How to evaluate a blog?

As there are such a variety of blogs out there, a single yardstick may not work. We might first have to divide blogs into different categories and have different yardsticks for each category.

Some of the categories that come to mind are:

- personal blogs

- commercial blogs

- consultancy type of blogs

- group blogs

- mission-oriented blogs

- more...

This is a very interesting debate that you've started.

Can you tell me why exactly are you trying to come up with a system to evaluate blogs? Is it because of IB's blog of the day? Who are these rules supposed to apply to?

cheers!

Prashant.

second you one this one

I think before you putting up this, you should have written why you propose this.

There is a definitive logic about how things work. 

ThanksHemal

No, the relevance to IndiBlogger's blog of day is only tangential. My interest in starting this discussion was how can we tell a good blog when we see it?

At present everything is very subjective, like the five blind men trying to describe how an elephant looks.

In contrast, there are very clear cut methods for telling, for example, what good poetry is, or what a good novel is, or what a good painting is, or what a good building is, etc.

Blogging is also a creative endeavour like literature, painting, architecture, etc. So I thought it will be good if we could debate a bit on the contours of a good blog.

This topic is actually a spin off from another thread that I had started (Is blogging a waste of time?). It was suggested there that it would be a better idea to start a new thread for this topic to keep the discussion focussed.

Think about these to get a picture of what I am trying to say:

- you have a blog that is a delight to see. It has the right colours, eye-catching visuals, the right font-size, the right widgets, and is easy to navigate. But has ****ty content.

- you now have a blog that is hopelessly wrong in its design. It is a pain to move from one post to the other, has practically no widgets. Yet it has breath-taking content, has at least 50 comments, all thought-provoking, on each post.

- you now have a third blog that has all the features of the first, but is a purely commercial blog aiming to maximise earnings. It has content written cleverly from the point of view of fooling Google into posting maximum ads, and has pictures of semi-clad Bollywood actresses on every post to coax viewers back again and again. It drops words like Shahrukh Khan, Bollywood and such words in every sentence so that search engines pick up the posts regularly. The content, however, has no relevance except to Google and other search engines.

We could give more examples on such lines.

Which of these would you rate as the best blog?

I think your discussion has a fundamental flaw when you say "there are very clear cut methods for... what is good poetry, novel...etc" in that no, there is absolutely no clear cut method at all.

I'm an Eng Lit student and let me assure you that for five years, all we studied is the different ways to critique literature.There is absolutely no concrete way to measure a good novel or a good poem.

Do not confuse popularity with "being good." If a novel sells well, it doesn't mean it's good. If a movie is popular, it doesn't mean it is good (check Sahil Rizwan's blog for that!)

Appreciation of any art is VERY subjective and blogging is no different. I am a big fan of tech blogs - blogs about new gadget releases, tutorials, how-tos etc. But there as many people who would not be interested in such a blog. I don't follow personal musings blogs but there are enough people who swear by them and there are enough who blog about nothing other than their personal thoughts.

So, my overall response would be that we aren't studying Physics and Math here. There is no solitary right or wrong answer. Blogs are like films, poetry and books - what you might like might not work for me. So, why bother trying to pigeon hole everything - feed what you like and skip what you don't!

cheers!

Prashant.

I don't know Prashant, whether they teach Sanskrit poetics in English literature classes, probably not.

In Sanskrit poetics there are five or six schools of thought, each of which have minutely gone into what constitutes good poetry.

The general consensus among the literary aacharyas is that what causes ras nikshapti, is good poetry. Ras is a nebulous concept which has been equated to two things: it is inferior to the bliss experienced in becoming one with God, but is superior to the pleasure experienced in intercourse. Ras is a mental state which you suddenly arrive at when you are reading a good poetry, novel or play. Suddenly you experience a feeling of upliftment, a feeling of aanad, you feel light as the clouds, you feel are at the top of everything. Any literary piece that takes you to this level of experience is good literature.

Ras nikshapti happens through a process called sadharanikaran, in which the sahruday (reader) experiences the same emotions that was experienced by the poet when he wrote the poem.

So if the poet was sad, the reader feels sad when he reads the poem, if the poet was elated, so feels the reader.

Now I don't want to write a treatise here on Sanskrit poetry but there do exist enough theoretical underpinnings  as to what constitutes good poetry.

Even in English poetics which I have briefly studied in my MA Hindi classes, there are clear cut views as to what constitutes good poetics. People ranging from Plato, Aristrotle, Longinus, Richardson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Eliot, etc., have written reams on what constitutes good poetry.

