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Most of the Bleacher Report community will understand my point; they may disagree with it, but they'll understand it. Automatic importing of member blogs has been a feature that has disturbed me since I first joined B/R several months ago...

B/R's Automatic Blog Importing: Could the Cons Outweigh the Pros?

by Craig Garrison Sr (Columnist)

21

416 reads

Opinion

September 05, 2008


Most of the Bleacher Report community will understand my point; they may disagree with it, but they'll understand it.

Automatic importing of member blogs has been a feature that has disturbed me since I first joined B/R several months ago. B/R presents itself as an avenue by which fans can "write" about their teams, their favorite sport or athlete, or whatever else they find important in the sporting world.

"Write."

What does that mean, exactly?

Does it mean a single paragraph of rambling jumbled thoughts? Or several "one-liners" on the screen?

"Blogging" has become a very popular form of self expression across the world. It gives many people the opportunity to express their views, thoughts, and opinions on any subject without the "restrictions" and "structure" of "published writing."

Blogging doesn't require that the writer make any attempt at researching his or her points, or use any type of "writing structure," proper grammar, or correct spelling.

I have read several "articles" here at B/R regarding the "legitimacy" of B/R's writers, speculating on whether or not B/R's writers can ever be taken seriously, and if B/R will ever be "respected" as a legitimate source of news or simple quality sports journalism.

With automatic blog importing, B/R may may be hurting itself in a big way in this regard.

While clicking through B/R, one will undoubtedly end up on a page at some point that is nothing more than a random blog entry, with no journalistic integrity whatsoever. There is no writing structure in use, or even as much as an attempt at a true written work.

Rather, these "articles" are a quick tip-tap of the keys to let one's thoughts fly onto the screen, imported overnight from a user's blog.

Add to that the reality is that so many of these "members" are importing their blog entries and rarely, if ever, contribute in any other way. There are no comments posted on other articles, and no responses to comments made on their own imported works.

This is not a good thing for B/R.

I am not in any way disparaging "blogging;" I think it has it's place in society and is a valuable resource to everyone.

But is it right for Bleacher Report?

I don't think so. Do you?

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21 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment

  1. PaT Gesuale 10 months ago

    I agree totally, Craig. I personally love to edit, but have not done so recently because the majority of "articles" that are unedited are not "editable" from a writing standpoint. As you have described, they are thoughts, opinions, ramblings without necessarily any back up or substance-- reading more like a journal or in my opinion, even a "Dear Diary". My enjoyment as a "reader" of BR has diminished because of this-- as it is hit or miss in terms of clicking on an article of any substance, and I therefore tend to stick with writers I am familiar with. Great topic to tackle, and thoughtful words and ideas...

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    • Craig Garrison Sr 10 months ago

      Thanks PaT, I was just clicking around this morning and it started irritating me that so much of what I was seeing was simple blog entries and I don't think that's what b/r is trying to be.

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  2. L.J. Burgess 10 months ago

    The key is to not 'grade' those entries...or not even read them.

    You will only find the best of the best bloggers on the front page anyway.

    B/R is unique, open source and inclusive...it can not be any other way.

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    • Craig Garrison Sr 10 months ago

      I agree LJ, but the reality is that the pieces that are no more than "blog entries" are not good for b/r's overall "rating" if you will. And there seem to be so many from users that NEVER contribute anything else that I think the system as it is now, is a MAJOR detractor to what b/r could be.

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    • Tim Coughlin 10 months ago

      L.J.'s point about the site being inclusive is pretty much why the feature is still around. The whole "anyone can post anything" atmosphere is a key to the site's success. As long as something doesn't violate the Terms of Use, it's OK to post here.

      I think the blog-linking feature was better for the site's early days, generating more content to work from when there were fewer B/R-only members, but I don't think any of B/R's brass would argue the good of the feature doesn't come with some bad.

