Fumier points out that Hemlock has now been posting his diary on-line for two years. For some reason, I had imagined that it was longer than that, but I’m not sure why. Like Fumier, I came across Hemlock on IceRed in the days when it was possible to have an intelligent debate there (didn’t happen often, but it wasn’t completely out of the question).
Fumier describes Hemlock as “the grandfather of Hong Kong blogging”, which I think is slightly misleading. Perhaps he did inspire other people to start blogs, but not me – what I liked about other blogs was the way they linked to each other, which is not something that Hemlock does.
BWG apparently started in 1998, long before Hemlock, and his site certainly looks more like a blog, but again it has very few links to other blogs.
One more thing that these two sites have in common is that they don’t follow the standard blogging practice of allowing comments to be posted. I know that this is open to abuse, but it is also an excellent way of connecting up blogs, especially as current and aspiring bloggers post most of the comments (in part because they can advertise their sites) with Ron being one of the most active participants in this sport.
Fumier says that he is considering dropping comments from his blog, but I think he has been talked out of it. He says he wants to retain an air of mystery, in which case one option is to allow comments but not to respond yourself.
My biggest problem (he says, finally getting to the point he wanted to make) is that I can’t resist posting comments when I disagree with people. Most recently this has been about the BBC, but I also found time to point out to Simon that he had got it wrong about UN resolution 1441. Unfortunately, people aren’t as grateful as they should be when you point these things out, and some of them even carry on arguing.
The stupid thing is that I know that the best plan is simply to avoid getting drawn into these debates. The active participants have almost certainly made up their minds already, and sadly there probably aren’t many other people following the discussion. I know from my own experience that the most disheartening thing that can happen is for a post to be ignored completely (no comments, no links, no emails), and so if I really disagree with someone it is probably best to say nothing. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting this and waste my time trying to convince people that the Licence Fee is not a tax or that UN Resolution 1441 didn’t authorize the US to invade Iraq. Stupid boy.
UPDATE: It seems that this has been read as an attack on other bloggers, when actually it is not intended that way, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I think comments are a good thing, I want people to add comments to my blog, I will carry on adding comments to other blogs, and Ron has far more visitors than me. All these things are undoubtedly true. Also, irony doesn’t always work very well in a blog.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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