In the case of Hindi, literary critics like Acharya Ramachandra Shukla and Dr. Ramvilas Sharma, have categorically declared that good poetry is that which promotes lok mangal (common good).

We have similar theoretical thinking for what constitutes good music, or a good painting or a good building, or even a good city, that is, anything that is man-made.

But blogging being so new, there doesn't seem to be any such criteria as to what is a good blog.

I thought we could develop such a criteria here.

Still flawed... A consensus is not fact.

5-6 schools of thought - what you have is some sort of an agreement between people. Someone proposed a theory, others agreed with it, that means an agreement? Yes. An understanding? Yes. A fact - no.

It sounds as if it can never be open to debate. And what you have put forward as "good poetry" can be definitely open to debate. The part about "becoming one with God" is very debatable. As is the idea that "good poetry is superior to the pleasure of intercourse."

Plato and gang might well have put forward theories about what consitutes good poetry but they remain that - their theories on what they consider good poetry. Always was and always will be open to debate. It sounds as if you were taught absolutes - that this theory is true and this isn't - as I said, it's not Physics we're studying here, it's expression and so long as one person has a valid opinion different from the consensus, you have debate and what you don't have is fact.

It's unfortunate that you studied poetry as absolutes (this is good and this is bad). It's also unfortunate that your experience of music, novels and everything else artistic has therefore been affected. Don't limit the blogging experience by reducing it to a bunch of if-then statements and theorems.

cheers!

Prashant

No Prashant, it is not simple as that.

The Sanskrit achaaryas go pretty deep onto what constitutes good poetry. They ask for example, what is kayaatma?

Some answer, it is the words, some say it is the meaning, some say it is both, some say it is the rasa, and they all given valid arguments for their views.

No, I am not proposing to have some kind of an exact rule, as in Physics, etc. I know that won't be possible, but yet we can arrive some four or five criteria which if a blog has we can say it is a good  blog.

For example, as I said,

- technical issues - navigation, widgets, code, etc.

- aesthetics - colour, design, visuals, etc.,

- content

- purpose

- writng style

etc.

We could give maximum points for these and other cirteria, say 10 for each, and then add up the points that a blog gets for these and that could be a fair indication of the position of blog on a notch-pole.

For example a blog may get 5 for techical criteria, 7  for aesthetics, 2 for content, 5 for purpose and 4 for writing style. So this blog gets 23/50 so it will be better than one that gets 12 and worse than one getting 32.

Of course all this will be subjective, but will be less subjective than randomly saying that phalana blog is good or bad.

We are getting a lot of requests from new bloggers to review their blogs. In fact there is even a separate section in IndiBlogger for this.

If we have such a criteria then it will be easy for us to pass an objective and informed comment on new blogs.

Currently it's all subjective and mostly favourable comments even when some of the new blogs don't deserve it.

This hardly helps the new bloggers, for it doesn't tell them where they are going wrong.

If we have a rating system in place, we can tell, for example that a particular blog is superlative in content but zero or one in technical finesse. This way the new blogger will know where he stands, and will be able to improve his blog.

What an awesome debate! Although, I do agree with Hemal on this one.

For example, Chetan Bhagat's 'Five-point-someone' is by no stretch of the imagination, a work of 'literary brilliance' or anywhere close. But, it sells pretty well, huh?

On the other hand, how many people can even spell 'Aldous Huxley', forget about having read his books!

Like Delson says, it would be like judging the Miss Universe contest. I might find a contestant more appealing, more confident, more suave, and more worthy than you do. As they say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

My take would be - stop bothering too much about ranks and stuff, and just blog if you love doing so. If you blog purely to get over and above others in the rankings, then of course, I have nothing to say.

Sumit

Sumit: That is the point. If we had an evaluation system, Chetan Bhagat would get 3/10 and Aldous  or Premchand would get 8/10. So people would know where these two stand vizaviz each other.

No, it won't all be subjective, or vary from one person to the other. It is easy to identify certain commonly agreed qualities that every good blog should have, such as:

- navigational ease

- elegant writing

- superb and relevant content

- internal cohesiveness of the various posts

- choice of language (Hindi, Tamil, etc., we could give bonus points to non-English blogs in order to promote them, given their social relevance just on the basis of them being in one of our languages.)

- relevance to society (this is to penalize the excessively personal blogs, many of which should never see the light of day).

- technical innovations (widgets, better coding, new features, etc.)

- text supported by appropriate visuals

- etc.

As for not bothering about ranks and stuff, if we don't, I fear we would soon be so swamped by mediocre and downright trash blogs that it would be difficult to get to the good ones from among the thousands upon thousands of blogs on blogosphere.

