I’ve been letting Planet Geospatial (PGS) sit for the past month just to see how its doing. There was an issue with some Wordpress blogs not showing up, but that seems to have passed and everything is smooth. One issue I’ve started to notice is that there are way too many blogs in it. This is probably a good thing as it proves that the Geospatial blogging community has grown to the point that moderation is required.
I’ve been clearing out blogs that don’t post so all the ones in there right have have at least one post in the past month (or are important enough to be included for other reasons). There are 75 blogs in the aggregator right now and I’d like to cut that in half (I think too much noise hurts the value of PGS).
Without going into specifics, what blogs do you guys think should be included and which ones might be best left off? You don’t need to point to a specific blog that should or shouldn’t be included, but I’d like to know what makes PGS valuable to you.
20 responses so far ↓
1
Ken S
// Feb 24, 2006 at 10:31 am
I’m torn on this, but I think some of the blogs that link to stories that already showed up in Planet Geospatial should be removed. I don’t mind people linking to the stories, but add more than just a quote of it. SlashGIS does this all the time. I like the site, but they don’t add any value unless people comment and that isn’t happening.
2
kjohnson
// Feb 24, 2006 at 10:33 am
I agree, it needs to be cleared.
I’m not sure what remove, but please keep, Spatially Adjusted and All Points Blog.
3
av8tor
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:00 am
I’m not so sure the Google Earth blogs are really important.
4
Paul
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:30 am
One of the things I like about Planet Geospatial is the diversity of content. It exposes me to many blogs I don’t normally visit. Some of those that I click through end up becoming regulars for me. I’m probably in the minority here, but I say the more the merrier…
5
Vector One
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:37 am
I like Planet Geospatial and use it a lot.
It would be good to see a balance in geographic coverage around the world.
Good work and thanks for your time to make it happen.
6
James Fee
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:39 am
I’m cool with letting it stay too. In fact I only post about it bacause some had complained about the size. I’m guessing most are fine with it and that is good IMO.
7
James Fee
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:41 am
Jeff, I’m cool with that. I was thinking about starting another one with non-english GIS blogs because many people have asked for theirs to be included in PGS.
8
Christian
// Feb 24, 2006 at 11:44 am
I really appreciate the broad spectrum of geo related information (from programming over gps, cartography to google earth stories) through planet geospatial. It would cost me a lot of time getting that daily overview without PGS - it’s not a matter of adding a feed to a my reader, it’s a matter of networking and finding the information. When removing blogs, please make sure you keep that spectrum.
9
Sean Gillies
// Feb 24, 2006 at 12:14 pm
PGS is good for me, James. Gets me out of the open source walled garden at least once a day
10
Joe Francica
// Feb 24, 2006 at 2:36 pm
James…I think your criteria is to keep the blogs that are 1)active enough to have regular, if not daily, posts that are, 2) Comprised of newsworthy items and thoughtful opinions, not merely casual observations, rants, or useless meanderings. I think we will continue to see the geoblogsphere grow, and then shrink as the reality of maintaining a consistently worthwhile blog sets in with those who don’t have the time to do so.
11
Allan Doyle
// Feb 24, 2006 at 2:51 pm
But wait! If blogs are not posting, they are also not updating their RSS. So they don’t clutter anything. When they do, the articles show up. That’s the whole point.
The bit about duplicates is more of an issue but most blogs have something original to say, so it’s not worth worrying about.
Maybe you can just make the font a notch smaller and tighten up the layout a little. It’s important to try to fit about 2 day’s worth onto the page.
12
Allan Doyle
// Feb 24, 2006 at 2:54 pm
And, Joe - if we want carefully selected news, with good commentary, we’ll just go straight to Directions!
13
Joe Francica
// Feb 24, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Allan: I appreciate the compliment but I was hoping to illustrate that what we’ve found (and James has found as well) is that it takes a daily committment to blog something useful. I’d like to think we’ve done a good job of keeping content not only fresh but useful. That’s just not that easy. I think it is interesting to see what happens to larger IT companies that specifically employ someone to do nothing but maintain a corporate blog. It’s created a whole new job title: CBO - Chief Blogging Officer.
14
James Fee
// Feb 24, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I think Allan has a good idea. I’ll tweak the css this weekend and see if I can get the page more readable. As always you can use the Greasemonkey script to remove any blogs you don’t want to read.
http://zcologia.com/news/114
15
Reid Watkins
// Feb 24, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Here’s another vote for keeping as many blogs as possible in the mix, unless there’s some technical or financial reason to filter some out. It’s easy enough to skip over those entries that aren’t of interest. Thanks for maintaining this great resource James.
16
Dave S
// Feb 24, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Count this as another vote for keeping as many blogs as possible. (As long as they have original content and aren’t just adding to the echo chamber.) I’m trying to keep my RSS Reader to 50 geospatial feeds so I scanPlanet Geospatial for those odds and ends that don’t make it into my top 50. Thanks for the resource.
17
Allan Doyle
// Feb 24, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Responding to Joe about 4 comments up - Blogging is not about quantity. There are many blogs that are not updated on a daily basis that contain some real gems. I am often delighted to see a posting on a blog that’s not daily, or necessarily even weekly. Paul Ramsey posts infrequently, but well. Chris Holmes as well. Howard Butler. I would go the other way and strip out the daily fluff generators.
You can count on one hand the geo companies that can afford a CBO. And when a CBO blogs, you can bet it’s party-line and predictable.
18
James Fee
// Feb 24, 2006 at 9:14 pm
OK, it seems like everyone likes all the blogs and since it isn’t any extra work to keep them in there, lets just go with I’ll keep it the way it is. In fact, if there is a blog you think that should be in it, email me and I’ll toss it in.
I don’t want to me the gatekeeper to what should be or not be included so if its remotely related to GIS or something geospatial, I’m including it.
19
Vector One
// Feb 25, 2006 at 1:06 am
“I don’t want to (me) the gatekeeper” - wise policy James.
When I think about Allan’s comments on irregular posting, I think he is correct. That is the point of the Internet - to accept, tolerate and include.
Barring outright non-usefulness and providing it is not much effort then why not keep things?
In fact, I now amend my own thoughts on this.
Admission: One of the reasons I chose WordPress as my blog software is because I can post-date entries. Gad - am I a ‘impure blogger’ now?
20
Brian Flood
// Feb 25, 2006 at 7:27 am
I think Allan said it best: if blogs are not posting, they are not showing up in the aggregator. No harm no foul.
my 2 cents…
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