“Just Wanking”

There’s a fun, albeit somewhat uncomfortable conversation going on among some political blogs I read, and it’s about how much blogging is too much. It started with this:

I’m privileged to have a job that I really enjoy. But at the same time, I would prefer to write somewhat less—this pace is stressful and doesn’t leave me as much time to pursue other projects and interests. But though I would prefer to write somewhat less, I have a stronger second-order preference to produce a blog that’s competitive with other major offerings on the internet. And over the years competition between bloggers has led to escalating word-counts. The resulting situation isn’t terrible, there are lots of people you should cry for before you get to me, but basically we bloggers are engaged in a red queen’s race where we all need to keep trying harder and harder just to maintain our positions.

Then it went to this:

The blogosphere would be a better place if everyone took a deep breath and decided that quality was more important than boosting traffic by simply having a post — any post — on every news event of the day. Slow down and think instead!

And today we get this:

Picking up from the Kevin Drum-Matt Yglesias exchange on the Red-Queen race of contemporary pro-blogging, I will name names of people who blog too much among the folks I read. Some of the people are folks whose writing I’ve long enjoyed but whom I’ve practically given up on reading because, when faced with a count of 30 items in Google Reader – since breakfast – the heart sinks and the mind quails . . . It’s much easier to just click the “Mark All Read” button and resolve to catch the next batch. . . . Kevin Drum himself is kind of on the edge. He’s been known to top ten posts a day, and my rule of thumb is, once you hit double digits you’re just wanking . . . In the spirit of this age of economic restructuring, I will simply declare how often people may blog. Most of you should average four to six posts a day. If you’re a group blog, you may post once an hour.

Hurm. This is post eleven for the day. Thirteen yesterday. I suppose that’s pretty wankeriffic. In my defense, a lot of them are short posts and, hey, it’s baseball, which beats the heck out of dense wordiness about the budget and deterring Iran or what have you.

Still, I’ve been wondering lately if less is more. Anyone have any thoughts on that? And I promise, this is my last post of the day.