So the relevance of rating blogs is obvious (at least for me). If you agree, can we now focus this discussion on the qualties that mark good blogs, some of which I have outlined above, but there could be many more, and group them into logically, and then devise some ranking system for blogs based on these criteria?

Blogging costs not a single paisa, and any Aira, Gaira, Nathu Khaira (my desi version for "every Tom **** and Harry", for we don't have these amidst us), can start a blog. But this of course does not mean they should do so? But who is to stop them?

The rating system can be a mechanism to promote purposeful blogging.

There are certain dangers of course which we should be very wary. This should not become a thought police, like our friend in Mangalore, Mutthalic.

It should be an impartial mechanism. We should even think of a blogger's parliament or some such things under whose aegis this rating will be awarded. For now, IndiBlogger could play that august body, at least for the blogs listed on it.

A different approach to a numerical evaluation could be, deciding upon terms that are indicative of the rank of the blogs.

For example we could have such terms:

- Silverback (for the top level blogs; word taken from the term used for top dog (sorry for the mis-match of species) in primate societies)

- Four Star (for blogs in the next lower rung)

- Junior (blogs that leave much to be desired)

- Cub (new blogs and blogs that present only the bare basic qualities)

- Thumbs Down (blogs that are best avoided)

But even behind such a verbal rating, there should be a well-thouight out numerical rating rationale.

The words will only mask the numerical ratings, as many people are numerically literate, and may find verbal cues more appropriate.

Instead of words, we can also develop symbols that can appear before the blogs.

As blogs change in character constantly, these ratings should come with a shelf life, and should be recalculated, say every month, or three months.

Think of this as the ratings that companies receive to indicate their investibility. For example, a company with tripe A rating (AAA) is a company in which you can safely put your money.

These ratings are very hard-headed things and millions of dollars (or rupees) are at stake here. So a lot of thought goes into developing these rating systems. Some of the bloggers who are up-to-date on how these business ratings are developed can help us in developing a rating system for blogs.

Basically I think, these rating systems work by giving weightage to various characteristics that define a good company. We can follow this methodology for blogs too. But first we will have to identify what are the distinguishing characteristics of a good blog.

Many responders here have opined that blogs are impossible to rate. But that is most likely beause they have not thought through the issue. If as diverse entities as companies can be rated, so can blogs be. In fact, not only companies, but a whole lot of other things, including politicians, cars, software, hotels, and what not are regularly rated to help people make a correct choice.

Rating becomes necessary when there is a plethora of choice, and people can't easily choose. The situation with blog has gone much past this stage. There are too many blogs and there is no way of tell a Taj Mahal blog from a slum hut blog.

Aside: The censoring that is being practised here is really ridiculous. It has starred the word D,i,c,k. This is absured. Early it erased s,h,i,t, which had been correctly and inoffensively used.

I think we should do away with this type of inane automatic editing of posts.

Okay I am going to react to two major points here, one:

By ratings blogs, the chronically personal blogs that serve only the blogger can be weeded out, or restricted just to his friends and family and we can promote those blogs that contribute more to the general good.

The current situation is, anything goes, that is any trash can masquerade as a blog.

As for not bothering about ranks and stuff, if we don't, I fear we would soon be so swamped by mediocre and downright trash blogs that it would be difficult to get to the good ones from among the thousands upon thousands of blogs on blogosphere.

Honest reaction: Oh my good lord, are you serious? Who are you or anyone to judge a blog as "chronically personal"? Have you heard of a blog called Waiter Rant? Guy's a waiter and only wrote about how customers pissed him off. He's an international best selling author now. Have you heard of Tiny Art Director? A father writes his daughter's comments. Just got a book deal. Do you think these blogs are "chronically personal"?

Next point: choice of language (Hindi, Tamil, etc., we could give bonus points to non-English blogs in order to promote them, given their social relevance just on the basis of them being in one of our languages.)

Ditto honest reaction! Social relevance? On the one hand you say this "system" is impartial and unbiased and all your points are spewing classification and exclusion. All your points are subjective, you need to realise that. And it's interesting that you would want to award non-English blogs more points given your profile.

Look... I haven't read your blog because I haven't read any Indian language since I was in class 10, more than a decade ago. I'm sure you've got a stellar blog and maybe I'm missing out on the holy grail but that's fine! How does it matter. I'm sure you're getting enough visitors already. Someone doesn't read my blog... I don't care! Some people are.

Stats fact: more than 50,000 new blogs added round the planet DAILY. Are you going to try and police them all so that you have a better surfing experience? Or are you simply trying to police Indian blogs? Or are you simply upset that Renie gave you a lower IndiRank than a "chronically personal" blog.

