty group of birds that Merlin tells me were House Finches.
@birming I like this! 😜 In all seriousness, though, this is my favourite thing about micro.blog, and I wish I could turn analytics off on every other platform. It’s revealing to see how useful it is to the platforms for us all to care more about metrics than the actual content of what we share.
@birming I didn’t even know that blog recommendations were a thing. That’s a great little featur; I’ll have to add some.
The only thing I think is missing is the ability to add images to replies. Apart from that, I completely agree - really enjoying my time here on Micro.blog.
@kev You can reply with images using Markdown syntax like this: .
@birming Wait, what? There’s a blogroll feature built into micro.blog?! I didn’t know that. Interesting.
@roelio There sure is! Not very obvious location, though. Head over to Design -> Edit Recommendations
@roelio The blogroll feature might be a little too hidden! I’d love to do more with it. (It’s on the Design → Edit Recommendations page.)
@manton @kev Awesome! Time for me to add descriptions and work on the design: https://birming.com/blogroll
@manton Well heck I didn’t notice that feature before you mentioned it in this thread. Played with it a bit - one thing that I immediately missed was a way to move a feed from one blogroll to another (other than delete & recreate). But it’s a good starting point.
@birming Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I’ll take a look at it and use the tips in your latest blog post to create a /blogroll page. :)