Should Overseas Bloggers Ping Project Petaling Street (PPS)?
BolehLand's new Speak Out section poses a very interesting question this week. Should Overseas Bloggers Ping Project Petaling Street (PPS)?
Talk about food for thought. Should they?
You might argue that the Petaling Street Project is for Malaysians, and therefore overseas bloggers should not be allowed to ping the site. You might argue that in the e-Community, there are no borders, and therefore, it doesn't matter if you come from Malaysia or from Tibet, you should be allowed to ping PPS.
The first thing to consider would be the quality of Pings. Would our stopping pings from outside Malaysia increase the quality of the blogs on PPS? It would be hard to say so. If we were to agree to this statement, what we're effectively saying is "We Malaysians have the world's best blogs. If we stop outside pings, all the posts on PPS would be from us Malaysians, and therefore would have increased quality."
But is that really the case? Can we honestly say that blogs from Malaysia are of great quality? Would we really increase the quality by stopping external pings?
Take Top Bloggers like Xia Xue, Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi and Kenny Sia for example. Kenny's the only Malaysian among that bunch.
Then again, this argument doesn't really work does it. The fact that Kenny Sia, Xia Xue, Mr Miyagi and Mr Brown all don't even need to ping PPS to get their hits shows that the top bloggers, the ones that have quality blogs won't even bother using PPS to get their pings.
Basically what I'm trying to say is, Bloggers that use PPS in the first place are those looking to increase their traffic. The ones who are trying to make it big, the way people like Kenny Sia have. Where the pings come from doesn't change the quality of the blogs. Restricting pings to Malaysian bloggers would basically mean we're missing out on a lot of opinions from other places. Keeping the pings limited to Malaysians would be almost the same as closing the door on ideas, and limiting our growth as bloggers overall.
We can also ask whether bloggers from overseas should ping blog portals in their respective countries.
Well, they should. Of course they should. But it doesn't mean that they should ONLY ping blog portals from their countries.
We have to remember that this is a blogosphere. Limiting readers to those from your own country is simply stupid. Why even bother to blog then? Should we Malaysians ONLY ping PPS? Should we Malaysians ONLY read Malaysian blogs? No!
How about the question of potentially harmful blogs from overseas? Again, are we so closed minded, that we would think that harmful blogs can only come from overseas? Are we telling ourselves that we as Malaysians live in a perfect country, where everyone follows the law and does nothing harmful?
You only need to look at the newspapers to get an answer to that. Robberies. Murders. Rape. Molest. Not too long ago I wrote about two cars being broken into. Does this harm come from overseas? No, it came from us. From Malaysians.
To say that harm comes from overseas is closed minded, hypocritical thinking. There can be harm from within too, and we should be aware of that.
BolehLand also poses the question whether overseas bloggers are part of our Malaysian Blogosphere/Malaysian Blogging Community.
Are there? To answer that, there's only one question we need to ask ourselves. Do we limit the blogs we read to those from Malaysia, or do we read other blogs as well?
I believe that while there is a Malaysian Blogosphere, this Blogosphere does not only include us Malaysians. The ones who read it are also in it. The ones who have access to it are also in it. The same applies to other Blogospheres. By reading, commenting, talking to the people from elsewhere, we are effectively part of their Blogosphere. Why should we stop them from becoming part of ours?
Then again, we can ask ourselves. Project Petaling Street was made for Malaysians. So should we allow others to ping it? Its a tough question. But then we can ask ourselves. If we do not allow others to ping it, would they even bother to come and look for blogs? What would we think if Technorati were to limit themselves to blogs from the USA.
As I said earlier. There is a lot of food for thought in this subject. There are a lot of points that can be argued. But we have to remember. Limiting PPS to Malaysians would be akin to what China did ages ago. They closed their doors to the outside world. History tells us that the closed door policy did not do much for the growth of the country.
Are we going to do the same?
All thoughts and opinions in this post are entirely mine. You might not agree with them, but that's why they're called opinions. Everyone has their own. Feel free to use the comments box to discuss.
