Yesterday marked one year since I moved to Scienceblogs, so I was in a navel-gazing mood even before a post over at Bayblab caused a few other people around here to get all retrospective (look on my evil incestuous linking, ye mortals, and despair!). Of course, I was thinking more about the impact that hanging around here has had on me and my blogging, rather than the (allegedly negative) impact that ScienceBlogs has on the wider science blogosphere, but I couldn’t help but notice that this notion that we SciBlings form an exclusive, self-referential clique who have sold out to The Man has resonated, at least a little, with people whose opinions I respect. This makes me wonder: does Scienceblogs really look so ugly from the outside?
In one sense, this debate seems to at least partly overlap with some of the concerns surrounding the ResearchBlogging project: the risk of using different groupings and affiliations within the science blogosphere to define what is “good” science blogging, and what is not, rather than celebrating the diversity of approaches and ideas that they represent. In this case, the complaint is curiously double-edged. On the one hand, ScienceBloggers have allegedly been corrupted from the One True Path by Mammon, and spend too much time posting about such dirty and impure topics as politics, religion and our lives outside of science in a bid to drive up traffic. On the other, people are simultaneously chafing under the peception that “the ScienceBloggers” consider themselves to be the science bloggers, and thus we mainly ignore those outside the SEED servers in favour of cliquey cross-linking.
If you have strong ideas about what science blogging should be, and a prominent outpost like ScienceBlogs does not adhere to it, then I can see that that could be a little distressing, particularly in terms of the way that it might shape the outside world’s view of what science blogging is (if they have any view beyond “what’s that?”). Of course, it’s hard to believe that there isn’t someone around here who approaches your ideal*, since we’re far from being a tribe of mini-PZs. My sympathy is also somewhat eroded by this notion that the only reason for a scientist to write about “populist” issues is to drive up traffic. Clearly, there’s no other reason why a scientist would be interested in writing about these things, such as finding them interesting, and important, and wanting to push the ideas and perspective of science more prominently into the public conciousness. Given that the SEED byline is “Science is Culture”, is it really such a surprise that they are going to look for science bloggers who sometimes engage with cultural issues?
Just for the record, here are my five most viewed posts from the past year:
A tale of two volcanoes
What on Google Earth?
Annoying Misconceptions in Geology
The Art of Palaeomagic
Journey to the bottom of the Cambrian
Hopefully that demonstrates that despite ample evidence that posting Britney Spears pictures is the true key to driving up your traffic numbers, I write about things which interest me rather than the things that I think will get me more page views. I’d probably get it wrong anyway: I never would have guessed the identity of my most popular post in the last 12 months (which has turned out to be a bit of a sleeper hit: it’s recently been getting more page views – from an unknown source – than it did when I first posted it). That isn’t to say that I don’t take audience response into account, because the Geopuzzle series was directly inspired by the popularity – also surprising – of number 2. But it’s not my only consideration. It can’t be, because however much you think SEED is paying me, I suspect you’re overestimating it by a factor of lots. I feel no real pressure to shape what I write based on annual sums that I could earn by working at McDonalds for a weekend. With looong lunch breaks.
As for the “clique” thing, I do have some perspective on this myself, as prior to last March, I spent a year observing the collective from without. I don’t remember thinking of them as particularly insular, especially since I’d received links from a couple of them, but I must have perceived that there was some sort of collegial spirit in operation, because one of the main reasons that I accepted the invitation to join – once I’d sobered up** – was the chance to be part of that community. But that was never in the sense of “Huzzah! I’ve joined the real science bloggers now” – I was just excited by the opportunity to interact with all these smart and talented people who shared my enthusiasm for public outreach, and to learn from them. But I don’t believe that it’s led me to turn my back on those outside the SEED stable: indeed, I’ve always viewed being on ScienceBlogs as an opportunity to share any extra attention that I might get out of it with the rest of the geology bloggers out there. I’d like to think I’ve at least had a small part to play in the growth of the geoblogsophere – from a certain point of view, another cliquey in-group which spends its entire time cross-linking to, and commenting on, each others’ posts.
I don’t consider myself to be particularly special in this regard – I’ve come across a lot of good writing via public and private links provided by my SciBlings. I can hardly claim completely objectivity on these issues, but having mulled this over I really do think that this is more about people feeling excluded rather than actually being excluded. That doesn’t mean that these concerns should be dismissed, rather that people should realise that most of us are happy to promote good science writing wherever it should pop up on the web. You may feel that I’ve lucked out by getting a gig in a relatively high-profile part of the blogosphere, but truly, I’m always willing to share that luck around.
*Unless your ideal is, in fact, you. But that would be tremendously cynical of me, wouldn’t it?
**I first read the invitation e-mail at 2:00 am on a Saturday morning, after a night out in a pub with a very good selection of real ales. Which is probably why it seemed like a good idea to check my e-mail at 2:00 am on a Saturday morning.
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