Some "one-note-charlies" are some of the most popular blogs out there. Take Groklaw.net for example. It all started as a Blog of a paralegal as a hobby that really wanted to voice what she thought about the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit and use her skills to research info on that subject. It's now become more of a repository of Legal information on the case.

I make something of an exception if you are an expert in the area that you post on, which I sorta said but didn't make clear. Specialization also isn't inherently bad if you're primarily collecting links. When I wrote that, I was thinking more of essayist and "thinkers" rather than linkers.

One-note charlies, even thinkers that are outside of their area of expertise, can be quite popular. But, generally speaking, they lose my interest quite quickly.

And I'm all that matters here :)

Dude -- Tony Pierce is odd! Wow!

What? I should have an about link? what?

Adrianne,
You should read the story where he meets Kurt Kobain in Heaven. Really interesting stuff!

The "About Me" being a biography. An entry about who you are and where you're coming from. An introduction to you for new readers.

Quick thoughts:

1) Agreed -- if you're not going to offer something remotely unique, why play at all?

2) What if the modesty isn't false? Humility shouldn't be a dirty word.

3) Agreed. One of many odd quirks of the short time of working with Dan Patrick was his notion that archives should be deleted. Huh?!

4) Agreed. Nobody likes a pedant, and blogging pedants are the worst.

5) It's hard to read bloggers who consistently substitute the wrong homonym for words, use poor grammar, misspell words, and misuse punctuation. Still, sometimes they are interesting enough to overcome my preference for clean copy.

6) I disagree. A person can overdo it, but sometimes a clever phrase or term rocks. Anyone who's listened to Chris Baker or Jim Rome should know what I'm talking about (yeah, maybe Rome is a bad example because he overdoes it, but sometimes he's really good). As for $AFEclear, maybe it's offensive to some, but it's also stuck among folks in Houston, and I've had contact with councilmembers who have used it in their emails. It was intended to drive home a point, and it has, effectively. There's no reason to give the Mayor free use of a term that implies "safety" when it's as much about generating revenue for the city.

7) Take advantage? That's an odd way to put it. I say read and link because of the power or originality of the linked post, not because you're trying to generate traffic. Indeed, my Ten Things list would probably include an unhealthy obsession with traffic.

8) I don't agree. I think niche blogs are where things are headed, in all sorts of fields, and that's a welcome development.

9) Agreed

10) Are there bloggers who really decline to participate in their own comments?

2) I consider comments like "Why anyone would want to read this crap as beyond me" as inherently false. Some people can pull it off (Scott Chaffin being a good example), but for most people it feels quite fake. If you really think it's crap, why not make it better? If it's something that you're inherently bad at, why not use the talents you have? It seems like an apology ("Sorry I'm not better or more entertaining") than anything else. Also, I think, anyone that has a blog must be driven in part by believing that they have a perspective that people ought to be interested in. Humility is good (indeed, I have quite a self-depricating sense of humor), but it doesn't seem to come across well most of the time when you're bashing your own blog. Feels false. Better, in my view, to avoid the subject altogether.

5) No disagreement here. There are some cases where I work around it if the blogger is good enough, but it makes it hard. I think one can go overboard in the other direction and worry too much about making everything perfect, which defeats the purpose of blogging (most such people, in my observation, actually end up giving it up).

6) If it's clever it can work for a while, but most of such things need to be retired once everyone gets it. On the dollar sign thing, I was actually thinking of "Micro$oft." In regards to Safeclear, the program is itself only a few months old and it hasn't jumped the shark. If a year from now and (heaven forbid) the program is still in place, I'd be quite tired of it.

7) Obsessing over traffic should have been on my list. I was thinking of some bloggers that complain about lack of traffic and then proceed to only "play with the big boys." That said, if two bloggers (one big and one small) make the same point equally well, I'd say you're likely to generate more traffic from the latter. And while generating traffic should not be a goal in and of itself, when one is just starting out it is of more concern than it might be to you or me and I don't consider that unjustified when the point of the blog is to be read - not necessarily by "as many people as possible" but by some, and people can't read your blog if they don't find it.

8) This is probably the one that's come back to bite me the most. I love blogs that focus on a single area, but not a single issue (or are merely the reiteration of the same point of view, over and over again). Some focused blogs are among by daily reads, but they take a lot more time and dedication than most bloggers can manage. And, as mentioned to Kavey, I have an overall preference for more eclectic Dustburys than I do for Other-Side-of-Countrys.

10) I've run in to a few and it's baffling.

It's "participle," not "participal." Otherwise, right on!

I especially appreciate your comment #1. I am new but already appreciate this problem: see http://pratie.blogspot.com/...

It's good when people actually get up off their butts and leave the house and look around and do things and then bring some ideas or news BACK to the internet instead of restlessly recycling the same snarky stories.

By the way, I had to count on my fingers to figure out which was the tenth month, is that pathetic?