Re: Web feeds for "Blog" types

On Mon, May 23, 2022 at 05:44:32PM -0400, jason@massiveimpressions.com wrote:
>Hi,
>
>This is a good question.  I really do not like the term "blog" in a
>technical sense, and for personal reasons I'll reveal at the end.
>
>WHAT IS A BLOG?
>A "blog" is a term that refers to a collection of postings. However, a
>website labeled as a "blog" may also contain static pages and dynamic
>elements in addition to simply posts. In WordPress the practical difference
>between a Post and a Page is that a Page doesn't display the author, doesn't
>display the date and lacks categorization features. In essence a Page is a
>Post lacking certain features.

I disagree. Without context, a "blog" is merely one set of pages on a 
site in which an author makes a "web log" of written thoughts. It need 
not be the only collection of pages on a site.

If you go through a typical webring or blogroll, you'll find that this 
isn't some edge-case. This is especially pronounced on the IndieWeb, 
where "(blog) posts" are separate from "bookmarks", "notes", "reviews", 
etc.

A software project may have one feed for "release notes" and another 
feed for the "project blog". The distinction is useful; the former will 
likely be a list of all major changes, while the latter will 
editorialize and/or go into more detail on a less comprehensive set of 
changes.

>If I published a series of pages over time around a certain subject, for
>example weather conditions, I'd be technically "blogging".
>Someone may refer to their collection of posts on a site they don't own as
>their "blog", for example with Tumblr. Is it "their blog"?
>I don't know. Nor is it useful for me to consider how they label it.

It would be better to clarify the type of blog. With context, a blog can 
refer to a collection of a given type of CreativeWork besides Article. 
Linkblog? Weblog? Weather blog? Microblog? Live blog? Live weather 
microblog? Clarifying the type of blog give a much better idea of where 
the content came from.

>NOT EVERTHING WITH POSTS AND FEEDS IS A BLOG
>I work with JobPosting schema a lot. We both submit directly to the Google
>API and publish RSS feeds for our job listings. I wouldn't ever think of
>publishing JobPostings without a RSS feed, even with the API submissions
>making it superfluous. Also I wouldn't ever exclude them from sitemaps.
>These are postings, 100%, but nobody refers to a job board as a "blog".

I agree; blogs should be distinguished from job posting pages, and other 
regularly-updating pages. Personal sites often contain a "now" page. 
IndieWeb sites often contain auto-generated booking histories lacking 
any authored content ("just checked in at $hotel, currently at $person's 
house"), etc.

>THE WAY PEOPLE USE THE TERM BLOG IS DEROGATORY
>A blog is thought of as something "less important" or "less professional"
>than a website by the public as a whole, by laypeople who don't publish
>sites themselves.

Blogs are generally supposed to be less professional than periodicals or 
peer-reviewed journals. The whole idea of a blog is that any person or 
organization can set one up. It's very in line with the spirit of the 
early Web.

>IMHO CAN THE TERM BLOG
>If it were my call I'd just deprecate the whole "Blog" type and simply use
>"WebSite" in its place. In my humble opinion it's just not different enough.
>Let's just can it.

Not all websites have blogs, and not all parts of a website are a blog. 
Canning the term "blog" would eliminate this distinction.

>When I think "series" I think TV shows where the characters stay the same.
>Once it's a collection of a hodgepodge of topics, or even one topic that's
>too broad (like all lodging establishments in an area) then it's not a
>series.  Not all shows on one TV channel are a series. Not all shows
>produced by the same Persons are a series. Not everyone might agree with
>this definition and examples. Someone may see all their blog posts as a
>series and someone else my only see subsets of all their blog posts as
>separate series, not wanting to refer to the whole of their work as a
>series.

Maybe "Series" is the wrong term, but a blog should be some sort of 
"collection type" that can contain CreativeWorks. I just picked 
CreativeWorkSeries since it already exists, but perhaps a new type could 
be created.

-- 
Seirdy