If you blog on a topic followed by enough of the right kind of people, you may be providing fertile ground for a lively community to take root and grow without any further intevention required. One of the most remarkable examples of that is the Wunder Blog of by Dr. Jeff Masters, the meteorologist founder of Weather Underground.
Jeff’s steady and knowledgeable accounts of extreme weather are both technically deep, editorially satisfying and educationally rich. He attracts a legion of professional, semi-pro and amateur weather freaks who begin by commenting on Masters’ articles but then relax into extended “Dogpatch” conversations about weather developments they are tracking on their own. Or about climate change. Or diesel prices. There are many regulars and old relationships in the community, and comments to one blog post may reach well into the hundreds (the Typhoon Nargis post currently has 930) before a new article sparks a new round of conversations.
Jeff’s a good blogger, not posting unless he has something in the real world to post about, and keeping his articles short, sweet and informative. His community is made up of people who are glad they found one another and a place around which they can interact while feeling perfectly at home. Weather is their thing.
For a long time, I thought nothing could replace asynchronous conferencing as an online platform for discussion and community aggregation. These days, a good blog seems to serve the same purpose, even with its very limited feature set for commenting. Just another illustration that it’s really all about the people and the topic.
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