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Dave Winer have a view that there is insufficient great blogging. And in his definition:

  1. People talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course).
  2. Asking hard questions that powerful people might not want to be asked.
  3. Saying things that few people have the courage to say.

I view blogging as building upon human knowledge. And knowledge is subjective. Teenagers blogging about their everyday life may be “noise” to me, but to a social scientist, such “noise” are raw research material. On a whole, there should be a common understanding of blogged content that are beneficial to society, locally and globally.

For example, I read treehugger everyday and do recommend it for anyone who wants to broaden their understanding of conservation. On a more narrower scope, I follows Damn Interesting because of damn interesting articles. And of course I recommend anyone who wants to up their geek level to read that too. Be warned, it can be a terrible time sink for first time readers.

Great blogging is essential for facts and expert opinions to surface from the many information sources that are on the net. Asking hard questions and and having courageous comments on issues according to Dave Winer also makes for great blogging. I believe the first step is for the writer of such questions and comments to truthfully identify themselves. From which such hard questions and comments will bear more weight.

Apply to the local context, it is essential that Singapore have bloggers who can practise the above. It is a accepted truth that Singaporeans complain a lot and many blog posts can come across as venting of anger, or at least injustice. As a commercially competitive society, we also have bloggers who blogs for commerical interest, doing product reviews and such on one hand, and shamelessly promoting their “guru skills” on the other extreme.

Blogs are cost effective in creating content and giving access to the public and well as providing the necessary archiving features. It enables the people voices to be heard by other people. Bloggers are plenty now. We need are the right bloggers to do great blogging and for bloggers to acknowledge great blogging.