Blogs...I don't look at them.

[Clive Mortimore]

Hi All

 

I seem to spend (waste, according to Mrs M) too much time on RMweb, but never look at blogs. I don't know why?

 

I will admit I find them harder to follow than threads.

Am I missing a lot of stuff I might be interested in?

 

Do other members not view areas of RMweb excluding threads that do not interest you?

[DenysW]

I've not tried the RMWeb blogs. But that's because all the ones I have tried in other fields have had too poor a signal/noise ratio. Yes there are some rambling, irrelevant, and repetitive posts on the threads (mine included?), but generally in the minority.

 

 

[Izzy]

I hardly ever look at blogs, and on the odd occasion I have found them to have lots of worthwhile content, but hard to follow, too many individual bits. So I know I’m probably missing some good stuff but just can’t be bothered. 
 

Bob

[Oldddudders]

No doubt blogs - and vlogs - contain some gems, but they lack the ebb and flow of a thread in most cases, I think. 

[CWJ]

I'm another one. There's some really interesting content in the blogs, but I prefer the forum topics because they're organised into categories.  

 

I also find it a lot easier to scroll sequentially through a topic/thread than to open and close a series of blog entries, each of which might be quite short.

 

Just my personal opinion.  Blogs have their benefits, e.g. it's not possible for contributors to go off on a tangent for three full pages before getting back on topic!

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Barclay]

Nope - never look at the blogs, I have trouble navigating through them, so simply don't bother. The structure of the main forum is just so much easier to work with.

[JDW]

I look occasionally, and whilst I can see the appeal, as others have said they lack the kind of structure which I find makes them readable. Unless you've read or followed previous entries, they seem disjointed and lack context in many cases. I've noticed quite a few recently especially where a general thread would have been of more interest, more readable, and probably had more views. OK, it's not difficult per se to scroll back through blog entries, and I get the argument that they keep all comments on that entry together rather than spread through a thread, but it feels to me like a thread is more of a conversation, whereas a blog is just "here, look" and then done. There are some very interesting ones, and some very good work and ideas to be found there, some recent ones I've enjoyed include the 3d-printed Network Rail stock by @LMSfan72 , whilst @Ruston's run-down of the excellently modelled 'Charlie Strong' loco fleet makes an inventive and interesting way of showing off each item of stock, almost like a 'collectors card' for each one.  

[Mallard60022]

Anything named after a bloke known for their name not being remembered, is not something I bother with Clive.

J. Bloggs

[Nearholmer]

There is something odd about the way RMWeb handles things if you comment on a blog too ….. I did on one, and seemed then to get “stuck” to it.

 

They do contain good stuff b some cases, but as others have said it tends to be inaccessible (depends on the discipline and ‘reader focus’ f the author, I think), so I now don’t look.

 

Threads seem to settle down into a nice sociable “chat in the pub/cafe” once a group of participants who are genuinely interested in the topic becomes stablished.

[unravelled]

I'll occasionally unintentionally  click on a blog with an interesting title from VNC, but usually back out again. I find them too much effort to work through further. I think they are a bit better than some of the earlier iterations, but they still don't suit me.

 

Dave

[PeterStiles]

I find it difficult to write and manage a blog. I've tried a couple.

(a) I'm surprised I don't automatically get notified that someone has commented on one

(b) I had trouble with the UI and making the blog content seem coherent

[LMSfan72]

Interesting. I only created a blog because I thought it’s where it fitted under the rules! There is definitely a lot of content that gets missed because of the way the forum works I think - might just be my user issues though!

Edited February 17, 2023 by LMSfan72

[Nearholmer]

I tried running a thread like a blog a couple of years back, attempting to use it n a structured way to step through a series of things, and that didn’t work either, because the inevitable (interesting) discussion provoked by the initial few postings knocked the whole thing off at an angle, and then down a long weed-grown siding to the buffers.

 

So, there is a place for blogs, I’m just not at all sure the way this message board system handles them is very helpful.

[DLT]

I rarely look at ANY Blogs (not just here) as I agree that they are very difficult to follow, let alone find something that you previously saw.

Fine if all you want to do is see the latest addition, but awkward, time-consuming and frustration to look back.

Great for a "News" type site, but not so good for a modelling forum like this.

