But taking it in this aspect brings out the social talents that bloggers have. Blog entries are actually conversation igniters wherein a topic is being opened for discussion through the primary insights of a blogger. Such can be compared to actual life conversations where people who are not interested would simply ignore the topic at hand.

On the other hand, people who always make it a point to stress their own opinion and views will most likely be the starting point for a good exchange of ideas and opinion.

One of the things that some bloggers do to fight spam is simply turn of their comments section. Now, I don’t know about you, but turning off the comment section is just not an option I will ever consider, after all how will (real) readers be able to provide their (sometimes) valuable feedback easily (no one really likes to email and anyway posting your email can lead to spam in your email!).

Another thing that bloggers do is to moderate their comments. Now this is what we do here but this is not a good option for everyone, especially those who do not the time to browse through comments, which of course contains spam that Akismet failed to catch, and approve or disapprove them.

So what this leaves us with is re-CAPTCHA. re-CAPTCHA is a an anti-spam technology that requires people to type in the letters/words/numbers they see on the screen before the comment can be posted. This ensures that the comment isn’t automated and the the commenter is a real live person. It may be seen by some as cumbersome but it really is a good compromise between having to wait for comment approval and no sort of moderation at all. The only catch though is that people who link drop and provide no real valuable comments can not be filtered through re-CAPTCHA. However, at least that leaves you with a lot less spam to deal with.

The ironic thing was that I clicked on a link that was supposed to be giving tips on blogging and contests. I guess the blogger, whose good enough to give tips, didn’t even know the first rule of blogging: Don’t violate rules and if you do, don’t get caught! I mean isn’t that the rule in life?

Anyway this made me think and I realized that I personally haven’t even read Wordpress fine print in its entirety. Come on, who has? The fact that no one really reads every site’s Terms and Conditions doesn’t excuse anyone from suffering the consequences when rules are violated. We all know after all that ignorance of the law excuses no one.

So what does this mean? It simply means that we should all get our act together and start reading the fine print. Starting with that of the services we use to create and maintain our blog – from the hosting service to feed readers and search engines. At least read the most important parts, which for me is the privacy part and the responsibilities part, which is where we find the DONTs.

For now here are some of the DONTs listed on Wordpress’ Terms and Conditions:

1. infringing on proprietary rights
2. content that contains or installs any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content
3. spam
4. content that is pornographic, libelous or defamatory, contains threats or incites violence towards individuals or entities, and violates the privacy or publicity rights of any third party
5. blog name that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company

Problogging is categorizing bloggers and writers in a different aspect since they are fully aware of what to blog and steps to undertake to be able to produce the quality content and reliable information needed by people who are looking for juicy information outside that of the usual reference sites and materials that people would immediately turn to.

Hence, credibility is really at stake thus it would depend on the person tagged as a professional blogger to safeguard his interest of being categorized under that distinction of problogging.

[tags]problogging, problogger, blogger jobs, quality content, content writing, article writing[/tags]

Varying opinions and points of view will be normal. A person would write according to what he believes and understands. The opinions will always be up to criticism regardless if they are good or bad. But whatever the case may be, it is respecting what the person believes in and not what readers would know about the subject matter. Besides there will always be the comments portion to stress their ideas, something that would entice a good discussion between the blogger and the reader.

[tags]problogging, quality content, sense, blogger, blogging, blogger jobs[/tags]

Blogging may be known as a freelance style of composing articles of any choice, but stressing facts rather than fiction would be a better way to offer for readers who are after so much information. Fiction will always be present for some, but this would only prove that the quality of content has no real basis but rather is just a brainstorm coming from one person�s head.

It is not bad to prevent ideas from being emphasized, but sometimes, they should be categorized and chosen properly. Not all people may be interested in the thoughts circulating the mind of other people since they are more inclined towards concrete facts.

Basis for this is that they would bring the solicited information to their real lives and facts are what help people build on anything they would think of undertaking. Essence and quality of information from good and well-written content will always have a bearing or purpose. This is what probloggers must always bear in mind.

