Another gem that we find on yet another “Breaking the Power Law” blog. (Stephen, you’ve opened up a gold mine.) Wrede’s article gives one of the most clear-eyed assessments that I’ve seen of the strengths and weaknesses of weblog discourse.
Here’s a great little excerpt:
Most weblog authors are no professional writers and most weblog visitors are no professional readers as well. Not being a professional reader means, that this reading can’t compensate weak writing skills of authors and potentially could be characterized as a kind of “seeing what one wants to see” (selective perception).
In addition to this comprehension problem unprofessional weblog readers very often are professional web surfers that may practice a reading style that could be called “fast scan reading”.
This will have an impact on the informational cascade problem. (And yes, I really will finish revisions to that article Real Soon Now.)
Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.
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