The Kauffman Foundation hosted a number of econ bloggers, including myself, at the AEAs to discuss blogging, communication and new media. Tim Kane at Growthology summarizes the stimulating discussion:
Some of things I learned include (1) the process of collaborative filtering is increasingly useful for discovery and evaluation, and a pioneer to watch is Slashdot, (2) commenting on blogs is arguably more valuable than posting for evaluating ideas … look for weighted commenting/evaluation systems to supplant formalized referee systems over time, (3) blogs are just part of the spectrum of idea sharing, as is journal publishing, and simply having a web page is now essential to be part of a research community, (4) good ideas can filter up much faster through the academic community thanks to blogs, (5) it is very difficult to determine what revenue models will sustain the print news media, but one possible trend to watch for is the return of ideological patronage (e.g. think tank magazines) — it’s not just advertising and subscriptions that will sustain the sector, (6) it’s still probably not advisable for graduate students or junior faculty to blog instead of focus on tenurable research … for now, and (7) if blogging is representative, then risk-taking entrepreneurship will thrive, even in a recession.
You will be happy to know that it was brought up in the discussion that the MR comment section is especially good so take it away readers.
regarding (5)
Isn’t that a step backward? Suppose one’s patron wants all the news that fits their ideology, and nothing more? (Not that we don’t suffer from that already, but the “return of ideological patronage” seems to be an even worse road to go down)
Slashdot’s filtering and weighted evaluation system relies on selecting random logged-in users to do the moderation, almost like registered voters getting selected for impromptu jury duty. It also uses meta-moderation, to deal with the problem of “who moderates the moderators” and prevent gaming the system. You probably need a very large user base to make it workable, larger than that of most specialized blogs.
Slashdot’s moderation system has been in place for many years now, but seems to have few imitators, perhaps for the above reason.
I hope you’ll entertain a dissenting opinion on conclusion 6.
Chris,
Isn’t that yet to be determined?!
Cheers
Alex
What I found most interesting was this:
(6) it’s still probably not advisable for graduate students or junior faculty to blog instead of focus on tenurable research … for now
I wonder how long it will be before blogging – especially well-researched, thoughtful posts – is regarded as an equally important factor in tenure decisions. It seems that facilitating the transmission of ideas, and especially the debate that erupts around those ideas, is a key goal of academia.
I love slashdot – it’s karma and moderation systems are great stuff – but they do have limits. Its moderation gets troublesome in the face of politics posts, though, because passionate subcommunities can give each other enough karma to moderate some pretty troublesome comments as good.
It works great for technical topics, though, and’d probably be good for econ blogs. It’s a tad heavyweight to set up compared to a blog, though, which is probably why blogs’ve been outcompeting slashclones even in technical blogs. I guess the open questions are how to make moderation work even for politics and have lightweight setup.
Nathan, The Onion’s way ahead of you. It may be the only newspaper increasing its print exposure. It does have some local events specialization, though.
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