The long and the short of it
It appears that not everyone is happy with the length of our Sola Panel posts. Dave Miers would like to request shorter posts (on behalf of himself and his friends), and Mike Doyle has congratulated Ben Pfahlert on his sub-300 word effort (maybe as a direct response to the sub-1400 word effort Benny produced last time). So, in the spirit of defensive self-protection, let me ask the question: how long is a good post? (The eagle-eyed reader may well be reminded of a similar issue involving twine ...)
While I am aware of the neo-Luddite, culturally blinkered state in which I, as a late 30-something, white male dwell (although, you should see the state of the mid-to-late 40-somethings around the office!), let me act for a moment like an oversized, now-extinct quadraped and leap to the defence of the longer post. For the sake of argument, I will put my points in bullet form for the chronologically challenged.
- We live in a culture that has the attention span of a gnat. Gnats don't know much. Go figure.
- Sound bites are used by reporters to create conflicts (even conflicts that don't exist). You can start a fight in five words or less, but you can't always say the thing that needs to be said.
- I wonder if the apostles would have communicated with congregations via 300 word posts.1
- Should we always give in to the new medium as a way of communicating with a new culture? Is this the only way?
Sorry for being a little facetious. I'm not having a go at Dave or Mike; their comments just raised the issue. (I also know all too well from my own experience that life is short, and there are lots of things to read, do and think about.) But it does raise the whole issue of length, communication and the web. And I want to make a case for involving some longer reading in our lives. I am not persuaded that the worldview challenging, spiritually mind-altering truths of the Bible can be communicated or debated adequately in short slabs. Sometimes grappling with big ideas takes time and energy. But if all we do is turn off if something is too long, then we aren't going to make any progress in thinking deeply about the faith.
And before people challenge me about the fact that you can go and read a book sometime if you want to, let me say that the posts we're writing on the Sola Panel are essays. In fact, my guess is that you read things of a similar length all the time. Let me give you an example. I went to the opinion section of The Sydney Morning Herald and sampled the first half-a-dozen entries. The average length? 880 words. I went to the opinion section of The New York Times and sampled the most recent half-a-dozen entries. The average length? 677 words. I sampled the last half dozen Sola Panel entries. Average length? 594 words. (I actually do the word counts for every Sola Panel entry as I compile stuff for The Briefing. 600 words is about average, and we very, very rarely go over 1000).
Here's my issue: many, many people read the opinion columns in their local newspaper and find 800 odd words very digestible. So why, exactly, are Sola Panel pieces too long? If it's because we're boring, then you need to say so (I mean this). If it's because we're talking about things that are irrelevant or unimportant, you need to say so. But I am not sure it's either of those things. And I'm certainly yet to be persuaded that you have to be sub-300 words to be part of the web world. Sure, we won't be for everybody. And if you keep up with lots of blogs, then you may well struggle to read all that we write here. But the comments in our mission statement still stand: we want to be “thoughtful, non-trivial, Bible-driven, unashamedly Reformed and Evangelical, ministry-hearted, pro-active and godly”. I reckon sometimes that takes a few more words.
Just to make it clear, I am aware of market forces, and I realize that if, over time, people stop reading, then we will have to change or be totally irrelevant. (There's no point writing stuff that people don't read.) However, I think it's also worth challenging people occasionally to think about what they read and why they read it. There's more to life than just cramming more sites and more information in. I am sure that most people would agree that we need depth as well as breadth. Our hope is that The Sola Panel provides a little depth. Maybe you think the web isn't the place for that, or maybe you think Sola Panel isn't the place for that. If that's you, here's your chance to make your case. Why should we be shorter?
1 I'm sure the Apostle Paul would have called his blog Anathema and other stuff, and the post to the Galatians would have gone something like this: “Hey dudes, you're not being dudes when you dis the apostolic gospel. And Peter agrees with me, even if he wasn't exactly dude-like when he wouldn't eat with the Gentiles. So faith rocks, man, and the law won't get you in with God. Don't worry about circumcision unless they tell you to worry about it—in which case, it's a good idea to worry about it—which is another way of saying don't do it if they tell you you must! Walk like the Spirit, crucify your old dude and keep the faith. Peace. Amen.”
I hesitated before clicking on The Sola Panel in Google Reader today, my thought process:
“Do I really want to look at this now? They (almost) always write a lot and I’m not sure if I have the time or inclination to read a long post”
I think the length issue may be related to multiple factors:
A few more comments:
Paul,
my experience at various times of designing opinion pages for newspapers was that writers and editors had a strong view that 800 words was the length required to outline an argument or make a convincing case for most things.
So you will indeed find the Sydney Morning Herald opinion pages laid out to provide 800 word pieces.
People of many differing points of view seemed to come to accept the 800 word standard.
That being said, 800 words on screen can seem very long.
A preference for shorter pieces might be a function of your layout: it would be interesting to see a blog optimised for longer pieces of writing.
The web version of subheads and pull quotes might help too.
You should be shorter because it is a good discipline! Brevity (much favoured of Calvin) is not the opposite of depth. Read Psalms or Proverbs lately?
