Back in October, I read Jakob Nielsen<\/a>‘s warnings about the Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability<\/a>.<\/p>\n I thought: “Hey, that would make an moderately interesting blog article, scoring myself out of ten. Let’s see, I fail #2, #3, #4, #5 and #8, but I have a spirited defence for some of them.”<\/p>\n For example, I avoid #2 to reduce problems with #9, which I mention in my solution to #1<\/a>. (Oh dear, I suspect I just lost half my remaining audience with that sentence.)<\/p>\n The very next day, I read Jeff Atwood<\/a>‘s blog article<\/a> on the very same topic. He’s beaten me to it.<\/p>\n Atwood admitted to failing #2 and #5 on his Coding Horror blog. (He’s since addressed #2.<\/a>) In a recent comment<\/a> on this blog<\/em>, he reiterated the need for a “greatest hits” list (#5). He also points out the omission of “disabling comments” as another mistake.<\/p>\n I should listen to Jakob Nielsen because if you type “Jakob” into Google, he’s the top hit. You don’t get much more authoritative than that.<\/p>\n I should listen to Jeff Atwood he has shown the ability to make an article into one of my “greatest hits”, from a popularity perspective, simply by whether he deigns to reference one of my pages on his site, and thus sends a small fraction of his readers my way!<\/p>\n Because I am not particularly proud of the most popular hits – I am not convinced that they are my best work.<\/p>\n Let’s look at them now:<\/p>\n Rather than a popularity rating, perhaps I need to use a personal rating system of what articles I<\/em> consider classic hits.<\/p>\n I just wish I could improve my story-telling<\/a> so that it could rate better<\/a> when compared to the geeky<\/a> articles. I have more fun<\/em> writing the stories.<\/p>\n Perhaps my real fear is that I don’t think I can churn out high-quality blog articles at the same rate as other techie bloggers, including Nielsen and Atwood.<\/p>\n That brings me to mistake #8. I chronically mix topics. I don’t need a top 5 list of articles. I need a top 5 list of puzzle discussion, a top 5 list of usability posts, a top 5 list of geek-related stories, a top 5 list of non-geek stories, etc. <\/p>\n I have been considering Nielsen’s advice to split multi-topic blogs into several separate blogs with some fear and uncertainty. <\/p>\n\n
How did I score?<\/h2>\n
Atwood Tells Me What To Do<\/h2>\n
Why should I listen to these guys?<\/h2>\n
Why shouldn’t I listen to these guys?<\/h2>\n
\n
What Should I Do?<\/h2>\n
Variety of Topics<\/h2>\n