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– Ponderings & code by Drew McLellan –

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This man must be stopped

10 August 2003

Bilbo Baggins is at it again. In this week’s column ‘All over for blogs?’ he’s making ludicrous claims left, right and centre about the state of blogs and the community. He even makes the claim that

The earliest bloggers have been at it for two years now …

Two years? Typically that’s more like eight, surely? Argh. The man drives me insane. I really shouldn’t let him get to me like this, but the fact that he is regularly spouting absolute rubbish about our industry into mainstream media makes my blood boil.

Can’t something be done?

- Drew McLellan

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Comments

  1. § Tom Coates: Agreed.
  2. § Jesse: Well I have a similar problem with a department here spewing out that they are ’the first to use blogging at UW’ when there has been a blogging group for 3 years and blogs well before that.

    How do you stop misinformation?
  3. § Keith: Wow. He’s making quite the assumption there. And you know what that making a assumption means.

    I’m pretty sure he has no clue what he’s talking about.
  4. § Joe McBride: I have noticed that being removed from the forefront of the ”hip” and ”cool” on the net for more than 1-2 years has a detrimental effect on one’s mental map of it. Maybe he needs to get off of vacation? Then again I don’t expect large media organizations (even the BBC) to get this right.

    I always get to work with guys (administrators) that are about 4 years behind internet time.
  5. § Joe Grossberg: Why don’t you email him and ask for a clarification—i.e. what he means by ”blogging” and how he arrived at that ”two years” estimate?
  6. § cybo: find out where he lives, pay him a visit, kneecap him.
  7. § Paul Watson: ”The optimistic view is that the problem is only temporary, and it is just me and the summer.”

    No, it is just him.

    I was in Greece for 7 days. Did not read a single newspaper, watch a second of telly or go near an internet cafe.

    Doesn’t mean everyone stopped blogging or started blogging nonsense. Just means one person was on holiday.
  8. § burt: the bbc can usually be counted on for journalistic accuracy, but when it comes to technology, especially this clown, they haev lost the plot.

    i would recommend posting comments on the site to highlight his stupidity, but i can’t remember if it allows the ’have your say’ option.

    maybe he realises he’s talking rubbish and wants to avoid the obvious flack.

    personally, i’ve been keeping a website for nearly five years, well before i’d heard of the term blogging - does that make me an innovator - i think not.

    people in this industry will read it and laugh or cry. they will go to other sites and read the truth, which is perhaps more important after all.
  9. § Tim: It’s a shame, because I normally have a lot of time for Bill - he’s very clued up on online rights and civil liberties. He’s got this one wrong, though.
  10. § Drew: I must admit, I’ve not really had any exposure to Bill’s work outside of his BBCi articles. That said, neither have 99.9% of the audience for those articles.

    I have yet to see him deliver an informed, informative, well written article that presents technical issues to an essentially non-technical audience. As that is my take on the brief for that column, I think he’s missed it.
  11. § jason hoffman: His point that most weblogs aren’t worth reading is generally true (it probably applies to all websites), but he could have been more positive the few independent writers that are worth reading and do make an effort to write interesting articles (that happen to be serialized by date).
  12. § Matt McIrvin: Somebody should just send him to Clay Shirky’s site and make him read all the essays there. Shirky explains all the stuff that Thompson is slowly starting to notice, except that Shirky actually knows what he’s talking about and understands that it doesn’t just mean blogs are dying.
  13. § Aleksey: It is really hot in Europe these days.
  14. § Mike: meh. Blogs are great as communities - I read a few that deal with issues that concern the kind of work that I do. There’s a lot of great inter-blog discussion out there for those who are interested.

    Who cares what he thinks? read what you want.

    From the looks of Bill, he’s hardly a man who makes or breaks what really happens in the world - this column is pretty much irrelevent AFAIK.
  15. § Rob Winters: I agree there is an increase in uninteresting blogs, (uninteresting to me) but there is still lot of quality content out there, its just a matter of knowing where to look for it.
  16. § Mike: I have regularly posted on the BBC’s Have your say section about the rubbish Bilbo writes. Unfortunately the editorial munkees at the bbc never see fit to publish my posts.
  17. § steve: He has to write something that provokes a response, that’s his job.
    No big deal.
  18. § Paul: I’ve got ask... why do you all care so much? I mean, I wouldn’t normally even make a comment, but I am surprised at the number of people upset about this and the vehemence with which they are expressing themselves.
  19. § Drew: Paul, we care because it’s these sorts of attitudes and misconceptions that we battle against every day of our working lives. People like Bilbo Baggins and Carol ’The Internet Will Eat Your Children’ Vorderman happily broadcast ill-formed opinions and misinformation across mainstream media. Anyone who works in this industry will know that a hell of a lot of effort then has to go into, for example, persuading a client that despite what they read on BBCi last week it might actually be a good idea to utilise a blog on their website.

    A worse scenario (and one that I think is surprisingly common) is when your boss gets hold of this misinformation and holds it up as gospel truth. There are plenty of idiots out there who will take the word of Bilbo Baggins over that of the highly skilled web designer/developer they’ve employed to build their business.

    That’s why I care, although others will have their own reasons too, I’m sure.
  20. § Jai: ”Sitting at a computer does not seem to be the way to understanding, enlightenment or happiness when the long hot day is beckoning you outside, and reading other people’s postings can seem like a waste of good thinking time.”

    I’m glad he said that. As soon as I read it, I closed the browser and went outside. What a bunch of uninformed nonsense...
  21. § beerzie boy: > His point that most weblogs aren’t worth reading is generally true (it probably applies to all websites)

    And most written work.

    ”Could it be time to quit reading blogs?” he asks.

    Go ahead. Who’s stopping you? Life, and blogs, will go on much as it has before.
  22. § Motekye (Mote): There’s really nothing you can do to shut him up. The path of least resistance would be to leave him alone and let the ignorant lead the ignorant.
  23. § Mike: The thing that REALLY annoys the hell out of me is that people like el-bilbo actually get PAID a decent amount of money to ramble on about stuff they wished they actually knew more about.

    It also bugs me that he’s probably getting at least partially funded by our license fees too.

    That said however, I’m sure that as he’s so well acquainted with his own back teeth, maybe a dentistry column would be more suited to his expertise.
  24. § kenrick: wow that guy featured in the article has a face for radio....
  25. § Nataliya: Agreed!
  26. § Italian Charms: I have yet to see him deliver an informed, informative, well written article that presents technical issues to an essentially non-technical audience. As that is my take on the brief for that column, I think hes missed it.

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About Drew McLellan

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Drew McLellan has been hacking on the web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he’s spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now is Director and Senior Web Developer at edgeofmyseat.com in Maidenhead, UK (GEO: 51.5217, -0.7177). Prior to this, Drew was a Web Developer for Yahoo!, and before that primarily worked as a technical lead within design and branding agencies for clients such as Nissan, Goodyear Dunlop, Siemens/Bosch, Cadburys, ICI Dulux and Virgin.net. Somewhere along the way, Drew managed to get himself embroiled with Dreamweaver and was made an early Macromedia Evangelist for that product. This lead to book deals, public appearances, fame, glory, and his eventual downfall.

Picking himself up again, Drew is now a strong advocate for best practises, and stood as Group Lead for The Web Standards Project 2006-08. He has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media’s XML.com, mostly due to mistaken identity. Drew is a proponent of the lower-case semantic web, and is currently expending energies in the direction of the microformats movement, with particular interests in making parsers an off-the-shelf commodity and developing simple UI conventions. He writes here at all in the head and, with a little help from his friends, at 24 ways.

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