daverea.com

Despite the flurry of activity here since last November, I’ve managed to let the better part of March go by without a single post … so I figured now’s as good a time as any to chat about a few trends I’ve been noticing lately in the blogosphere. These trends have been annoying me. Maybe I’m not the only one they’ve been annoying?

1. Multiple-page entries
One of the nicest things about web pages is the fact that they can be as long or short as their content needs them to be. What’s the point of splitting your blog entry into 4 pages?! Not only does this annoy me when I have to locate the “next page” button, it interrupts the flow of your entry and messes up those who might actually want to print the thing out onto something that doesn’t have infinitely-variable length: a sheet of paper.

2. Registration-required comments
Don’t make me jump through hoops to comment on your blog. Moderating comments is all well-and-good (heck, we do that here at daverea.com for first-time posters) but demanding that commenters complete a registration form and wait for a confirmation e-mail is annoying. Not to mention by the time I’ve gone through all the hassle of registering, I’ve probably forgotten what I was going to write in my comment in the first place…

3. Lists of little-known Linux apps
Why is everyone publishing lists of obscure Linux programs that “you absolutely must try” all of a sudden? Did someone on the blogosphere put out a call for every grammatically-challenged geek to publicly extol the virtues of their favorite apps – as long as no one else knows about them? Enough already.

4. Hyperbolic, backwards titles
This week alone, the following titles came across my feedreader: “Firefox May Already be Dead”, “Command Line Terror!”, “Top 10 Reasons I’ll Never Use Ubuntu”, “Programming languages that melt your brain”… And the list goes on. In every case, the content of the entry in question actually contradicts the title – which leads me to believe it was nothing but an eye-catcher to begin with. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think the headlines we author should reflect the credibility we seek. I’m tired of “X is Dead, Long Live X” titles, and I’m tired of hyped-up, sensational headlines that lead to blog entries whose only extravagance is in their mundanity.

Think we can live without these? I thought so.