Blogging and Information
I’ve complained about the problems of blog bloat and it’s something that really doesn’t make me want to blog. Frankly, the blogging is really only truly good structure for sites that deliver news. Anything that remains static is problematic for blogs because the good stuff quickly drops down and becomes difficult to find. Tag clouds and categories somewhat mask that problem by making older things more easily accessible by topic, but in the end information is ranked not by importance or relevance, but rather by latest post.
Throw in the fact that blogs tend to throw in personal posts and rants, and in the end you get a large amount of noise that needs to be filtered through. Tagging sites like del.icio.us and search engines help somewhat in solving the problem of finding good content, but they’re not efficient in properly directing traffic. I won’t even mention the fact that you should never rely solely on a tool you can’t control to make up for design shortcomings.
Frankly, only extreme diligence and focus in tagging and categorizing could result in an organized enough structure for long-term use. Unfortunately, this creates heavy overhead and prevents us from focusing on writing and creating quality content. Instead, time is wasted reorganizing the structure of the content every few months to accommodate for increased articles and new topics.
Instead, a hybrid Wikipedia/blog organization would be ideal for users, and ultimately for the webmaster as well. Unfortunately, this takes more time on startup to setup, and can’t be made into a turnkey solution as easily as a pure blogging platform. If properly set up, it creates significant value for the users at only a miniscule additional cost to the webmaster, which in turn will translate to massive value to the site owner in the long run.
So as to follow my own advice, I’ll be announcing a new site in the next month that will follow this kind of aforementioned structure. I haven’t disappeared entirely 