You are making a large claim that the extra length of your posts adds value. I think it would take an extremely skilful writer to convince me that this is true. When I blog, I try hard as I can to go between 400-500 words, because I know I am just not that good. Having said that, I do love it when Baddeley gives a 2000+ word spray!!
Blogging is all about discussion and comment, too. You aren’t writing a book, or a treatise that is the final word on the subject. That’s the nature of the medium. So you can afford to hold back some of your material and use it in the discussion.
Which leads me to another thing: because you have a comment-monitoring policy, it means that the discussion doesn’t develop in real time. Could this be changed? I don’t think it is really necessary to be sooo protective of it. Are you being inundated by nasty comments? It would be more efficient to quietly remove anything annoying than to wait for approval.
Interesting post.
I didn’t read it all tho.
Too long.
‘nuff said?
Sorry ... to make this comment slightly more helpful, might I suggest that the length of your posts is probably inversely proportional to the size of your readership (assuming you only want to count those who read every word).
I certainly don’t read many Sola Panel posts in full ... I follow many blogs in my RSS reader and long posts have to be very interesting before they’ll get my undivided attention.
So, the question goes back to you ... who do you want to engage with here? No offence, but the only people who will read the entirety a long blog post from here *every* *day* are the unemployed, blog addicts, ministers who can write it off as part of their work day, and those who think the sun shines out of the Panel’s proverbial behinds.
Like most people, I’m none of those, which is why I don’t read every word. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I would definitely read more if the content was easier to consume quickly.
I guess what it comes down to is how “bloggish” you want The Sola Panel to be. Do you want it to be something that people read every entry on every day, or is it more like the opinion section of a newspaper (as you compare it to) where readers can read what they like, when they like?
Personally, I don’t feel under compulsion to read Sola Panel articles that I’ve missed in order to keep up - each post stands pretty much on its own as far as I can see. This makes it easy to treat the Sola Panel as a series of lengthier “opinion” like pieces, that I may or may not read. But when I do read them, I know that they’ll be worthwhile and food for thought.
May I suggest that if you want to go “the way of the blogs”, that the suggestions above regarding the commenting system are taken into account, and that the Sola Panel heads in a more discussional direction? However, if you’d like the Sola Panel to be a place where short essays are written, why not archive articles by subject to make them more “browseable”?
Hey Paul, just for a lark I looked at your last 6 posts (excepting the factotum re-runs).
According to me your word counts were:
1463
1293
940
681
592
393
Interestingly it was your two longest articles - about Driscoll’s new Calvinism and cultural engagement - that got by far and away the most comments.
The short articles tended to be about more ephemeral things - something like the Nick Darcy issue which could simply become a sermon illustration.
I must admit I thought one of those longer articles could have been more tightly edited and more polished at points.
But that’s the difficulty of blogging. I know I can be long-winded sometimes. And it takes real discipline to cut out every spare word and to ditch the little side-track that you spent time crafting.
Sometimes there’s not enough time to edit. But is that not the nature of blogging. A little rougher and quicker than magazines which are in turn less developed than books.
But where there is time, then tighter and shorter and more vividly written is good.
Maybe sometimes you should put your Briefing hat on and ask the author to turn the potential blog post into a proper article for the mag!
Headings and pictures make a post more readable with an opening paragraph that lets the reader know the contents of the post so they can decide whether to keep reading or not.
(Just my humble suggestions.)
It’s all about cultural engagement, Paul.
You guys are choosing to join in on a particular type of medium.
Take the time to learn how to use it. Don’t just criticise it limitations.
Good on ya for asking the questions and thanks for you hard work.
I reckon it’d be awesome if all the Sola Panellists had to read and comment on at least six blogs daily.
That’d be both an educational and courteous act as you seek to contribute to the blogsphere.
What are the stats at the mo? How many blogs do each of the Sola Panellists read? How often?
I agree with Mikey. You’re not an op-ed page, you’re a blog. You need to understand the medium in which you are operating.
I’m currently following 112 blogs from all over the place….so brevity with depth is great.
If you want to keep pushing out long articles, that’s fine. But you’ll become more of a ejournal than a blog…
@Ian Tyrrell: I’m curious why you think putting comments on the same page as the post would be helpful. Could you please elaborate?
Personally, I think it’s ridiculous to say that a writing for the web must be short and snappy. To pick up Sandy’s point, people will read longer pieces when they think that it’s worth it—worth their time and investment. I regularly read long stuff online (e.g. some of The New York Times’s feature articles in their weekend magazine). I also post longer stuff online: ‘Bridget James’s Diary’ was 7,000 words long, yet it was read by many, many people and disseminated widely.
@Karen: Currently the comments are completely segregated from the post they are referring to - it requires either loading two tabs, or constant use of back/forward buttons to reference the post in a comment. The comments don’t necessarily need to be on the same page as the post (although I would argue this marks the discussion as being a part of the article and not completely separate), but having the article text on the comments page would be really, really useful.
Also, having comments in real-time (maybe configure the moderation to only be required the first time someone posts a comment to the Sola Panel site), would be great too! (just a suggestion, not an imperative
)
@Karen: I agree that articles don’t <i>have</i> to be short and snappy for the web, I think the problem (for want of a better word) is not necessarily the length (although a wall of text often scares people off reading), but rather the verbosity of the posts.