      From what I've read (I believe from open comments by Zander on a story and/or profile), they're taking some of that into account and thinking about minimum word/character limits to prevent someone's blog post of nothing but a funny link from making it through to its own article here. I know that hasn't been implemented from what I've edited just today, but, if it does see the light of day, it might be worth it, and I think the bloggers affected would understand.

      Either way, there are probably too many members using this feature who are valuable to the site to nix it altogether. That doesn't mean its pros and cons aren't worth discussing, though.

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  3. Rich Tandler 10 months ago

    I like the feature--it's a great time saver as a good chunk of what I post here is cross-posted from the blog--but it does need some tweaks.

    The 150-word threshold for posts should be increased. For example, I fired off a quick post about Shawn Springs being out for the Skins-Giants game. I tried to keep it under 150 words but I couldn't quite do it. By the time it was imported here it was pretty much irrelevant. Maybe posts no shorter than 250 words should be auto-imported.

    Also, the automatic classification needs some work. All of my articles mention "Redskins" and they end up being classified to "Reds". Apparently the reader doesn't differentiate between text strings and whole words. I'm not a computer guy and I don't know how hard it would be to change this, but it would be helpful.

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    • Craig Garrison Sr 10 months ago

      Appreciate the thoughts, and I have experienced the same issues, which was one of the reasons I stopped using the "auto" setting myself, I just didn't like that type of stuff making it into b/r.

      Thanks again, and keep up the Skins work.

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  4. Angel Navedo 10 months ago

    Great topic, Craig! 5-stars and a pick from me.

    I think blog importing is too dependent on the time of this site's editors. It's unfair to shovel an article across the internet and let someone else clean it up.

    Honestly, I never really found any pros with it.

    The people on this site went the extra mile in developing methods to format articles so that it looks legitimate. Everything from image uploading, to writing teasers, to general formatting is disregarded by a lot of blog importers.

    I usually don't bother editing those articles. I just give it one star and click away.

    I write primarily for a Jets' fan site that operates off WordPress. I could easily have the b/r script incorporated, but I prefer not to. I'm not too lazy as to copy and paste.

    Besides, posting on B/R schooled me further to the Chicago Manual of Style when I was posting all my articles on NYJetsFan.com in AP style.

    On a side note, a peeve of mine is when I'm reading an article on b/r and someone only publishes a portion of it, and links to their site to read the rest.

    One of the things that makes this site fantastic is the community aspect. It's not any of the other sites with writers that may as well be anonymous. Importing blogs completely detracts from that!

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  5. Shaun Ahmad 10 months ago

    While the open network aspect of Bleacher is a great idea, I think it also leaves the door open for a lot of "articles" that wouldn't pass a 9th grade grammar test. If B/R is going to continue to gain momentum in the sports-internet world, one way of increasing credibility would be making it tougher for poorly written articles to get published.

    I know that takes away from what b/r's intentions were when it started by putting a restriction on what gets published and what doesn't, but to keep moving forward and become a competitor with other big time sites, it will be necessary. You can't continue to mix quality with junk and expect to be respected universally.

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  6. Thomas 10 months ago

    hm, interesting. I totally agree. Too many articles here wouldnt pass for anything more than a diary page. the anyone-can-write angle is great to get people in, but unfortunately, some people think that they can use this sight as a personal blog.

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  7. Jack Anderson 10 months ago

    Great Stuff Craig. I don't put anything blog-worthy on B/R because B/R to me is not a blog. It's a place to write intelligent,thought out articles on sports.

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  8. Zander Freund 9 months ago

    Great conversation here guys—Craig, appreciate you raising this concern.

    This is something we have talked about a lot internally. We really like the blog import feature in that bloggers who write great sports content every day don't have to take the time to re-publish their work over here.

    On the other hand, there surely are some issues when people use auto-import settings and then write notes/irrelevant material on their blogs.

    We're still in the process of working all the fine details of the feature out, so hang tight. As always, all of your feedback is greatly appreciated and will be considered in our decision.

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  9. Bruce Dickenson 9 months ago

    You are correct on this. I have read a few articles that leave me perplexed as to what the writer was trying to convey.

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