Reminder on Updates, Form

This is just a reminder as to how things are handled now, because several of the stories we covered recently have updates and they will be updated, there just won't be any new posts:

When I first switched to actual blogging software (I had been doing The Rundown on the old site since around 1998 through a Dream Weaver template I manually updated with every entry), I would add a comment to older posts when there was more news or updates, clarifications, or whatever. I found out very quickly that almost no one ever read them; I would add an update to a story in the comments and 2-3 days later, 2349075 other bloggers would have the most popular posts of the day because they made actual posts on the "update" I had merely added in the comments.

This was during the big Blogging Boom a few years back and I blame that 100%. Most of the "bloggers" around then jumped on board without the faintest, frigging idea as to what they were doing, because they thought they were going to get rich overnight. Unfortunately, there were so many of them that certain changes were made, certain precedents set, that are hard to shake simply because so many people were doing them that they became de rigeur. Making new UPDATE posts instead of simply adding a comment is one of those.

Things change like this all the time - did you know the phrase, "Okay (O.K.)" actually means "all clear"? It was used in the Civil War and so many soldiers were illiterate that "A.C." mutated into "O.K." So it isn't like this is some online anomaly. Still, it's a bit of a hassle and I never liked it anyway.

When you want to read about a story, you prefer to have the research already done. You don't mind clicking-through to some supporting material, but you shouldn't have to surf through 10 different posts on the same story - eight of which bear the word "UPDATE" in the title! Adding comments to the original story keeps the whole thing together and in context and so, while I went with the flow when posting UPDATES became what people expected, I didn't like it, I don't like it, and I'm no longer handling things that way.

Sometimes, a new post will be made if the comment turns out to be very long, it has been a long time since the original post was made, or other extenuating circumstances prevail; for the most part, though, when there is more to the story, a comment will be added to the original post.

For this reason, you may wish to subscribe to replies for any story you are following.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008