I realise these are essays, and not my-cat-is-cute blog posts, but it often seems that they are quite long-winded and take a good long while to get to the point.
People will read a long article occasionally, but having it every day is quite intimidating.
Perhaps a shorter daily post, with a full-length essay at weekends might work well.
Mikey, you asked
For me personally, I receive by RSS Challies, Between Two Worlds, From the Dean, Anglican Church League, Primtetime Jesus, What’s Best Next, and Blogging the Institutes from Ref 21 (but I am way way behind). I try to browse these daily. I only comment rarely.
I also look daily at Sydneyanglicans, but not via RSS and comment there quite often. I often check the SMH online. I occasionally browse Andreas Kostenberger’s blog and Unashamed Workman.
You can see a bit of what some other panellists read in regards to blogs in my Highlights of 2008 post, and in some of the interviews done with panellists.
Hi John,
Keen to know if you can point me in the direction of a few sites that you think do this well?
Thanks Grimmo.
Mikey and Adam,
This is not meant to be defensive, but I’m not quite sure how to communicate this. I have been trying to work out why you seem to think that I have no idea about this online world in which I am operating (at least that’s the vibe I get from your “you’ve got to understand the medium” comments). Some reasons that have popped into my head are: I’m over 35 and have described myself as a dinosaur; or I’ve persisted in posting long; or maybe it’s just my vibe? I’m genuinely interested in your answer.
I guess part of me is wondering who writes the rules? What exactly is the medium and what does it mean to learn how to use it? Do you stretch it or let it set your boundaries?
Also, I am interested to know, would you consider Challies or Pyromaniacs as blogs or ejournals or something else?
Grimmo.
I don’t read SP often because I find it too long and too persistently negative. However here are some of my thoughts:
Length is not the problem. I think people complain about the length of your posts because it’s a symptom of inappropriate use of the medium.
If you want to be a blog, then act like a blog. Good blogs are not publishing houses for essays.
Good blogs:
- give of themselves and are a pleasure to read
- facilitate discussion, sometimes even community
- are episodic in nature and rewarding to follow
If you want to write essays, that’s cool. But like John Sandeman said - change your format. If people use an rss feeder they may resent getting an essay dumped on them daily. It feels like work - which they either have to ignore and feel bad about or wade through to evaluate. This could be helped by using teasers or summaries so people can evaluate more quickly… however you’re at that point you’re still just publishing essays.
However, if you want to write a blog, use the episodic nature of the medium. Build storylines and arcs. Make it worth following. Romance your audience, engage with them, don’t bludgeon them. Reward them for the attention they invest over time.
Oh yeah, and be nice.
Remember: people subscribe to journals, they follow blogs.
Mike,
I’m interested that you point to Calvin as a model of brevity. Read the institutes lately? (He is dense though - able to communicate a lot of depth in a short space of time). But that just raises the question doesn’t it? Could a little length make depth more readily comprehensible?
I’m denying that long can just be sloppy by the way!
The comments policy is tricky. We catch lots of spam. I probably need to work out how to check it more regularly in the working day! (If only there was more time).
Grimmo.
<i>Also, I am interested to know, would you consider Challies or Pyromaniacs as blogs or ejournals or something else?</i>
They are hard work
(often rewarding, but real toil to get through at times).
Hi All,
Interestingly, due to a funny set of circumstances, what appears in the post isn’t what I meant to write. What I meant to write was:
“let me say that the posts we’re writing on the Sola Panel aren’t exactly essays” (why it appears differently in the post is a long story). I don’t think what we are writing are even essays really. Although maybe people will disagree.
Grimmo.
Hi Paul,
Good article. Some comments:
- I generally read your articles. You write well. Some of the others are too deep for my shallow brain
- I agree regarding some break-up type things, like sub-headings and a summary content.
- At the moment, I’m sitting at home sick and on leave from work. I have time to read and time to comment. Usually I don’t. Unless the topic really grabs me, and I think I can actually add something by commenting.
- Karen, I think it’s just that it’s another “click” to get the comments, especially when you’re busy.
- However it would be really great to have comments appear more quickly. How does SydAng get away with it?
- I guess another question is: Do you want to fight the blog culture? or do you want to embrace the blog culture? Fighting would mean keeping with the longer posts. Embracing means the shorter posts.
My final comment: KEEP going. I enjoy it. I enjoy discussing with the great Peter Bolt over the nature of the modern education system. I can’t believe I get to discuss with such great theological minds. This is WAY cool.
In Calvin’s commentaries he deliberately pursued a policy of ‘lucid brevity’ (his term) in distinction to the voluminous commentaries of his day. That’s all.
Thanks for putting your necks on the line like this guys, btw.
Hey Paul, I don’t mean to call you old
It’s just a vibe thing that makes me feel like you haven’t quite grown to love and enjoy the blogsphere. ‘Who writes the rules’? The community does - welcome to the postmodern world!
Challies and Pyros are also long, and to be honest, I rarely read them except out of courtesy for their greatness
There’s obiviously a spectrum out there, though, you’re right.
