I don't mean why I don't play in Constant Con. I don't do that because of (1) No webcam; (2) No mic or headset; (3) No predictable schedule or guarantee of uninterrupted play. I think I've mentioned before that I hope to be able to play online at some point, so I pretty much add everyone who adds me and is obviously part of the RPG community to my "RPG" circle.
No, I'm referring to the so-called exodus to G+ away from the blogs that everyone is talking about. I don't read my G+ streams all that often, and although I've posted comments, none of the RPG people have seen them. The reason for all of this has to do with circles, and how people apparently aren't using them.
Zak uses them. I haven't added him on G+ yet (out of sheer laziness, really,) but I've seen his notice that anyone who adds him should let him know what circles they want to be in, so that they will see the messages he posts on that topic. Because, you know, Zak probably has RPG friends and co-worker friends and maybe several other kinds of friends, too, so he doesn't want to flood everyone with everything he posts.
I don't see that many other people do that. So, since I've already added a *lot* of gamers on G+, I get a few posts on D&D and lots of posts about stuff I don't care about.
Now, if I griped at everyone on G+ to please filter their posts, I'd probably get dropped by hoards of people, which I suppose partially fixes that problem. But really, I don't want to be mean. So, what I will probably do is create another circle. Everyone who is a gamer gets in the RPG circle, just like now, but the new circle will only be for people who either mostly post Stuff I'm interested in, or who seem to be using circles to filter their posts. And then I exclude the RPG circle from my main stream, so that I don't have to wade through tons of posts to find the sort of stuff I'd normally be reading on blogs.
An inbox circle and an outbox circle are the key to using G+ well, I think.
ReplyDeleteI much prefer blogs for more involved work, but G+ works well for instant feedback (the barrier to commenting is so much smaller).
I'm trying out the new DnD circle alongside my RPG circle (I guess the equivalent of your inbox/outbox) to see how it goes. I have a couple other circles, though, some of which are probably "inboxes" and some are probably "outboxes".
DeleteTo those who think G+ is the bees' knees:
ReplyDelete"Yes, let's steer away from open blogs and migrate to a closed platform so Google can decide at random to shut it down and we'll lose years worth of content. Great idea."
@David
DeleteI'm a pretty heavy user of G+, but it is not a replacement for blogs at all for me. It's a different thing--a more transient form of conversation. Not a place for one to put something to reference later. I often use it to "pretest" ideas before writing a full post. One definitely shouldn't put data on G+ that one wants to maintain.
@David: Of course, that also applies to Blogger (owned by Google.)
DeleteThe problem is that, to do a blog right and remove fears of losing all your content, you'd have to pay for web hosting and run your own software. Preferably software that doesn't rely on a database of some kind, which
can get corrupted.
Yeah, I have less faith in Google maintaining Blogger right now than I do in then maintaining G+. This is (one of the reasons) why I did exactly what Talysman mentions above and moved my blog off of Blogger recently.
DeleteDatabase corruption can easily be handled by good backup procedures.
I'm interested in what service you decided to use?
Delete