The Copenhagen Project

Whereas Google News and Techmeme shared the fundamental characteristic of beeing edited by an algorithm, Boing Boing and MetaFilter shares the wide definition of beeing weblogs. But how well does the definition of a weblog hold up when we apply our model to the sites?

As can be seen from the above table, there are two fundamentally differences between the two sites. First of all, Boing Boing is edited by a small number of editors, whereas MetaFilter is edited by anyone who bothers to participate. That’s a pretty huge difference in terms of site dynamics. Secondly, but closely related to the first one, not only does users at MetaFilter edit the site, they also provide the original content.

In that way MetaFilter’s media type is the most open that our model can represent – everything is decided by users, including layout changes, banning of trolls, content etc. Boing Boing’s media type on the other hand shares the common characteristic of medias before the Internet age, as there is an editorial board that produces a final product.

Why, then, does Boing Boing and MetaFilter still feel very much alike? First of all it’s in the presentation of information. The content at both sites isn’t prioritized, whereas content in a traditional media type - e.g. The New York Times – is. And then there’s the social aspects. Both Boing Boing and MetaFilter allows social interaction around their content. So if we look at the aspects of presentation and social interaction, Boing Boing and MetaFilter is identical.

But if we look at the editorial structures, we see that Boing Boing and MetaFilter is fundamentally different. Interestingly we can also see that the editorial structures of Boing Boing and The New York Times are identical. They are both based on a central editorial board that produces the content and edits it into a final product.

Comparing MetaFilter and The New York Times we see that they are very different from each other, whereas Boing Boing is kind of “in the middle”.

If the New York Times decided to omit it’s prioritized frontpage and allow commenting, their media type would be the same as Boing Boing’s - it would be a standard weblog. If it wanted to be as MetaFilter they would have to go much further than that and fire all it’s journalists and editors and give the users the power. I’m not in any way saying that The New York Times should do any of this. I’m just suggesting that editorial changes and differences according to our model might be more fundamental than those regarding presentation.

If we regard Boing Boing as a standard weblog, how much of a weblog is MetaFilter and The New York Times then? In terms of social interaction, MetaFilter is a weblog whereas The New York Times isn’t. But if we look at the editorial structures, we see that The New York Times is more of an weblog than MetaFilter is.

Conclusion: A weblog isn’t just a weblog, and a newspaper site isn’t just a newspaper site. It’s much more complex than that.