Most blogs consist of one person commenting on the world, and a whole bunch of people passing by, spending five minutes to skim several posts, and perhaps making a comment or two. These people move on to never return, and they are replaced by more people who in turn do the same.

While blogs are typically considered more communal than typical websites, they may in fact be less so. Other websites have forums which receive hundreds of posts per day from established and respected members. That is a community. Blogs have comments. If you’re lucky (like with this blog), they are threaded with email notifications. This has the potential for community building, as people may make comments, reply to other comments, and return to reply again. However, it generally does not create community. Most people still visit once and only once.

Some bloggers try adding a forum. I did this, and the sad reality is that you will get no participation. For every 100 people that visit your website, one person will make a comment. And for every 100 people who comment on your blog, one person will sign up and post on your forum. Even if you put a widget …

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2008-07-20 Update: They upgraded the site and broke the old URLs! Here’s my new Gawker Artists page.

I have a page on Gawker Artists now. The photo that got me in is The Rebel, one of my favorite portraits, taken for my now-concluded black and white film class. This means the image will appear occasionally on Lifehacker and other exhibitors. Quite cool. Sarah will be proud, if she checks here. She’s representing an entire movement of non-conformity.

I came up with a great summary of my photographic mission for the page:

I’m an experimental photographer who’s been working in the digital medium for four years. I strive to capture nature in inspiring and unusual ways; while I take pretty pictures, they should always make you think. The same effort goes into my portraits and still life; I photograph whatever I like, and am known for forcing people to pose in crazy ways, or for spending hours setting up arrangements of marbles or ketchup bottles. I’m a believer in contributing to …

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I added comment threading, similar to deviantART. deviantART lets comments nest infinitely and after each ten levels, you must click a link to view the deeper levels. Mine stops at four levels though, so the page indent doesn’t become too great. But at the fourth level, you can continue posting replies like normal (they’ll just stay on the same level), and it will still be easy to keep track of the conversation, as other commenters will be on different threads. Try it out on this entry. Click “Comments” in the bottom-right, and then on my comment, click *REPLY TO THIS*.

I don’t know how to get comment previewing to work with the plugin, so it’s gone for now. 2008-01-10 Update: It’s back!

Also, each entry has a printable version, which you can view by clicking “Printable Version” at the bottom. Above this, there is a ShareThis button, so you can share my articles with friends and strangers alike, by email or through Facebook, digg, del.icio.us, et cetera. Finally, there is a dynamically generated list of three similar entries at the end of each entry, and a “random page” link in the sidebar. Both of these features will become useful …

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