Sometimes experiments fizzle and sometimes they explode
Currently, I think the Bible Behemoth is somewhere in the middle. If you recall, I mentioned in The Next Big Thing that I was soliciting input on ways of collaborating on highlighting the best posts out there about the Bible. I tried to put the various ideas together into something called The Bible Behemoth. It is essentially a Google Reader page that shares other people’s shared feeds. Currently there are six contributors and I imagine that number will continue to grow. It is very interesting to see the posts some of my blog buddies are sharing. I’ve already discovered some new blogs that I want to follow.
To see the Bible Behemoth, visit:
- The Google Reader Page: Bible Behemoth
- There is also a blog to track questions and how-tos: The Bible Behemoth Blog.
I’m looking forward to more people signing up with an interest in Bible translation. You can see information on how to get involved here: How to use Shared items in Google Reader
posted by David Ker at 10:50 AM
4 Comments:
The difficulty for me is that people are sharing things I wouldn't share. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. I sometimes share things that I intend to read more thoroughly myself later. Also I never share anything I have written myself - since I know that I have read it already!
But I share with some inarticulated purpose and mostly rarely. I often don't even share the posts I want to comment on. Usually I star these especially when the host does not allow subscription to comments. So I don't share many of the most interesting posts (to me).
Still - there has to be a sense of the rare or the worthy or the complete and also the relevant - for me to share something. I don't want to hear about political things either in Canada or the US on a blog that has focus on the Bible or theology. At least most of the time these are local and irrelevant. BB has doubled or tripled my reading at the moment - so I am marking them all as read without reading them.
I am willing to let the experiment continue (i.e. it will stay on my reader), but I think discrimination and discretion in sharing is important for all who are linking their shared items. My policies may be influenced by this experiment but it is a wait and see for the moment.
I'm with you on that, Bob. This is very much in flux at this stage. I'd be interested to see how sharing behavior evolves. I posted briefly on this phenom here.
It's definitely messy like collabs tend to be but I'm excited about the potential.
What if someone doesn't use Google Reader? I used to but prefer Feed Demon (what a name) now.
I was glad to see one of my posts in the Behemoth list on your blog.
Jeff
I chose Google Reader because it's used by the largest number of people. Bloglines would be another choice but it doesn't have any of these features. So in my view it was better to use an existing product with long-term momentum and get people to buy into it.
I think there might be a work-around using tags but I'm not sure how one would do that.
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