{"id":5623,"date":"2017-04-19T13:39:39","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/?p=5623"},"modified":"2017-04-19T13:40:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:40:11","slug":"genealogy-blog-reading-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/genealogy-blog-reading-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy Blog Reading Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Closeup<\/a><\/p>\n

A few days ago, I posted What Happened to Genealogy Blogging?<\/a> because I wanted to know why so many genealogy bloggers that I follow hadn\u2019t posted in over a year. A flood of comments came in sharing all sorts of wisdom, which you can read about in my post Follow Up & Reflection on \u2018What Happened to Genealogy Blogging?\u2019<\/a> In addition to answering my initial question, I came across several comments about blog reading; a handful of people like me hadn\u2019t read any genealogy blogs in quite some time (and most didn\u2019t have plans to return for various reasons). This got me thinking about why I stopped, why I\u2019m trying to get back to reading genealogy blogs, and what my preferences are. I thought I\u2019d share my philosophy.<\/p>\n

I actually talked a little about blog reading in my post Reevaluating Life: Why \u2018Friday Finds\u2019 Series Will Be Discontinued Beginning January 1<\/a>, which I wrote at the end of 2015. When I wrote that post, my intent wasn\u2019t to stop reading blogs altogether. My plan was to \u201cclean out my blog reader to remove blogs that do not fit my current interests\u201d so I could better manage my reading time and focus on the things I was really interested in reading about. If your math is good, and you read Saturday\u2019s post, then you know that I never did get around to that task of cleaning out my reader back at the end of 2015. I was so overwhelmed that I kept putting it off and basically just stopped reading altogether. Almost 18 months later, and I have finally started to whittle my way through those 600+ blogs. I\u2019m down to just under 250, which of course still seems like a lot.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing. I personally like a wide variety of genealogy blogs, hence the reason I had over 600 in my reader until last week. I like to read about other peoples\u2019 ancestors, even if they have no relevance to me personally, because that\u2019s how I learn about records, methodology, telling my own stories, etc. I like bloggers who write instructional and\/or informational posts. I like learning about different locations, even if not relevant to my research. And for the most part, in get a lot of relevant news items from genealogy blogs. All that said, this is why I was incredibly bummed when I saw so many blogs fall off\u2014350 from just the ones I subscribed to. Some of my favorite \u201cmust reads\u201d hadn\u2019t posted at all in my 18-month absence from reading; I was truly stunned! Now, some I know personally, and know of things going on with them, so those didn\u2019t surprise me, but that was only a handful of the 350.<\/p>\n

Someone asked how I could possibly manage to read 600+ blogs. The number of blogs perhaps isn\u2019t the right perspective, since not everyone posts everyday, and as I recently found out, over half of them hadn\u2019t published in over two years from the present day. It\u2019s probably easier to think in terms of the average number of new posts per day. I wish I had more accurate numbers, but I\u2019ll take a stab at it to illustrate. In my 2015 post I mentioned that my reader had reached over 2,000 unread posts, but that\u2019s not really reflective of reality. First, that figure pertained to all<\/em> the blogs I follow, which are more than just genealogy blogs. And second, that number was what I usually saw when I went weeks without reading. And since I\u2019m not quite caught up with reading, I can\u2019t come up with an average number at the moment. But, let\u2019s just pretend that of those 2,000 posts, 1,500 were from genealogy blogs, and I was two weeks (or 14 days behind). That would mean that on average, there were a little over 100 new posts each day. That may still seem like a lot, but I don\u2019t READ every single post. I have my reader set so I can see the title and a preview, which I skim and determine if I want to read the post or not. Thinking back, I\u2019d estimate that I maybe READ 10 to 12 posts each day; when time was short, I\u2019d flag the ones I was interested in and save them for another day. If I didn\u2019t have a blog reader to manage all of my blog feeds, I probably wouldn\u2019t read many blogs, if any at all.<\/p>\n

I knew that cleaning out my reader wouldn\u2019t necessarily reduce the number of average posts per day, but it will reduce the clutter. First, on my gReader app, I don\u2019t think I can search for a particular blog. So if I wanted to look for a particular blog, I\u2019d have to scroll through a list of 600 blogs to find it. Since many of the blogs had been in decline or abandoned (remember over 50 haven\u2019t been posted to in over four years) and some no longer held my interest, it was silly to keep them in my list. Second, for the blogs that I really don\u2019t find helpful, it was just more titles\/previews I had to read through to get to the good stuff. In essence I was looking to be more efficient. Now that I have finally gotten around to cleaning out my reader, I\u2019m hoping that I will be able to save some time and keep up.<\/p>\n

For most of the people who mentioned that they no longer read blogs, the primary reason was because of a lack of time (shocker, right?). My only suggestion is to do what I did\u2014get picky and only follow the ones that provide value to you in accordance with your definition of value. That\u2019s what I did. It was hard (there were a few that were hard for me to remove, but it had been years since they\u2019d posted) and it took several hours for me to go through all those blogs. But I feel liberated and no longer overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

Another interesting comment related to blog reading was the frustration by some about bloggers who pretty much only post press releases about products, events, etc. It is frustrating to see the same title 20 times when scrolling though your reader, but I suppose you only need to read one of them. When I cleaned out my reader, I removed blogs that only posted these types of posts. In many cases, I actually get the press releases from the organization\/company, so it\u2019s usually old news to me. And, for those that I don\u2019t receive, I can read them on blogs that also provide other meaningful content or head over to GeneaPress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the process of getting caught up on my reading, and already I know my decision to get back into reading blogs is a good one. While I do see things on Facebook, I have so many friends that I really don\u2019t see much, and honestly, I\u2019m not on Facebook all that much. Reading blogs used to help me keep up with the genealogy community. I literally feel like I\u2019ve been living under a rock for the last 18 months! Occasionally I catch something on Facebook, and think, \u201cwhoa, I didn\u2019t get that<\/em> memo!\u201d I\u2019ve only made a dent in the unread posts, but already I feel like I\u2019m \u201cin the know\u201d again. I\u2019ve also found some great posts that will help me on my genealogy journey. Knowing that I\u2019ve probably missed a ton of stuff in my 18-month absence from blog reading really irks me. But it is what it is, and I\u2019m moving forward and loving it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I posted What Happened to Genealogy Blogging? because I wanted to know why so many genealogy bloggers that I follow hadn\u2019t posted in over a year. A flood of comments came in sharing all sorts of wisdom, which you can read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genblog","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-1sH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5625,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5623\/revisions\/5625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}