[tags]fact, fiction, content, article writing, blogger, problogging[/tags]

Blogging is a test or practice for the use of grammatical structures as well. If there is one thing that people are quite sensitive and particular about today, that is of properly stressing facts that are essential for a person to be able to understand messages and ideas coming from what they actually read.

Blogging becomes an investment in a way because it not only hones up the mind and language capabilities of a person but provides samples which can be accommodated and used by groups that put premium towards quality content.

[tags]problogging, problogger, blogging, blog marketing[/tags]

Blogging may not sit well with most people but the overall content is really more on the point of view of one person only. These views mostly depend on the immediate understanding of a blogger in any category to which he would want to specialize.

Getting conflicting feedback with regards to posts made is only normal. The view of one blogger is not the view of other people regarding certain topics. Many would get wise crack comments and reactions but the bottom line is really more on being able to stress on a point he believes in and has experienced. Put altogether, such points are valid and argumentative, but not all bloggers and people would have the same understanding and experiences to solidify the claim of one person only.

[tags]problogging, blogger, content management, quality management[/tags]

Keyword repetition has been the essential secret towards making a site optimized. Among the hard parts of making quality and optimized sites for such requirements is that of combining both keyword use requirements with content. Ideally, the gist content of the entire composition would be up for scrutiny, especially for some who misinterpret such postings as splogs.

Classifying them into authentic compositions rather than spam blogs is hard to explain indeed. Only after reading the entire entry and understanding what the message is really about will they appreciate that such is a certified blog entry and not a spam blog entry or splogs for short.

[tags]splogs, spam blogs, spam, problogging[/tags]

Still on the topic of sploggers, the head lemur, Allan Herrell, has been writing about his experience with a particular splogging network. He has been writing about a particular blogging network, actually. As he pointed out in Splogger John Bransford, Chronic News and the head lemur:

John Bransford has not contacted me either as an individual, owner of ChronicNews.com, Phoenixsnews.com or any other entity to obtain permission to republish my material on his network of splogs. In every case that permission is denied now and until the heat death of the universe.

Allan Herrell also made sure that on his sidebar, there is the button that says “Some Rights Reserved.” I suppose that if you are mainly someone who uses a blog reader for personal purposes, you wouldn’t bother with that. However, if you are someone who likes aggregating material for your ‘network’ you would have to think again. And again. And again.

Upon reading such blog entries, it made me wonder. What makes up a blogging network? Who defines it? How would we even verify such things? What about those who aspire to either become part of a blogging network or a blog ‘overlord’ so to speak?

Maybe those questions would be more on the entire philosophy of blogging and also the business-side of blogging. Those questions are rather general and ask the rationale behind things. If you are a problogger, you know that there are some things that you can do and cannot do — a matter of ethics, as some people would say. You know that there are limits to how much freedom you can have and how much freedom you can also give to people in terms of access to your blog.

In any case, just think about it. Have you seen people who put up networks of splogs? Is there a pattern? Have you become a ‘part’ of that blogging network? If you are apparently part of one, what will you do? Allan Herrell tried to get in touch with the splog network overlord and he really tried to do something about it, as you can see the chronicles on his blog. Bloggers really seemed concerned about their content appearing on splogs because it potentially could damage one’s reputation. Imagine if they associate your blog with a splog — your credibility would be at stake.

For those who would like to make a network of blogs:
If you want individual bloggers to join your network, scraping off their feeds is definitely not the way to do it. It is really so much better that you contact them and find out if they are interested in joining you. You better make sure that you give a win-win situation so that the bloggers will know you are not taking advantage of them by either abusing them (using their content to benefit you) and that you are sincere in your offer.

For individual bloggers whose content appear on splogs:
Though you might not be able to track down each of those sploggers but the moment you do find out your content is being scraped, you could do several things:

• Email the splogger about it and talk about it.
• Blog about your case (like what Allan Herrell did, somewhat recently).
• Track down the splogger’s account on Google Adsense and DMCA it (as suggested by Jonathan Bailey).