Mathemagenic

Could Blogging Assist KM? by Amy D. Wohl is one more introductory article about blogging, but it provokes Denham Grey comments (note, this was posted earlier than Ton's blogs and knowledge sharing I and II):

At times I think k-logs are hyped by a few evangelists (converted bloggers). If you look closely at the record, things are not all that rosy

* reciprocity is very poor - bloggers tend to say this does not matter, it is more important to be heard, to 'voice' or 'push' and publish your view
* 'community' happens from individual enclaves - bloggers retreat to their spaces to reply the common 'space' is then fractal, distributed and walled - it lacks cohesion
* the 'record' is fragmented even categories and RSS feeds do not produce a coherent easily readable discourse
* empathy is low - most times it is about branding and spreading my memes

To be fair, I don't 100% understand why Denham streeses 'community' so much. I believe that knowledge is socially constructed, but I don't understand why community and not networked individual should be the unit of analysis.

Later: Sebastian Fiedler comments 

• 'community' happens from individual enclaves...
  And how is this different in other parts of life? "Commom spaces" in modern societies tend to be "fractal", "distributed", and occassionally "walled". Why should I even expect cohesion? I would say that cohesion needs to be constructed and imposed by the individual.
• the 'record' is fragmented...
  So are all of my records. Do you hold "a coherent easily readable discourse" with anyone - including yourself - over time? If you go about any personal learning project do all the books, websites, conversations, etc. quickly add up to "a coherent easily readable discourse"?

Dale Pike comments

I believe that weblogs (whether for KM or not) will succeed or fail because of their open-endedness. They are messy, organic tools without any lockstep procedures for making comments. Lockstep procedures can be very helpful, but they must anticipate the needs of the user in advance. I think weblogs are intimidating to many people because there is no "wizard" that asks you to fill in the form and make your contribution. Ya gotta get a little dirty. Granted, the lack of anticiptory structure makes re-purposing the message more challenging, but we'll figure this out as we go along.

Micah Alpern is fast to fix and update his Trusted Blog Search tool, so now you can enjoy the results:

• search my blog/RSS subscriptions from navigation bar at Mathemagenic
• get the code for your blog
• instructions and explanations

More: about Trusted Blog Search in Microdoc News (it also points to Kartoo, a meta search engine which presents its results on a map).