Talk about food for thought. Should they?
You might argue that the Petaling Street Project is for Malaysians, and therefore overseas bloggers should not be allowed to ping the site. You might argue that in the e-Community, there are no borders, and therefore, it doesn't matter if you come from Malaysia or from Tibet, you should be allowed to ping PPS.
The first thing to consider would be the quality of Pings. Would our stopping pings from outside Malaysia increase the quality of the blogs on PPS? It would be hard to say so. If we were to agree to this statement, what we're effectively saying is "We Malaysians have the world's best blogs. If we stop outside pings, all the posts on PPS would be from us Malaysians, and therefore would have increased quality."
But is that really the case? Can we honestly say that blogs from Malaysia are of great quality? Would we really increase the quality by stopping external pings?
Take Top Bloggers like Xia Xue, Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi and Kenny Sia for example. Kenny's the only Malaysian among that bunch.
Then again, this argument doesn't really work does it. The fact that Kenny Sia, Xia Xue, Mr Miyagi and Mr Brown all don't even need to ping PPS to get their hits shows that the top bloggers, the ones that have quality blogs won't even bother using PPS to get their pings.
Basically what I'm trying to say is, Bloggers that use PPS in the first place are those looking to increase their traffic. The ones who are trying to make it big, the way people like Kenny Sia have. Where the pings come from doesn't change the quality of the blogs. Restricting pings to Malaysian bloggers would basically mean we're missing out on a lot of opinions from other places. Keeping the pings limited to Malaysians would be almost the same as closing the door on ideas, and limiting our growth as bloggers overall.
We can also ask whether bloggers from overseas should ping blog portals in their respective countries.
Well, they should. Of course they should. But it doesn't mean that they should ONLY ping blog portals from their countries.
We have to remember that this is a blogosphere. Limiting readers to those from your own country is simply stupid. Why even bother to blog then? Should we Malaysians ONLY ping PPS? Should we Malaysians ONLY read Malaysian blogs? No!
How about the question of potentially harmful blogs from overseas? Again, are we so closed minded, that we would think that harmful blogs can only come from overseas? Are we telling ourselves that we as Malaysians live in a perfect country, where everyone follows the law and does nothing harmful?
You only need to look at the newspapers to get an answer to that. Robberies. Murders. Rape. Molest. Not too long ago I wrote about two cars being broken into. Does this harm come from overseas? No, it came from us. From Malaysians.
To say that harm comes from overseas is closed minded, hypocritical thinking. There can be harm from within too, and we should be aware of that.
BolehLand also poses the question whether overseas bloggers are part of our Malaysian Blogosphere/Malaysian Blogging Community.
Are there? To answer that, there's only one question we need to ask ourselves. Do we limit the blogs we read to those from Malaysia, or do we read other blogs as well?
I believe that while there is a Malaysian Blogosphere, this Blogosphere does not only include us Malaysians. The ones who read it are also in it. The ones who have access to it are also in it. The same applies to other Blogospheres. By reading, commenting, talking to the people from elsewhere, we are effectively part of their Blogosphere. Why should we stop them from becoming part of ours?
Then again, we can ask ourselves. Project Petaling Street was made for Malaysians. So should we allow others to ping it? Its a tough question. But then we can ask ourselves. If we do not allow others to ping it, would they even bother to come and look for blogs? What would we think if Technorati were to limit themselves to blogs from the USA.
As I said earlier. There is a lot of food for thought in this subject. There are a lot of points that can be argued. But we have to remember. Limiting PPS to Malaysians would be akin to what China did ages ago. They closed their doors to the outside world. History tells us that the closed door policy did not do much for the growth of the country.
Are we going to do the same?
All thoughts and opinions in this post are entirely mine. You might not agree with them, but that's why they're called opinions. Everyone has their own. Feel free to use the comments box to discuss.
Dragon_4eva rambled on and on at 5:37 pm
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