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.