You don't like a blog, don't visit it again... plain and simple!

@ Sumit: Hear! Hear!

Popularity vs. Quality right... one of the oldest debates out there! Although I think Huxley would be turning in his grave if he read that you compared him to Ch*tan Bh*g*t...

I also compared him to Premchand and that will make him comfortable, I guess.

Honest reaction: Oh my good lord, are you serious? Who are you or anyone to judge a blog as "chronically personal"? Have you heard of a blog called Waiter Rant? Guy's a waiter and only wrote about how customers pissed him off. He's an international best selling author now. Have you heard of Tiny Art Director? A father writes his daughter's comments. Just got a book deal. Do you think these blogs are "chronically personal"?

No, I don't think these are personal blogs.

Next point: choice of language (Hindi, Tamil, etc., we could give bonus points to non-English blogs in order to promote them, given their social relevance just on the basis of them being in one of our languages.)

Ditto honest reaction! Social relevance? On the one hand you say this "system" is impartial and unbiased and all your points are spewing classification and exclusion. All your points are subjective, you need to realise that. And it's interesting that you would want to award non-English blogs more points given your profile.

Every blogging expert I have known has categorically stated that blogging will take for real in India when the non-English speaking population (which means 98% Indians) take up blogging seriously.

Since there are many technical hurdles still in blogging in non-English blogging, anyone doing it, is exhibiting exemplary initiative which needs to be recognized. This is even more so because today, it is impossible to earn a single paise by blogging in Indian languages because advertisign revenue is not there for Indian language blogging (adsense does not support Indian language blogs). So a blogger blogging in Indian language is not doing with the hidden motive of earning money, as most English bloggers do, so this again merits reward.

Look... I haven't read your blog because I haven't read any Indian language since I was in class 10, more than a decade ago. I'm sure you've got a stellar blog and maybe I'm missing out on the holy grail but that's fine! How does it matter. I'm sure you're getting enough visitors already. Someone doesn't read my blog... I don't care! Some people are.

It is ok if you haven't read my blog or any Indian language blog for the last ten years. You are the loser for it No, I don't get many visitors on my blog .  It is just three months old. I have three blogs and they all have Google PR of 0.

Stats fact: more than 50,000 new blogs added round the planet DAILY. Are you going to try and police them all so that you have a better surfing experience? Or are you simply trying to police Indian blogs? Or are you simply upset that Renie gave you a lower IndiRank than a "chronically personal" blog.

You don't like a blog, don't visit it again... plain and simple!

The verfy fact that 50,000 blogs are being added every day is an argument that strongly favours rating of blogs. Otherwise there will no way of telling which are the better ones.

I had clearly mentioned in one of my posting that we must beware of thought policing.

As for the IndiRank for my blog that Reni has given me, frankly, I don't even know that my blog has received any rank. it was so far "na". I expect it to be low anyway, because I myself know that my blog is not all that great. It has great content though. Now that you have broken this news to me, I will be rushing off to see what rank Reni has given my blog after finishing this post.

Don't take this at a personal level. It is just a forum discussion. Just let us have your views on what you think about rating blogs and how we can arrive at a workable yardstick to rate blogs.

Even I'm on n/a for my Indirank so we're in the same boat!

Every blogging expert I have known has categorically stated that blogging will take for real in India when the non-English speaking population (which means 98% Indians) take up blogging seriously.

I guess I'm at a bit of a loss here because I don't have a "higher" purpose of trying to get blogging to "take off" in India. It doesn't matter to me one bit whether blogging "takes off" in India or not. That's not why I blog so I suppose this bit doesn't apply to me.

I'm going to stick with the thought that the second you try to rank blogs based on content and language, you are practising censorship and exclusion. Blogging isn't a new phenomenon and there is a reason why your kind of rating hasn't been adopted by anybody already. Because it defeats the whole idea of 2.0. There are enough stupid videos on YouTube, does that mean the "quality" movies get lost in the crowd... Good movies and clips will find a way of getting noticed. Good content will always get noticed. That's what 2.0 is about.

I don't know how many people here have a "higher" purpose of being socially relevant by blogging, I know I'm not so I don't care for any sort of ranking/points/grading system.

Coincidentally, by what measure did you say Waiter Rant is not a "chronically personal" blog? And I'm curious to know, our blog is about the things we do to stay healthy without depriving ourselves... is that "chronically personal"?

cheers!

Prashant.

I guess I'm at a bit of a loss here because I don't have a "higher" purpose of trying to get blogging to "take off" in India. It doesn't matter to me one bit whether blogging "takes off" in India or not. That's not why I blog so I suppose this bit doesn't apply to me.

