Jim West has a post today about the "Dis-integration" of the biblioblogging community. This spurred a response by Chris Heard. I haven't seen any others yet, but I am sure there will be.
As one who has always considered myself as an outsider (not in an excluded sense, but I have tried to keep my posts more general, which is why I chose ANE Books as the title), here are a few comments:
Chris's comment about the lack of ease in following comments is well taken. Scot McKnight's site has the ability to track comments if you post them, but that is the only one I know of. Scot has a custom built site. I don't think most people would be willing to go to that trouble. So, strike the interaction via comments.
Another aspect is that there is no "central" blog that people interact on. What do I mean? When I worked in IT, the first thing I did every day was check Slashdot.org. It was the equivalent of the water cooler. Everything was posted there and the interaction was sometimes good, sometimes (usually?) bad. But it was a central location that everyone knew. Biblical Studies is not like I.T. It is made up of individuals who make contributions over the course of time and interact with each other. Should it have more interaction? Probably. Will it ever get the interaction of a Slashdot? Probably not. It is a different animal.
A third aspect is the sprawling nature of blogs. I spend almost an hour a day reading blogs, and I don't read all that I know of. I follow the ones I need to in order to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on for listing the needed books. I follow some other ones for personal enjoyment (there is a lot of overlap there). But, there is no way I could keep up. I suspect others are like that also.
So, what is the answer? Or is there one?
Update:
I just saw Eric Welch's post. Hilarious! You have to read it.
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