Comments on: Of chaos and stability: Two minor mini-posts

By: stevenb

stevenb — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:26:41 +0000

Thanks Steve for your clarification and perspective on the difference between the two. It seems like a fine line. I get your point that the semi-stability of the identity of the blogger is the quality that points to a pseudonymous entity rather than an anonymous one. I’ll keep this in mind as I make my way through the liblogosphere.

By: walt

walt — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:43:34 +0000

Stevenb: Steve said it pretty well. The Annoyed Librarian blog is written by a clearly identified pseudonymous entity–The Annoyed Librarian. “She” has a persona.

Quite a few liblogs are pseudonymous–by my standards, 55 of those in The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: DrWeb, the.effing.librarian, Feel-Good Librarian, The Hot Librarian, etc. Only a handful are fully anonymous.

The writing style in AL is reasonably consistent. The persona is extremely consistent, almost to the point of self-parody. I think that’s different than anonymous writing–which, as Steve L. notes, has no stable identity. (A similar situation plays out in LISNews, particularly in comments, where there are a fair number of pseudonyms and a fair number of anonymous comments.)

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:28:54 +0000

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:27:56 +0000

I assume the important distinction between anonymous and pseudonymous is that the pseudonym “Annoyed Librarian” refers to the works published under that name. Might be one person, might be several, but it forms the work of “The Annoyed Librarian,” and it makes sense to talk about it that way. That’s not to say that people can’t spoof the AL in various fora, and that spoofing of identities is at the root of some of the latest nonsense in the AL comments.

“Anonymous” has no such semi-stable identity. Any given AL post usually has many anonymous comments. They might all be by different people or there may be repeat commenters as “anonymous,” but in any case it would be nonsensical to say “have you read the works of anonymous?”

By: stevenb

stevenb — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:39:00 +0000

I don’t really follow annoyed librarian but I’m just interested in what you had to say about not knowing the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. I’m not sure I’m getting your point. Wouldn’t it only be pseudonymous if the blog was written under a false name. As far as I know there is no name associated with it. Therefore wouldn’t the quality of an unknown name make it anonymous. For example, I find an article in PC Magazine and it’s not attributed to anyone. Are you suggesting it’s pseudononymous because I know the title of the publication is PC Magazine – and I know there is a person (or people) behind it? I think it is actually anonymous because I don’t know who wrote it. The author is unknown. Are the individual posts there attributed to any name – even a false one? To me it’s the latter that would make is pseudonymous. I read a number of faculty blogs that have a title but you don’t know who the author of the blog is – most sources typically refer to them as anonymous blogs.

Unless what you are saying is that everyone knows who it is and therefore we know it’s a pseudonym for that person – sort of like we know Richard Bachman is a pseudonym for Stephen King. Is this blogger’s identity a widely known fact?

Maybe I’m not getting it – and I guess I’m one of those supposedly well educated librarians. But I’m ok with admitting I don’t understand the difference if I’m not getting it. Please enlighten me.

By: walt

walt — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:45:55 +0000

Daniel: I’m not aware of any WordPress limit–I was just noting that there’s no real penalty for having thousands of posts. (I’d be very surprised if there is a WordPress limit on number of posts. Given that it’s been used as an OPAC, with one page per book, it seems unlikely.)

GeekChic: So do I–although I’ll give up after three or four months in some cases. And I’m frustrated by those blogs that really don’t encourage such reading, either by not having chronological archives or by requiring lots of clicking to actually read each post. I would assume that the bloggers really don’t want people to read older posts–but I suspect it’s more likely that this behavior came along with a template chosen for other reasons.

By: GeekChic

GeekChic — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 01:47:24 +0000

Regarding deleting blog posts: I don’t blog myself – but I would like to note that I do try to read the complete archives of a blogger that I like. It gives me a good feel for the “blogging personality”. With some bloggers this can take a while!

As for AL: I too remain surprised by the willful ignorance of some – and their pomposity.

By: Peter Murray

Peter Murray — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 01:25:27 +0000

I, too, treat my blog posts as permanent-with-addenda (strikeout and addition markup). For me, it is a matter of building confidence in my audience. I would like them to know that I will stand by my words, as if they were published in the New York Times -- once they are out there, they are there. (You know that saying about never putting anything in e-mail that you wouldn't want published on the front page of the New York Times?) Corrections and additions should be noted as such. For instance, I theorized that the OCLC policy update was due in part to Google using OCLC records for the Google Book Search settlement. It wasn't, and Roy Tennant said as much on the Code4Lib IRC channel minutes after the post hit the wires. Rather than removing the post, I let the original text stand and added an update to the top of the post.

By: Daniel Cornwall

Daniel Cornwall — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:37:52 +0000

I pretty much treat my blog as permanent. I figure everything is being cached somewhere anyway. I don’t know what I’d do if I got to the end of WordPress’ storage. Probably either start a new blog or stop blogging.

Not that I think my words deserve immortality. They likely won’t have any if they stay digital, I just think people have the right to go back and see what I’ve said before and challenge me when I contradict myself.