Prashant, blogging concerns not you alone. Blogging is a tool that can be put to much better use that it is being put to use currently. It is a tool that has tremendous potential. Rating will improve blogging and make it more purposeful. You can of course continue to blog the way you do --  in a personal way or in any other way you prefer. Rating will have no bearing on that.

All that rating will seek to do is to highlight those blogs that rise above the crowd and have something more to offer than the mundane. I am sure you will agree that this is worthwhile.

People can't be reading all of the 50,000 blogs that are created every day plus the millions of blogs that already exist. They just won't have the time. Rating simply reduces the choice readers have. It narrows the blogs that they need to see. At the same time it provides a powerful incentive to bloggers to excel.

There is no policing or control involved here. It is just a facilitating measure. We do that in every human endeavour. In agriculture, we select those cows that give more milk, or those bulls that produce strong progency. That is how our excellent cattle stock and breeds are build up. In business we select companies that are better managed, that use funds more efficiently and invest our money with them. In films, we choose to watch those movies that are sensible, have a message or are technically savvy. We don't waste our time watching every movie that is made.

If we don't have rating how will be know which cow, company or film is more worthy of our attention?

I'm going to stick with the thought that the second you try to rank blogs based on content and language, you are practising censorship and exclusion. Blogging isn't a new phenomenon and there is a reason why your kind of rating hasn't been adopted by anybody already. Because it defeats the whole idea of 2.0. There are enough stupid videos on YouTube, does that mean the "quality" movies get lost in the crowd... Good movies and clips will find a way of getting noticed. Good content will always get noticed. That's what 2.0 is about.

I repeat, censorship and exclusion are not the driving idea behind any rating effort. The driving idea is to give a chance to the better ones to come to the fore and not be drowned by a crowd of commonplace stuff. Also, we won't be ranking blogs only on the basis of content and language; there would be many more criteria. One of the purpose of this discussion is to identify those criteria.

You yourself will agree that all blogs are not of uniform quality. There are some that are better than the others. Think about how you yourself approach blogs. I am sure you have half a dozen or more of your favourite blogs which you visit again and again, some may be those of your friends or relatives, but there are sure to be a few blogs that you frequent whose blogger you don't know personally, yet you visit that blog because something in it attracts you. All that this rating system will do is try to identify what are those features that attracts you to a blog and see how well blogs employ that feature. There could be several such features. That is the task I want to set for this discussion thread, to identify those features that parameterise a good blog.

I couldn't understand the 2.0 thing you have mentioned here, so I can't comment on that.

I feel YouTube too could do with rigourous rating, just like blogs.

I don't know how many people here have a "higher" purpose of being socially relevant by blogging, I know I'm not so I don't care for any sort of ranking/points/grading system.

That is fine, if you don't blog in a socially relevant way. Blogging has that potential, and if people use it, that will be great, but if they don't, it is still fine. Rating has nothing to do with it.

Coincidentally, by what measure did you say Waiter Rant is not a "chronically personal" blog? And I'm curious to know, our blog is about the things we do to stay healthy without depriving ourselves... is that "chronically personal"?

I haven't read the waiter blog, but from the description you give of it, it is certainly not a personal blog. It something with which a wide variety of people can relate to. It is almost like an autobiography. Autobiography is intensely personal, it talks about the author. Yet some of autobiographies form some of the best form of literature. Take the case of Gandhi's autobiography, or even Hitler's autobiography.

Again, Prashant, you are taking this discussion at a personal level. Don't do it. Approach it impartially. There is nothing to go emotional in this discussion. It is just a way getting people to think on how blogging can be made more purposeful and meaningful and how the better blogs can be given more limelight.

You will certainly agree that there is no harm if we try to use such a powerful tool as blogging more purposefully and meaningfully and if we highlight the better blogs.

We do it in all areas of our society. Why else would we have Nobel Prizes, Oscars, Bharat Ratnas, PadmaBhushans, Filmfare awards, Man of the Match awards, and the like?

I would like others too to join in, too, so that this discussion can be saved from becoming a closed dialogue between Prashant and me.

Web 2.0 was a major online development. It marked the shift to user generated content. The blogging explosion and social media were the major introductions to the online community. I would advise you to read up on 2.0 because it forms the core of online activity nowadays. It ties in with the idea of anyone can now generate content and gets noticed based on how other people take to it. Hence my argument against ranking because the 2.0 movement took care of popularity based on response as opposed to one person telling the others what they "ought" to check and what not.

~Prashant.