}

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Meta madness

Bloggers do some things that annoy me—and no, I’m not talking about their content. It’s not even about layout or styling (though I’m not keen on a whole lot of Flash animations). Instead, I’m talking about things they use regularly or add to posts. Here are three:

US-only video sites

I know that very often a blogger in the US won’t know that a given video site is only accessible inside the US, but once they become aware of it, I really wish they wouldn’t continue to post those video players. No one likes a tease, but in this case it’s frustrating not knowing what the blogger or commentors are talking about. If it were me, I’d ask myself if the video was really that important.

However, the growing trend toward video being corralled into US-only sites controlled by American media conglomerates is more than annoying—it’s potentially stifling of discussion and free thought. Many old media companies are vigorously enforcing their “copyright” and ordering sites like YouTube to remove their content—even if it’s not actually theirs (like when HBO began forcing YouTube to remove all privately-shot video of the pre-inauguration concert because they had “exclusive rights” to the public event).

Sometimes old media companies provide their own video players, and sometimes they even work outside the US, but it seems to me they’re shooting themselves in the foot by preventing wider non-commercial exposure to their content. In any case, I wish other bloggers would avoid this US-only video prison.

HaloScan sans halo

Considering how buggy and failure-prone HaloScan is, I can’t understand why any blogger uses it. A prime example: The HaloScan comments over at popular blog (and daily read for me) Joe.My.God, whose comments are sometimes screwed-up several times over a week (like it was much of today). High-traffic blogs like his are interesting in part because of the comments—if they’re totally screwed up or missing, then half the fun and a large part of the interest are missing, too.

Obviously it wouldn’t matter so much for low-traffic sites like this one (I just use Blogger’s in-built comment system), but I still have to wonder: How many chances to fail does something get before you get rid of it?

Don’t Feedjit

Okay, this one is just a personal dislike: I can’t stand Feedjit, a “Live Traffic Feed” monitor that all the kids are playing with these days. I admit it’s kind of interesting for a few minutes watching “in Real-Time” (um, more or less…) as people arrive on a popular blog, but I don’t like other people seeing when I arrive and where I came from.

I know that Feedjit gets my point of origin wrong (it measures where your ISP is directing you from, not where you actually are), and I also know that most blogs have some sort of site monitor that tells the owner where readers are coming from, how long they stay, etc. (and those monitors seem to be more accurate than Feedjit). Having the blog owner know I was there is one thing, having all other readers know is a bit different.

And in case you’re wondering why I provide links to the blogging tools I don’t like, it’s because I believe people should be free to make up their own minds about things. Which is why of these three, the one that annoys me the most is US-only video sites. Information was born free, but increasingly it’s living in chains of gold, to mix up metaphors.

6 comments:

epilonious said...

Well, as someone who runs an out-of-the-box open source website tech (two if you count my nary-viewed phpBB3 forum stuff) I can see the appeal of HaloScan: spammers are annoying, so anyone working real hard to automatically prevent them is always going to be easier and get lots of chances to fail.

The only other options are to force people to register (which means a lot less comments and broken registering/tracking systems) or to plug-n-pray some sort of captcha system and maintain constant vigilance in the spams that inevitably slip through which is an order of magnitude more difficult in some of the more popular sites.

I agree with feedjit, but mainly because I would sadden myself immensely each time I went to my blog and saw that I was the only one who had checked it over the last month.

As for YouTube and Hulu, I never really knew that some content wasn't making it to NZ. What would you suggest US bloggers use instead... because otherwise it sounds sort of like a "Well if I can't see it than NO-ONE should be able to *stamp feet*". I'm afraid you get my pat-onna-head for that one ;) .

Arthur Schenck said...

I can absolutely see why a high-traffic site would want a system like HaloScan to deal with comment spam. My sites, being low-traffic, don't have the same issues and ordinary commenting systems handle it well (so far…). I just get annoyed that HalsoScan seems to break down so often.

The new HaloScan will supposedly fix these stability issues, but they're also promising new features, like being able to vote a comment up or down (like on YouTube, I guess). I'm a bit dubious about that: Sometimes pack mentalities can set in and an "unpopular" commentor can be "voted down" regardless of what they say. Sounds like on some sites it could reduce debate to mere popularity contests.

I had the same thought about Feedjit, and that's the same reason why when I installed StatCounter on my blog I disabled the display of the number of visitors. After more than two years I may rethink that, since my visitor numbers are now well into the high two figures (yes, I'm joking; they're actually in the low three figures by now…).

Actually, Feejit has a feature that not all blog owners use that I like even less than it announcing my arrival: A display of how I left the site (my path). That's nobody's damn business (except the site owner, of course). I get around that by just closing the tab.

I don't have a solution to the video thing, especially because it will only get worse from here on out. I guess I'd just like a little awareness because I know many times videos are posted that aren't really necessary and maybe sometimes they could be left off the site. There are larger issues here of content being restricted to the US only, and how that's a really bad idea for a lot of reasons, but bloggers are unlikely to influence that except, maybe, by avoiding, to the extent possible, using video that's viewable only in the US.

But I recognise that bloggers will post what they post, and most have little or no awareness that a growing amount of video content is restricted to the US (there's a topic in that alone, actually). I also know that I'll just have to get used to not clicking on video players and skip over the posts that contain them when I visit US-based blogs. It's becoming the way things are. But I certainly would never suggest a blogger NOT post a video just because people outside the US can't see it.

Anonymous said...

I was completely unaware that there were US only videos, well no, I take that back, I do remember there being a preview of an HBO show that they mentioned was US access only. I have found that 90%+ of the content on TVNZ is New Zealand access only. I can only imagine that it is becoming that way worldwide now. It's really rather sad that they feel the need to restrict access like that, if it is free content, why not make it free to everyone, or at least available to everyone. I think I'd be willing to pay a (small) yearly fee to be able to watch video from other countries.

Not much to add about the other pet peeves as I only comment rarely on a blog and only keep up with a scant few blogs as well.

Anonymous said...

Could I add Snap to the list?

It's that ridiculous service that pops up a huge "bubble" over every link that you happen to move your mouse over while looking to click on something else. And all that annoyance just to see an unrecognizably tiny thumbnail of the website before you actually click on it. (With some ads sprinkled in for good measure, of course.)

Arthur Schenck said...

trillian25: Actually, I thought about mentioning the problem with TVNZ video, but the post was too long. You may have noticed that I don't generally link to TVNZ video or mention it in the podcast because of exactly what you said. Someone—may have even been you, the CRS is kicking in and I can't remember for sure—told me that TVNZ videos were restricted and I've avoided them ever since, except when there's no alternative.

I think there's a larger issue here with access to content, and I'm sure I'll eventually do a post about that.

As for blogs, well, you visit this one, so that's what counts, right? ;-)

Mark: ZOMG! I hate Snap, too! (Note to readers: I said "Snap", NOT Slap which, as we all ought to know by now, is something I love…). What annoys me so much about it is that it interferes with links that I really want to click on, so sometimes I just give up. And anyway, WHY?!

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