Meritocracy on the Internet

Listening to an interview with Rachel Maddow, her comments about the value of blogs got me thinking. Maddow says,

"There is a bit of a meritocracy in terms of rising to the fore with opinion... in the blog world, you're going to get more attention, you're going to get more clicks, you're going to rise to prominence if what you are writing is provocative, interesting, or accurate, occasionally."

Now her job, and the job of any pundit, is to take information from various sources, synthesize it, analyze it, and present it in a digestible fashion to a specific audience. Sounds substantially similar to what community managers do when looking at player feedback, no? The difference is that pundits are looking to be interesting and provocative in order to retain their audience. CMs are looking to present accurate information on which to base critical decisions. So are "provocative, interesting, and accurate, occasionally" the criteria by which we want to sort player feedback? Is that really "merit" for our purposes?

Probably not. It is helpful to be able to see what the playerbase finds interesting or provocative - keeping tabs on that is a very important part of the job. You can earn a lot of goodwill by leveraging highly visible issues that cost little to address, and filtering the information you have by those criteria is a good way to get that pool of issues. But getting base issues - the sort of issues that make people quit, rather than rant in amusing fashion on the internet - really requires an approach that *doesn't* take into account whether or not they've been, shall we say, "politicized."

There's another point here to be made about how actual politics get done, but I'll save that one for later.

Hello, World!

Welcome to the megablog. I've merged in content from my diet-and-fitness journal, my long-moribund MMO journal, and the few posts I wrote for a multi-author online community management blog. Keeping these bits of my life separate has been handy, but it's time to move them all to one place so I can feel free to ramble about whatever's on my mind. I've also opened a Twitter account, and might possibly give in to trendiness and start a Facebook account. Look out, internets - I'm here!

Still Fuzzy

The general headaches and malaise seem to be getting better, but I'm definitely not 100% yet. I went to conditioning class last night and survived, but I don't have a ton of energy.

On the plus side, the water is pouring off - down 4.6 pounds from Monday. That leaves me only a few pounds up from where I had stalled out. My pants are still distinctly looser from where they were earlier in the year - I actually bought a pair of shorts at my old waist size and they are too loose to wear without a belt. This is heartening, even if my actual weight isn't where I'd hoped it would be at this point in the year. Hopefully with a few more months of clean eating I'll be able to break through and get down another waist size or two :)

Fuzzy

I haven't had any caffeine this week, and it hasn't been fun. I'm definitely feeling the effects of withdrawal. This usually strengthens my resolve - I don't like being so dependent on anything.

Went to karate last night and ate tolerably well yesterday. I think I do need to find a way to get back in the gym without feeling utterly wiped, but I haven't decided how yet. I need to make it through the week first!

Sun Going Down

Well, I haven't been posting much, obviously, but it's time to get back into it before winter drags me down. I don't generally have much enthusiasm these last couple of months of the year, so I'm going to try to rely on routine to help out.

I put on a few pounds from the last time I weighed in, although it'll take another day or two to shed water from last week's business trip. I'm not that far behind, but I certainly haven't gained any ground. I'd like to get back into the Zone, but this week I think I'm just going to try to cook for myself a bit and avoid fast food. I think I'm starting to get a cold or something, so I don't want to make drastic changes.

I'm also still debating going back to Crossfit. I really like it, but four days of karate in the evenings is a fair bit of exercise, and I'm not sure if I can sustain more than that. I may try, but again, not til next week at the earliest.

One thing I haven't been slacking on is my karate practice. I haven't pulled many two-hour nights, but I've been going consistently M-Th every week that I've been in town. That being said, I've missed two weeks of the last three for work reasons. There's another belt test coming up next month, but I don't believe I'll be testing. It seems a bit early to me.

Wednesday Already?

My sense of time is way off this week. Nevertheless, it's Wednesday, and I skipped Crossfit this morning so I can go to conditioning tonight. As much as I love Crossfit, the schedule as written isn't working all that well for me - I think this weekend I'm going to sit down and try to think about what I need to do that will work better with karate.

Back in the Office

I had fully intended to go work out this morning but got rousted out of bed for a work emergency, and haven't had a moment since. I will be going to practice tonight, and may try to go to the gym first, but I'm not going to count on it

I had a great trip this weekend, and was thoroughly bad. I actually didn't eat all that much - it was all the drinking that did me in. I haven't managed to get on a scale yet, but I'm sure I didn't make any progress!