To re-blog or not to re-blog?

[vb]

Is re-blogging really blogging? (or tumblogging)?

[Shadowfirebird]

One other thing: when someone reblogs something I posted, and attributes it to me, I get a real buzz out of it. It's like they rang me up and thanked me.

[Angela]

Me too! I find it neat sometimes, that something I think might not be interesting gets reblogged.

[Kaiomi]

I believe re-blogging is great, as long as you're adding your own input to the content. That way, people can read and respond to the different opinions the content has generated.

Everyone sees the world differently, and it's nice to think about something from another stance. : )

[chantelle]

Yes.
Eeverything is a repost.
You don't have to "add" in the literal sense because CONTEXT will always be your added meaning.

Just now - I reposted for the third time an image I originally posted in response to another repost and then it was posted by another person who recognized themselves in the picture and so I reposted it again.

This was on soup.io though.

[esquareda]

In my humble opinion, micro-blogging or tumblelogging is absolutely re-blogging, To me, dropping a link to something cool on the Internet is tumbling - whether I find it in my Dashboard or on another site - same, same.

[jam]

Yeah, reblogging is cool but it can get excessive sometimes imho. It gets boring when I see the same, not-so-interesting photo on every other tumblr blog I come across. Reblogging is a great tool but let's have some originality every so often. Show us something we haven't already seen 10 times before :)

[Brian Recchia]

It may not quite be "blogging", but it is, in my opinion, tumblelogging. To use Tumblr's "scrapbook" analogy, suppose you saw a page in a book that you liked. You could photocopy it and put it in your scrapbook. Does this "book" you got it from have to NOT be a scrapbook?

[jrfiction]

It's interesting to note that what most people want to see in a tumble log; credit for the creator, noting the source of the link, humility in posting and the desire to add something fresh into the mix, have been highlighted again today by John Barger in an article on wired. The first of his top ten tips for new bloggers he defines a true web log as a log of all the URLs you want to save or share.

On his blog Robot Wisdom Auxiliary all you will find is a list of links. What I prefer to read is your take on what you find, what makes it relevant to you and why you think I might find it interesting. Re-blogging mindlessly is worthless, investing a little of your self in each link taps in to our commonality and provides a hook for new pathways of communication to open up.

I like tip 3:
3. If you spend a little time searching before you post, you can probably find your idea well articulated elsewhere already.

But from my dashboard I see things a little differently. If you see things that express an idea that you have or a state of mind that you are in, don't waste that chance to share it with some one. Add something to it, be yourself and be consistent.

[Nox Dineen]

Sure it is. A lot of early blogs were pretty much lists of links, sometimes with commentary and sometimes without.

[Shadowfirebird]

Personally I don't want to comment on the links I post; at least not normally. I find that one of the things that draws me to tumblelogging rather than blogging is that I am free *not* to comment, but rather, like a newspaper, just point and say: "Lookit. Make up your own mind".

But on the other hand just posting the link is, well, cruel. "you mean I have to click on every one of these things just to see what it is?" So I try and post a small quote or write something that gives the reader an idea of why I think that the link might be interesting. Better yet, post a picture or a video from the link. Without, I hope, biasing the reader to make up their own mind about the thing.

(This often means that I end up posting a link to the article that someone *else* linked to. So automatic attribution is unlikely to ever work for me; I have to do it manually.)

[jrfiction]

I followed your link about the difference in colour perception between babies ..., because I thought it was interesting enough. I was also curious about your interest in it.

I followed the comments on the wired article and found something that was relevant, and concurred with my knowledge of the Japanese and colour perception, and how closely it tied to language.

I am replying to your comment here because I am curious about you, and what you find interesting. I might be able to build up a picture of the kinds of things you like on my dashboard, but I wouldn't be able to engage you in direct discussion unless you reciprocated. I guess it doesn't matter to me where that discussion takes place, just that we have the opportunity to converse.

Pleased to make your webby acquaintance.

[Shadowfirebird]

Likewise!

My Tumblr is pretty much summed up by an old comic-book quote: "Strange world. Let's keep it that way." Posts generally fall into three categories: 1) "The world is stranger than we know" 2) "Some people want the world to be less strange" 3) Everything else. I try to keep (3) to a minimum, but I don't obsess about it. I like to think that giving the tumblr a theme makes it more interesting, but maybe not.

There seems to be some doubt about the way Wired reported that colour perception study, but I suspect we'll eventually find that the basic idea is true. It's certainly strange that we could look at a blue wall and think "blue" rather than just blue, because we don't think about the world in that way normally. But it seems to me that language has to colour (pardon me) our perception of the world. We don't perceive the world directly, but through filters of language and expectation. Maybe that's the ultimate strangeness.