 

[C126]

I am sorry to read the RMWeb blogs are found relatively 'inaccessable', for want of a better word.  As one in thrall to @Mikkel 's periodic offerings, for example, I rather like them.  I started one myself to keep my interested relatives, friends, and colleagues informed of my layout's progress with a simple address-link.  There are links below each posting to the next/previous post where applicable.  I find them a good place to ramble on, for a better phrase, about a specific subject bothering me, and welcome the input from other contributors that has had a positive influence on my modelling and the theories behind it.

 

Err... not sure what else to say, apart from 'How can we make them more obvious?'  Do they not come up in key-word searches?  As an aside, I think the 'Galleries' are neglected as well.

[AY Mod]

1 minute ago, C126 said:

As one in thrall to @Mikkel 's periodic offerings, for example, I rather like them.

 

Agreed; there's no better example of a carefully curated and presented environment.

 

2 minutes ago, C126 said:

Do they not come up in key-word searches?  As an aside, I think the 'Galleries' are neglected as well.

 

Both come up in searches by default; unless the user has deselected them from appearing in their Activity Streams.

 

Horses and water.

[C126]

Would it be better to have them segregated into subject areas/headings?  The simple 'date order of creation' can be a hindrance, but this could be kept as a viewing option, perhaps.  Not that I am suggesting @AY Mod has nothing better to do than re-code a whole part of RMWeb! 🙂

[JDW]

I think it works well sometimes, where each blog is a focused 'article' in itself, such as the ones mentioned in my post above, whereas some people tend to use a new blog entry for every new development, which just (as a reader) leaves a disjointed trail of clicking between each bit, scrolling to see if there are any comments, clicking to next entry, and so on. It doesn't make them easy to read or follow, whereas a thread would often work better in that 'stream of consciousness' conversation. Using the 'Charlie Strong' fleet as an example again, they seem to work well as each is a short, self-contained article/'log', readable in isolation.

Even some which are part of an ongoing theme (I forget the poster, but the current 356 days of modelling one would be a good example, and one which I've enjoyed) can work well where each post has sufficient interest (images and depth of content) to maintain the reader's attention over each 'episode', but to borrow from the post made by Andy while I was typing this, I think blogs do need that "carefully curated environment" to be a success. The 'stream of consciousness'/conversational approach that works in threads, where a short comment by the original poster or someone else can be enough to keep things moving along, doesn't seem to hold up for blogs.

[Barclay]

1 minute ago, C126 said:

Would it be better to have them segregated into subject areas/headings?  The simple 'date order of creation' can be a hindrance, but this could be kept as a viewing option, perhaps.  Not that I am suggesting @AY Mod has nothing better to do than re-code a whole part of RMWeb! 🙂

I think that's the crux of my confusion - the date order thing means there's no real way of knowing what's there. Having now had a brief look there's obviously good stuff I'm missing but much of it looks very much like it would be just as suitable for a thread, which would surely be easier for people to follow? No hard and fast rule I suppose, just whatever works for the individual.

[Michael Hodgson]

The concensus seems to be blog off.

[AY Mod]

Just now, Michael Hodgson said:

The concensus seems to be blog off.

 

A really useful contribution to the discussion. 

[jjb1970]

There is so much content on RMWeb that even if people were here 24/7 they couldn't read everything. So people (quite sensibly) gravitate towards content which they are particularly interested in, which means that for most a lot of content (probably most content) slips by unnoticed. Which is sad in a way but we just can't read everything and although I am interested in almost anything rail related I find some things much more interesting than others. I don't tend to follow the blogs, it's not a reflection on the blogs, just that there are other parts of RMWeb (such as the overseas section) I like to follow.

[Phil Parker]

6 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

There is so much content on RMWeb that even if people were here 24/7 they couldn't read everything.

 

@AY Mod is. And does.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Me neither. When I come on here I invariably just go to the "activity" tab.

 

I do try to avoid anything that mentions Sheffield and Exchange in the same sentence though...🥴

[Wheatley]

If something interesting pops up in 'unread content' I'll read it, and I might even wander around some of the other posts in it. But life is too short to start trying to work out where blogs start and seeing if there's anything interesting in them. It's not just RMweb, I find blogs generally something of a pain including my own. 

 

Mikkel's is an exception, it's as beautifully done as the layout. Most aren't.