And yet there’s lot of little ‘cues’ that they give which shows they love the blog medium, I think.
@Bronwyn Bultman:
At the risk of coming across as a pedant, I just wanted to point out that people subscribe to blogs too—through their RSS feed.
Tangentially related point: Just because you’ve got a subscription to a journal or a blog doesn’t mean you have to read everything. Personally, I follow 147 feeds, but I don’t read them all; I skim most of them and read the ones that interest me or that have been written by people I’m committed to praying for/building a relationship with.
@Ian Tyrrell: RE comments being on the same page: Thanks, that’s a helpful point! (No promises things will change though ;P)
Paul, thanks for bringing this up for discussion. I’m also someone who has criticised the length of SolaPanel posts.
I think your observation about the NY Times says something. They use some of the very best professional writers in the world, and they still average no more than 700 words per article? Modesty suggests that lesser mortals such as ourselves might want to aim a little lower.
I also think you can get away with longer articles in paper media because paper is easier to read, and also because of the tricks that JS pointed out.
A final point. People like Dave M and Mikey are worth listening to. They are very much connected to the online world, and very much in tune with GenY thinking.
I could be wrong, but the vibe I get is that the SolaPanel and The Briefing are not connecting with the GenY crowd - not in the same way that The Briefing was 15 or 20 years ago. That’s based purely on anecdotal evidence, but that’s the vibe I’m getting. If that’s true, it may be worth listening to guys like DM and Mikey…
For all the reasons outlined by others above I stopped subscribing to the SP feed earlier this year.
It’s generally too long
It’s generally too negative
I’ve never felt the majority of the bloggers on SP understood the medium or the community.
But I’m guessing you don’t care if I read or not, which is a shame because I like what you are trying to do.
What do people think of blogs that come in 2 or 3 or even 4 parts?
One example I am thinking of are CJ Mahaney’s interviews with other Christian leaders. These have appeared over several days if the length of their answers demanded it.
On the one hand it made each post more digestible, or at least quick to read. On the other hand, it made it irritating for me to have to remember to go back and read the follow ups, and to have lost something of the flow of the interview.
But alongside better writing - crisper, conciser, tighter - would breaking long posts into a series (not all would lend to this) also help?
I guess we’ve done that with some of Peter Bolt’s stuff. One problem is related comments get spread across several threads.
@Karen Beilharz:
yeah, I know
you can technically subscribe to a blog by using a feed reader. But that’s in the technical sense. I guess I’m trying to describe the emotional connection that’s involved in long term blog reading. And I don’t think that’s limited to personal, diary style blogs. Good non-personal blogs still have elements of it.
Re: Craig’s comment.
Does SP want to connect with Gen Y?
I could be wrong but I think most of the people reading and commenting are Gen x and above.
@Georgina Barratt-See
“I could be wrong but I think most of the people reading and commenting are Gen x and above.”
Doesn’t that prove the point?
I think variety is pretty good. Some longer, some shorter. Could the longer ones be shortened with a “read more” option? I think that has been suggested already.
I also really like someones idea of an archiving system whereby previous articles can be found. As relatively infrequent Sola-panelist I think there have been some excellent suggestions given here.
PS. I think I have a 361 word post coming out some time soon - I submitted it before this discussion.
Hi Ben
(a side point, is @Georgina Barratt-See because of twitter? - I’m not a twitterer).
Yes, and no.
Yes, perhaps the format and content of SP has turned gen Y’ers off, or no, because Gen Y’ers would not be interested anyway?
It’s a chicken and egg thing. Which comes first?
Are Gen Y’ers going to discuss on these sort of forums anyway? Isn’t the audience going to be older? Or not?
What about SydAng? My impression is most people commenting there are Gen x and above too.
And what about the “sex” divide? Why is mostly men commenting?
Are all the married women too busy with things of the home? Or are they elsewhere?
What exactly is the demographic SP is trying to reach? And why?
@Andrew Barry: I don’t mind a ‘read more’ on the site, but I’d rather have the full post in RSS, otherwise it adds a click (and there is a lot of commitment and psychological weight involved in a simple mouse-click) between me and what I’m trying to read.
@Not-necessarily-Andrew-Barry: Brevity for brevity’s sake isn’t the point, just because a post is long doesn’t make it bad, but it does put a barrier up between the blog and the reader.
Hi All,
Thanks to everyone for all your participation. It’s been a really helpful and interesting exercise for me and I’ve learned a lot. I guess that I’ll share a couple of things at this point.
1) Some of the comments about format and where we put comments and stuff have been really helpful things that we’ll seek to act on to make the site more usable.
2) I am really interested in the sense that I have gotten from some people that we should be different. I find that a little interesting given the supposed post-modern background of the people commenting. Why do we have to be like the thing your community has decided is their thing?
More interestingly, I am surprised at the comments that we are “wrong” and must “change” and “don’t understand”. Not wrong, or not understanding, just different I think. I am actually quite comfortable with the fact that some people will chose to read us and others won’t, it’s a free world. If some people find us negative, then that’s OK too.
