Cow Dung and Concentric Circle Theory
January 10, 2007 by Howard Greenstein
There are some good elements from Eric Rice’s article here about how comments and criticism change in tenor like the different wave sizes/wavelengths of the ripple of a stone thrown in a pond. (thanks to C.C. Chapman for the link to his article).
A few excerpts:
My previous post on income levels and the Long Tail had been brewing in my mind for a while, and finally found a place to jump out due to the latest observations about the comments on Amanda Congdon’s recent segment on ABCNews.com about cow dung as sustainable fuel….
He then talks about how the comments about the article can go from useful or relevant close to the context of where the story was reported, to less useful or more snarky/vicoious as you get farther away.
…
Metafilter and Valleywag are two examples of access-controlled content (need an invite), as opposed to the wide-open form of digg.com and tech news forum, Slashdot, considered by many to be much higher on the level of snark for snark’s sake.
It’s another simple example of content that starts from a different place, existing in a much wider space, getting criticized with a different intent. In fact, the commenter responsible for the comment above was the only one who commented on the actual topic of the video…
This piece is worth a read – it is tough to cut excerpts and still get the sense of it.
The comments make it even a better piece, as others have posted thoughts or disagreed.
Anyone who has watched a streamed movie of any sort knows that sometimes it can get glitch as it buffers and sometimes things get a little wonky. The stream ran very smooth except for the last 5 minutes of the film. I know it’s not just me because the theater erupted in cries of “what’s going on?”
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Nicky Philip
Wide Circles