Behind The Nihon Review

One of the things I’ve been experimenting with lately has been using Google Reader Shared Items to keep track of my own comments on the blogosphere. There are a couple of reasons I’ve started doing this, one of which is that I decided it was imperative that I had some method of keeping tabs on the comments I was leaving around the aniblogosphere. I don’t like the idea of subscribing to the comment feeds of individual posts, since it’s inevitably high maintainable, unless you have no problem with clogging up your feed reader with feeds that you generally only have a temporary interest in.

Now I’m not advocating that this is the best way to go about tracking your own blogosphere comments. In my brief research, I came across BackType, which is specifically designed for this sort of thing. There are also Wordpress plugins, but I have unanswered questions about their suitability to multi-author blogs. The same goes for BackType, which apparently searches for URL rather than alias or both. So, if you share a blog with other authors (as a lot of us do), then these services won’t discriminate… and nor are they comprehensive, possibly an innate flaw in the automated process (eg., do a BackType search for “Sorrow-kun“, and you won’t find any comments I’ve left on this very site.)

The disadvantage of using Google Reader Shared Items to keep track of your own comments is that it’s not automated, and you must do everything yourself. But it’s not any more difficult than sharing items normally. Another disadvantage also is how it might be received. The perception may be that directly sharing one’s own writing while indirectly sharing another’s article is narcissistic. I wouldn’t strongly protest that notion, which is why, right now, I’ll put the unapologetic disclaimer on this that the primary intended benefactor of compiling an account of my own wanderings through the blogosphere is myself, and any other utility is secondary. It’s not all that unlike an internet forum, in that a forum which doesn’t give you the option of being able to look up your own and sometimes other people’s past posts is a rarity. The blogosphere struggles to do this, since, unlike an internet forum which is a tangible, structured community that exists on one site, the blogosphere, as a community, is naturally fragmented and amorphous, a consequence of the fact that it exists over several websites that have no obligation to interact with each other. One might argue that blogs and forums are meant to be different. I would say, yes, but not by that much.

The advantages become apparent when trying to answer the question “why Google Reader?” The first part of the answer is that it’s pretty much become the feed reader of choice on the anime blogosphere, so sharing becomes relatively easy. The second and more important part is that it’s incredibly flexible, which gives it a lot of power. When you take a note with the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet, it puts that note onto a page which you may make public. The beauty of this is that this page has its own feed, so you can either subscribe to a person’s page of shared items or follow them directly under the “People you follow” tab, depending on your preference. You can also choose to keep your “comments” items separate from your regular shared items. Which means, there’s no need to force your own comments at the people who already follow your shared items… just use a new tag, and make the tag’s folder public. Another option is whether to make these items commentable (which, as far as I can tell, is a somewhat recent feature of Google Reader). My suggestion would be not to, since the idea of making a feed public is to give people who follow it a hook into an ongoing conversation. A new, meta conversation prompted by a comment posted on the original article is kinda beside the point, IMO… that’s pretty much how Google Reader Shared Items are already being used. How to do it:

1. If you’re unfamiliar with Google Reader and its note-taking feature, start here.

2. Access Google Reader, click “Notes” on the left side bar, find the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet and drag it onto your browser’s toolbar.

3. Immediately after posting a comment, a typical Wordpress blog will instantly redirect you to your comment’s permalink, with a fragment identifier included. For example, if the URL of the article you just commented on is “http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20090825/using-google-reader-si-to-keep-track-of-your-own-blogosphere-comments/” then you’ll be redirected to “http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20090825/using-google-reader-si-to-keep-track-of-your-own-blogosphere-comments/#comment-22xx”. Provided you don’t change anything else prior to adding your note, the comment permalink will be saved as is (which is convenient because, when you return to it, you’ll be immediately be focused to the comment within the page). TL;DR, don’t mess with the URL after posting a comment.

4. Select your comment. Click the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet. In “Add tags”, enter the name of the folder you wish to save your comment in (I use “Comments”). Using a new tag specifically for comments, different from your existing folder names, is recommended. Check or uncheck “Add to shared items”, that’s your choice. If the tagged folder is public (which I’ll get to next), it’ll be essentially shared anyway, but only from the public page (and/or its feed).

5. To put this folder onto a public page, go back to Google Reader, then click “Manage subscriptions” at the bottom of the left side bar. Click “Folders and Tags”. Click the RSS symbol next to the tag which you’re using for your comments to make it public. Click “View public page”. You now have a page which can be used to centralize your own blogosphere comments and can be shared readily.

6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 each time you leave a new comment on someone’s blog.

There are a couple of things I still haven’t got past. I can’t see a way to keep track of how many other comments an article has from your own shared items feed, which is a bit of a bummer, since my original intention was for this to replace comment feeds, but this shortcoming means that they never completely will, and you have to manually check to see if there are any subsequent comments after your own (which is annoying, since RSS should mean never having to manually check… anything). I still prefer not to use comment feeds, but the inability of a shared comment items feed to completely cover every function of a normal comment feed (and in a way which is more streamlined, organized and has more long-term utility) means that you’ll still sometimes have to make that choice for yourself. It’s also a little tricky to be perfectly consistent in what you select to share. Some sites have a nifty feature where the comments are numbered, and if you click the number, it’ll instantly select your entire comment. Most sites don’t have this convenience. I like to share my gravatar. Sharing a “reply” link that comes with sites that have threaded comments is a good idea if you want to encourage others to join in the conversation.

There are ups and downs with this system, but I find it to be a very useful way to track where I’ve been on the blogosphere. Whenever I want to refer to an article I’ve read on the blogosphere, I know that provided I’ve left a comment on it, it’s at fingertips, and looking back quickly over previous comments is sometimes a lot easier than trying to remember relevant keywords to do a search for it. It’s also just nice to be able to check instantly what I’ve said and where I’ve said it… it’s otherwise easy to forget where you’ve commented because the blogosphere is so immense. Optimistically, sharing one’s comments is yet another, less direct way to expose other people to worthwhile articles (and, I guess, more importantly, discussions) on the anime blogosphere.

With all that said and done, here’s my comments page.