3) Which actually leads me to realize that we’re also talking about slightly different things. The “short, sharp posts where everyone knows each other and reads each others blogs” world is one part of the blogosphere, but not all of it by any means. One of the interesting things to reflect upon is that out of the many hundreds who will read this post only a dozen at most will comment. So we’re not exactly like the blog communities that many of you are part of. We are something slightly different. The vast majority of people who read us will never comment. Maybe that makes us less of blog and more of a ...?? (Not sure what to call this).
4) So, if we wrote shorter different things, then we would become part of a different community and different kinds of people would read us. That’s a decision which isn’t right or wrong, it just is. It’s an opportunity for us to think about why we’re here and who we’re trying to talk to and what we want to be. Which is great!
Thanks again,
Grimmo.
@Georgina Barratt-See: (Yes, that’s a twitterism, I use it and I don’t use twitter
).
I’m generation-Y, and I’m 26. Just because the tail end of my generation can’t reed, rite or spel doesn’t mean that none of us will comment on things of a ‘deeper’ nature. I don’t think there is an age barrier here, I think the barrier lies more in the presumption of higher education. The posts are almost all very intellectual and considerably denser than your everyday “catblog”. That’s not a bad thing, but it is something to be aware of.
Sorry if I came across too harshly with my “you need to understand” comment.
I think my issues with the SP is that I don’t know where it is supposed to “fit”. Who are you trying to reach?
I agree with Craig’s comment that SP/The Briefing is not connecting with GenY (although ironically, I am GenY). That’s ok, if you’re not intending too….
A couple of people have commented that length is not the problem but that interest is. I agree with these people. A 1000+ word post can be fantastic. They provide room for insightful, thought-provoking and in-depth comments. As a result, they can provoke greater comment and can be of greater use.
However, speaking personally, in order to do that, they must say something that grabs my attention and makes it worthwhile to read on. A number of posts fail to do that.
Peter Bolt’s latest post is an example of a good post. It grabbed my attention, it got to the point quickly and it was thought-provoking. I did not even consider the word count. Other 600 word posts have bored me before the 150 word mark and I leave them alone.
Quality rather than quantity is the key. If they are worth reading, people will not worry about the length - even if they are gen Y.
Yes, I agree @Ian Tyrrell. It’s not a generational thing. It’s more an educational thing.
I didn’t mean to say anything negative about Gen y. I work with Gen Y. I love Gen Y. I was more looking at the names of people I knew and seeing that they weren’t Gen Y.
And I agree with Paul. If it provokes my interest early and well, then I’ll read it. Some don’t.
I think the comments that people have made regarding the quality of the writing on SP have been helpful; it’s something that all writers need to keep striving for—even those who have been at it for years!
However, please bear in mind that there is a significant difference between Sola Panellists and New York Times journalists—namely that Sola Panellists are not journalists and have not trained in writing! Surely we should cut them a little slack?
I do find the SP blog harder to follow because of the long posts. but then…i struggle to really define how much i actually benefit from most of the blogs i “follow”, whereas i know that i have really been blessed by some of the “articles” i’ve taken the time to sit and read on SP.
[i’m 22…what gen does that make me?]
Can I add something else to the mix?
The difference with blogs (as opposed to most opinion pages, journals) etc. is the ability to comment. The longer a blog post is, then (generally) the more ideas that are raised, which makes it hard for readers to comment on the article - there’s just too much to discuss.
A short, punchy post that makes one point clearly, then takes it to the ‘audience’ for comment, is a format that works very effectively in the blogosphere. This is what people have come to expect, because this is a manageable way of engaging with others in this format.
If blogs didn’t allow comments, then the length would be less of an issue. But comments are a great way of challenging and clarifying, and I’ve appreciated and been challenged by the comments of others on this blog.
I’m encouraged that you’ve started this discussion, Paul.
A long discussion about the length of blog posts, oh the irony.
I’m going to be honest here.
I think that SP posts are often too long - and I have occasionally offended in my own posts!
This is not because blogs have to be written in a particular way to follow certain unspoken blogging rules, but because it is so much harder and more tiring to read on line (if you read anything about publishing online, it will make this observation). So comparing the length of SP posts to what you’ll find in a newspaper isn’t really enlightening, because it’s easier to read long and complex articles in print.
Once your longer posts go into The Briefing, I often enjoy the ones I couldn’t get through on line - the SP content is great, but it’s sometimes not well written for this particular medium.
When people read on line, they are in a different mode to when they read on a page - they are in browsing and getting what I need mode, rather than a patient mode which will persist with something longer. If they don’t see something which interests them in the first paragraph, they will move on.
They are also in “scanning” mode. This means they will jump from paragraph to paragraph, noticing the first sentence, then moving on to the next.
If you are going to write long posts, it helps the reader to persist/take in the content if you use headings, dot-points, putting the information in the first line of a paragraph, using shorter paragraphs, etc.
It would be worth having a look at some of those online articles about how to write online to pick up some pointers (e.g. writing exceptional blogs).
I think blog writing does have to be particularly punchy, easy to follow, and interesting to help readers to persist with a difficult medium. You’ll notice this is true of people like Challies - what they write flows well and is easy to read, even if it’s long!
