I found this over at LeeAnn's Cheesy Castle of Doom ^(TM). Ralex Whitlock (what sort of name is "Ralex" anyway?*) made a list of ten things that he thinks bloggers do wrong. A list of common failings, if you will. LeeAnn did a self-analysis against the list and, since I'm nothing if not a slave to rule number 1, I have too:

1. Only link to what we've already read and only say what we've already heard.

Nah. A goodly bit of my stuff is original and I don't go around parroting people via links.

2. False modesty.
False modesty? Moi? Hehe. Hahaha. Mwah hah hah hah hah!!
Um...no.

3. Clearing the archives.
Nope again. All of my tripe is out there for your enjoyment. Actually it would be a great benefit and increase usability quite a bit if bloggers (like me) cleaned out half of the garbage in their archives. 4. Become overly concerning yourself with blogging "rules."
I was guilty of this at first, before I got comfortable with blogging and with my blog. I was very worried about stepping on toes and doing something wrong. Then I figured out the great secret of blogging - be polite and all will be well. If you do mess up but you aren't a jackass about it only the jackasses will care and who really gives a shit about the jackasses?

5. Fail to follow basic punctuation rules.
Innocent! This is a pet peeve of mine too. I don't know if it's because I'm an intrinsically anal retentive personality or because I'm a hard core reader or because I genuinely love the language (probably a bit of all three) but sloppy errors irritate me. I'm not talking about mistakes or the honest errors from people who speak English as a second language - I mean careless sloppiness from writers who just don't give a damn. Can't read 'em.

6. Substitute slang for ideas.
Another one I agree with and claim innocence of. It's no secret that I abhor Hillary Clinton but I don't use "Hilldebeast" when I talk about her. I use colorful adjectives and creative invective.

7. Fail to take advantage of 95% of the blogosphere.
Not guilty, your honor. He's talking about getting your cranial feed from Instapundit and other "A List" bloggers. Take a tour of my blogroll and you'll notice a complete dearth of such blogs. I guess you could say I'm guilty of failing to take advantage of the top 5% percent of the blogosphere.

8. Become a one-note charlie.
I don't think there's any danger there. I bounce from topic to topic like Hillary Clinton dodging Whitewater questions. (See? Told you. Re: Question #6)

9. Decline to put up an "about the author" link.
I sin the opposite way. I have an entire About Me category. It is because I am so awesome. (See Question #2)

10. Decline to participate in their own comments section.
I don't comment too much in my own comments here but that's more because my posts tend to be bon mots dropped for the readers' pleasure. Over at Zero Intelligence I comment frequently because there are actual discussions on many of the posts.

(11) Bonus: Take themselves too seriously.
Nah. I'm quite aware that I'm a little fish in a little pond. And that my little pond is connected to other little ponds, some big ponds, rivers, lakes and oceans. Given all of that I still maintain that I kick serious ass.

So I guess I stack up well against Ralex's list. So do the blogs on my blogroll. Are the bad habits he lists really that common out there or do they just stick out because they're irritating? Sort of like a sore tooth - only one out of 32** hurts but that's the one you notice.

* Yes, I know it's really "R.Alex", I just find the first initial, middle name thing to be irritating as all hell. If you don't want to use your first name then don't use it. Using just the initial seems very "Rule #11" to me.

** Or less, especially in Alabama.

Posted by: Jim at 11:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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