Just got my email invite to take advantage of the blog service offered to subscribers and made an entry, then took some time browsing the blogs. It appears many folks are using their blog to post issues/questions that would do better, and make more sense in a forum. Also, it doesn't appear there is any way to comment on a blog entry. So getting a response to anything won't happen. Discouraging to folks looking for help. The blog space just comes across as a random, and useless mess. Maybe the blog service should not be available to all subscribers by default. A subscriber should need to register separately to activate their blog.
I hope the new version of the blog service addresses some of these issues. As of now it seems the blog service is kind of a useless exercise. Don't get me wrong LQ is GREAT and I'm sure will only get better!

Jeremy is planning an overhaul of the blog system in the near-ish future. I agree that, as it stands, the LQ blogs could do with some improvement. As to the commenting, in the rush to post, the writers of those blogs have left commenting disabled! I wonder if they all sit there wondering why no one has commented?

Never could understand the need for blogs.
Guess that will get me painted as a modern day luddite ...

The main reason I see for a blog is a good therapy for frustration or success tutorial. I almost used mine to vent my frustration in the midst of trying to get my hp printer working. After thinking about it for a minute I decided to start a thread with my problem. You are right, LQ is a great site but is it ready for a blog or is the blog going to steal posts from the threads which might happen if they have consent to reply to blogs. Blogs might be easier to use, there are fewer rules to follow.

The idea behind a blog is really just a place for people to write stuff. You can use it to tell us the minutiae of your day, to debate philosophy or to make notes on great fixes you've done that you want to hang onto. It's purely a value add - it shouldn't detract from the main part of the site.

As the blogging system stands, it's unmoderated and is prone to abuse. Jeremy plans to address this in later updates, possibly utilising a report button or somesuch. My view is that if someone posts a question in a pretty hard to find place and doesn't spend the extra few seconds to allow commenting, then that is their own fault.

It has been noted in the past that spammers use them for advertising. And, although these blogs are members' personal blogs on the site, the LQ rules still apply - if you see a blog that is in violation of the rules PM or email any mod or Jeremy and we'll deal with it.

So, really, the blog is a present to everyone from Jeremy - use it or don't use it, it's entirely your choice.

Sorry - my comment was general, not LQ-specific.
Like I said, a bloody luddite - I also don't have any (ripped) mp3's ... (see another current thread).

The Blog should keep a lot of posts out of the 'General' forum.

Mine too It doesn't hurt the forums if they don't get used, they are a value add and useful if one wished to start a blog and didn't want to sign up to one of the free ones or to go the self-hosted route.

I think Jeremy noticed the functionality was there and thought it a nice thing to do for the members, many of whom have been around for quite a while.

As one of those who rushed to the chance of blogging: where would I have been able to do that? The blog settings are about 'change e-mail and password' only and the time zone, and when I click on 'New Blog Entry' I get input format options, but nothing else. I can't find any way to enable comments (which I would have done of course).

Furthermore, I find it strange that the My LQ -> My Blog link does the same thing as the LQ Blogs link, namely give me a list of all the recent blog entries by everyone. It does show the URL as http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/blog/bitpicker but doesn't show just my (up to now only) message. I can navigate to that message using Blog Settings -> View -> View recent blog entries but that's not exactly intuitive.

I do see it as a chance to vent, which was the first thing I did - I agree that it's not the place to ask questions, but it might turn out to be a nice option to voice opinions. This is actually something I generally miss in Linux forums: they are about getting help mostly, and only rarely just discuss things like new developments etc.

Robin

Thanks for the feedback. As Ray mentioned, you can expect a complete overhaul of the blogs in the very near future. Please use this thread for any feature requests. The new blogs will be integrated into the boards in a much better fashion, will have full comments and a variety of other features. The "My Blog" link only contains a list of blogs if you don't have any entries in your blog. This will not be the case in the new system, FWIW.

--jeremy

I do have one entry, but it still gives me a complete list of all blogs, not just my single entry. And I don't see where I could enable comments (if I could at all).

Robin

You're absolutely free to start up such discussions, I do hope to see some good ones.

Just as a quick note, I have added a second entry and 'My Blog' still links to a list of all recent entries to blogs as opposed to my blog. But I can definitely wait for the overhaul...

Robin

Just posted my first entry, if anyone's interested. It's a literary masterpiece.

I think the solution to the My Blog problem is really quite simple: the My Blog link points to [...]/bitpicker, whereas the 'bitpicker's blog' link points to [...]/41567.

Robin