I think the idea of having a “read more” button at the bottom of a section of a long post (doesn’t Karen do this on her blog?) is a brilliant idea! It’s a teaser, invites the reader in, and doesn’t overwhelm them with all the content all at once.
It’s also helpful to split long posts over several days / weeks.
Why don’t you get all us SP folk together at your next conference for writers and do a session on writing for blogs? That would be fun and useful!
As for women and men: it’s a well-known fact to any female blogger that women are often faithful blog readers but don’t come out of the woodwork and comment! Women are often shy of expressing their opinions publically, and don’t like to hurt writers’ feelings by disagreeing. So women will often read and not comment. Also, SP is written in a style which appeals to men more than women - it can be very dense and intellectual. Many women like their theology applied and personal! Which is a massive generalisation, but one which you’ll see clearly if you compare blogs written by women and men.
Hi Paul, I just caught up to your most recent post! I think it’s good to think about using a medium (in this case, blogging) in a different way. Longer, (potentially) deeper articles might work. This different way of using this medium might be effective.
You are right - blogging is very post-modern, and there aren’t any set rules!
There are however, ways of blogging that have proved over time to be most effective, and you can harness this.
I’m glad I read this post and all the comments. But for the fact that there are presently about 41 (and soon to be about 42) comments I don’t think I would have bothered. I agree with those who have said that, for them, the posts on SP are too long and too impersonal.
The reason I’m glad I read this stuff is because Bronwyn Bultmann has given me a blueprint for my own blogging. Blogs need personality and trajectory. And they need to romance their readers. Love it.
BTW Paul, most blogs have many many more readers than they have commenters (sp?). There’s nothing unique about your situation.
As a 23 year old University student, whatever generation that makes me, I think the Sola Panel is great.
It is longer than a lot of other blogs I read, but the quality of material and its presentation is consistently fantastic IMO, and therefore I want to read it and think on it. This means when I have time, I will try and catch up on posts I have missed.
Where as some of the other blogs I read I will skip some posts, or will stop reading them regularly, because I don’t find the content very grabbing. This might be because longer posts are more suited to team blogs, as you get variety etc because of different contributors.
On the other hand, I find the Sola Panel constantly grabbing. It is hard to explain why, but I guess it is in the nature of the posts. I wouldn’t say they were essays, but rather Bible Opinion pieces of substance, interest and wry humour.
Saying that, there are some things that you could improve on.
As mentioned before Sub-headings/pictures/breaking up the posts, showing more thought over the layout would be great. Mark Driscoll’s blog is a good example of this (http://theresurgence.com/md_blog). As a side point I think SP is well designed, clean and easy to read.
More variety in word length. If enough people are bothered about it to comment, it is probably worth introducing some shorter posts. I think you do have some variety in this already, but maybe a bit more would be good.
But after all that, I would just like to thank you all for providing a really great blog with a constant stream of interesting and thought provoking articles.
PS: I would think that if the blogosphere could be characterised by anything, then it would be by choice and variety, and I see SP doing what other blogs aren’t, and doing it well. Surely that is what ‘new-age’ media is about, not all doing the same thing, the same way
Hey Grimmo, good question(s) - thanks for raising them!
A question from me, based on this impression: that your question is about the Sola Panel as a whole. Do you have a way of sharpening up each individual panellist?
I ask because sometimes I’ll see a longer article from one author & think ‘No ... not today’, while another author will not cause this thought.
I reckon these comments are not the place to do the sharpening, BTW!
I don’t know if someone else has mentioned this - I didn’t want to read all 41 previous comments either.
I don’t seek short posts. I just need to know within a few sentences if the post I am viewing is worth my time right now.
A short synopsis paragraph to start the post would be helpful. Yes, these aren’t flashy - but for me they make the difference.
I put your blog in Google Reader because I like the essays (and I can go back and search/review them). But to stop and read and article - out of the 100’s that present themselves daily - I need to know quickly what I’m looking at.
<i>...Sola Panellists are not journalists and have not trained in writing!</i>
All the more reason for them to write within their capabilities, surely.
hey homies.
glad i could help kick off a fruitful discussion!!!
keep trusting and proclaiming Jesus,
dave
Paul,
As others have said you have to decide if you are running a blog here or not.
The blog format will lead you towards shorter posts, more immediate feedback and will also define what sort of things you run.
An alternative worth considering is the Huffington post/Daily beast model.
They are a lot easier to navigate than a traditional blog.
They offer a quick read of each item, tightly written, in a form that allows a reader to quickly choose what they want to delve into. Then you get to read the long version which is often quite long.
The key is to make the quick read version work, so that the reader knows where he or she is being taken.
Moving in this direction will mean that Sola and the Briefing will bump into each other, but you are on that trajectory already.
The copy in Huffpo often takes a form that is easy to read eg numbered pars, punchy writing, journalistic paragraphs.
Clergy tend to be ponderous writers. Do you sub or rewrite contributions? Thats the difference between compiling a website and editing one.
I am another person who finds the separate comments page an annoyance. It’s very hard to comment on both an article and subsequent comments if I can’t, by default, see them both!
