When is a blog not a blog...

During my lunchtime blog-crawl. hit this on Vecosys leading to this on Stowe Boyd re Conversation indices:

And one thing that became really obvious is that sucessful blogs -- ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start -- shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks - posts/(comments+trackbacks) - was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation -- as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers -- than posting articles. I will call this the Converation Index, just to put a handle on it.

Absolutely agree re Conversation, we of course as a newish blog are a lowly CI = 149/123 = (shuffle) - excluding the 500 or so spam ones we have deleted - but it is rising, most of the comments are in more recent posts (aka when people found us....marketing budget to date has been measured in cups of tea)

Our feeble excuse is it would be higher but for some reason our captcha system has not been perfect - and we didn't even know 'cos no-one could tell us

However, not all bloggers agree on the CI - I have had a good discussion on this with UK Uberblogger Hugh MacLeod and feisty alien* blogger Jackie Danicki on said subject, and even upped our own CI here on it...

(An aside - as y'all know I am underwhelmed with Snapstuff, but Jackie puts it even better on a later post:

Don’t take control of my blog and tell me that the onus is on me to put it back to the state I had it in before you started f*cking around with it without my permission or knowledge.

...told you re feisty)

No, a blog is part of a conversation, and you can't have a two way conversation via linking only, thats broadcasting - besides, we had Web 1.0 sites that did that linking stuff in the 1990's - its so last century !! (btw feel free to link, Technorati loves it....)

This raises some issues as a number of "A List" blogs do not allow comments...are they really blogs, or just Web 1.0 sites masquerading as blogs to get extra buzz from a smaller pond - "blogcasters"?

In the interests of conversation index rampup, what do you, revered reader, think?

Oh...and we turned on the karma system this weekend as another way of conversing...well, what can one say except the first hits were by people who stormed through hitting -2 on every post....there is something to be said for raising the entry level on Conversations. The most hated post is the one on Wii Mii's 4 posts below, the most loved on Opening the Mobile Web 2.0.)

* In the US, all foreigners are called aliens, on or offworld .