Grimmo asks: Why do we have to be like the thing your community has decided is their thing?
Well, my dad wants to know why pop music has those annoying drumbeats. It’s the nature of the medium, and SP isn’t working with the nature of blogdom. Blogs are perceived to allow intimacy, to foster community, to allow for discussion. SP doesn’t really function like a blog (hard to comment, slow to publish comments, not much sense of the people behind the dogma), and that’s why some of us feel you “don’t understand”.
And if you must advertise the Briefing by republishing 10yo articles, there should be some added value with “how my views have changed”, or “what experience has taught me since” or “how this article changed my life”. Otherwise, it’s just advertising the Briefing by republishing 10yo articles.
Grimmo also writes: The vast majority of people who read us will never comment. Maybe that makes us less of blog and more of a ...?? (Not sure what to call this).
More like the sermon of a visiting minister who leaves right after the service? If you aren’t getting comments, why is it so? Is it that they leave and don’t come back? Or are they subscribed but not commenting?
Of course it’s hard to argue with orthodoxy, so the only possible comment to some posts is ‘Amen’. That’s why such posts should not be in the majority, or at least should have an open-ended question included.
Karen writes: Sola Panellists are not journalists and have not trained in writing! Surely we should cut them a little slack?
No. The reality is that if this blog doesn’t meet expectations, people will stop reading it. More cutting adrift than cutting some slack!
I expect to be edified when I am reading SP. But I don’t want to read a sermon, a theological book or an ad. Make SP a bit more bloggy and I’ll be content!
A few comments about blogging conventions and formats:
Firstly, Steve Kryger said,
This isn’t true. There are a lot of blogs out there that do not have comments—e.g. First Things, Neil Gaiman. I’m not sure why First Things doesn’t, but Gaiman decided not to have them on his blog as he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the volume of correspondence (mind you, get he thousands and thousands of readers every day).
Comments do not make a blog; it’s the regular updating of entries. This makes the line between things like online newspapers, Facebook and Twitter and what most of you would call ‘traditional’ blogs somewhat blurry. (Chris Braga made the same mistake in his article about blogs.)
Well it appears, after 55 comments, that we’re out of touch and no-one is interested in reading us?! (Sorry, couldn’t resist that - I am inveterately cheeky).
Here’s my challenge. We will certainly make some site tweaks in terms of usability and stuff in light of some very helpful comments. And we will keep working at better writing and “engaging” stuff.
But assuming that we keep producing the kinds of stuff we are producing, what would you call us? (and I mean a genre description rather than rude epithets people
)
BTW - I agree with Ellen. If we’re boring and unreadable, people shouldn’t read us.
Secondly, the blogging community has given rise to certain blogging ‘standards’ (for want of a better word)—perhaps due to their hive mind-ishness. What I find interesting about that is that the rules are quite arbitrary. The same thing is happening with Twitter at the moment. I suspect the same thing happens when you get any group of people congregating online around a common thing: a certain etiquette about what to do and what not to do arises.
Etiquette is good for some things. It helps you to relate well to other people in the community. It gives you guidelines for what is acceptable behaviour and what is considered rude (e.g. politeness = good; trolling = bad).
However, what we’re talking about here when it comes to formats is more personal preference. Some will argue it’s all about the audience and finding ways to increase people’s attention spans (i.e. be relevant or die). That argument, I think, can only go so far; after that, I think, it’s just pandering to the masses.
Sola Panel is not unreadable (*she says a tad defensively because she edits every post—and most of them before they go live! ;P*). I agree the writing could be better. Headings are a good way to go. And a writing workshop for all the Panellists is a really nice idea Jean (though perhaps a little too hard to execute for everyone, given the number of our panellists, the constraints on their time and their placement geographically speaking).
But my point is, whatever the length of the posts, whatever the tone and whatever the subject matter, The Sola Panel is carving out its own niche in the blogosphere. It doesn’t have to be like other blogs for the sake of following convention. The rules are arbitrary, and the ones that SP has supposedly ‘broken’ are not relational or moral rules; they’re just matters of taste.
Karen,
all power to your editing arm. Please feel free to prune. You will be doing a favour. (Of course you might be slashing furiously already!)
So, 1. be short; 2. be punchy; 3. ask about Y?
Sounds like Joe Frazier. (Who? now the old age thing kicks in)
Hi Karen - sorry if I was unclear, I wasn’t suggesting that every blog must have comments, or that it’s not a blog if it doesn’t have comments. But, as a general rule throughout the blogosphere, the ability to comment is by far the norm.
And that’s what the team behind SP has decided to do here. Ask most people what SP is (at least in its current format), and they’ll look at the posts and the comments and say “it’s a blog”.
I think it’s cool if you want to do something different - turn off comments, or write longer posts. However, I do think it will be harder for readers to have meaningful, focused reflection via comments, if the posts are longer.
<i>The Sola Panel is carving out its own niche in the blogosphere. It doesn’t have to be like other blogs for the sake of following convention.</i>
I agree. But Paul invited feedback, and people gave it. I think tighter writing would make SP a better read, but if you guys are convinced you are going the right direction, keep going.
But since we are offering up suggestions, please turn off that wretched comment moderation, and please get a few more GenY writers (I say this as a crusty old GenX).
“Read more” is a good idea - I notice that the SMH splits it’s longer online articles up into 3 pages.
Is this a blog? Yes, but it’s a blog that is rebelling a bit against bloginess. If you want to move away from blogdom, your main option is to turn it into a proper online journal. As JS pointed out, you are then very much treading on the toes of The Briefing. But that collision is inevitable anyway.
Hi All,
I am getting the end of discussion vibe so just wanted to say thanks heaps to everyone who chipped in and commented. You have given us some great things to think about and you will hopefully see some changes coming here soon.
Grimmo
Please leave a blank line between paragraphs to make your comment easier to read.
It would be good if the above quote was to be obeyed in the printed articles and in the blog. It makes the articles easier to read.
Jean Williams makes a lot of good points. I agree with all of them.
As a Gen Y writer and minister-in-training, I’ve found SP to be both:
(a) Wildly attractive and brimming with possibilities. I know of no other Australian Christian groups talking things through in such a visible, systematic way.
(b) Dull/monochrome. Despite the no-party-line line, SP writers appear to come from the same (Briefing, Moore, SydAng) stock and seem to engage almost invariably with that stock.
I reckon SP actually has the potential to be a trailblazer in shaping Australian Christianity, leading the way in winsomely thrashing out the big issues of our day, drawing people to Christ in the church at large. What if SP was the online hub where all kinds of Australian Christians came to envision the future of Jesus in our nation?
I’d like to see SP writers keenly engaging with divergent views in Australian Christianity and society—and not just ‘critiquing’ them but actually conversing with them. I mean that in the most intentional sense—conducting blog dialogues with ‘outsiders’, bringing on guest bloggers and so on…
People are a bit carried away with this topic. You really just write as much as you need to and then you stop.
What gets up my nose is people who write elegant poop but have nothing to say. I could name names but I choose not to. The great thing about the Sola Panel is that it’s about 90% worthwhile, OK 83%, and the rest you can ignore.
I have just returned from holidays and was pleased to read this debate. I have been thinking about “the long and the short” after reading this article.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
The article is ironically long and is a thought provoking read about how our capacity to concentrate on longer chunks of text is deteriorating with our increased use of computers. Just thought I might throw that into the mix.
Media already exist for longer articles. They’re called magazines. If you want to write something longer than that, it’s called a book. Go figure.
Sarcasm aside, I agree with the spirit of your post (I like the first bulleted quote). But when I want to read something long, I don’t read blogs, and I don’t think anyone else does either.
How long are comments supposed to be?
949 words to make your point?
Obviously my original comment was tongue-in-cheek. Length can be a difficult thing to sort out.
I suspect SP is still finding its feet - and should continue working hard at not only exegeting their audience and medium, but also what they’re trying to achieve.
It’s not as simple as just making things shorter.
I suspect the “right” length depends largely on the content of the article and the skill of the author. A 1500 word well written, interesting, indepth look at some important content is worth it. A 1500 word rant that is badly written and badly thought out is a waste of time. But if it was 300 words, it is much easier to digest.
I feel that too often SP articles are too long for what they are offering. Sometimes they are badly written, badly expressed, badly edited, or just unclear. Some come across more as venting then well written opinion pieces.
Of course - I don’t think that’s the majority of articles.
Editing needs to be tighter. Articles need a little more thinking. Rants should be limited to 500 words. But don’t get rid of the rants - they’re great!
After all - it’s easy to forgive a bad 20 minute sermon than a bad 40 minute one!
Mike
I came to this late.
Yes, of course most SP is too long - but I don’t resent that. Just means I usually don’t read the whole post (and in this case the comments).
To paraphrase George Burns - the secret is a good beginning, a good ending, and having them as close together as possible.
I often don’t read Solar Panel amongst other blogs because of its length. However when I do take the time to read it, I find it helpful. Especially when the girls have a turn.
You made me think of this Blog by John Piper’s son Abraham, over in the states for his thoughts on limiting your blog length and other things:
http://twentytwowords.com/why-22-1/
http://twentytwowords.com/2008/10/29/22-very-simple-ways-for-a-new-blogger-to-improve/
I see you are trying the “read more” link on the front page of the site - that’s cool, but can you please keep the RSS feed as full text?
Thanks.
I’m joining in the discussion late, I know. I want to echo Alex Freeman above as I agree with what he said (no surprises there, he was the one who introduced me to this blog!)
I for one am confused about all this talk about the blogging medium being all about short entries - I’m a Gen Y blogger, writing since 2003, and two recent entries of mine come in at 1500 and 2000 words. They’re pretty long and should have been shorter (though I did paginate the latter), but that doesn’t mean my site isn’t a blog! (They even got comments.) They should have been shorter, not because of the medium, but because they were too verbose in general.
I like the option of giving a summary feed, though I will continue to subscribe to the full articles. From reading all the comments above, I’d say the general consensus is to do what I also need to do on my blog: prune, edit, clarify and write more concisely, but not at the expense of saying what needs to be said. Does that sound fair?
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