Jim West bemoans today the “death” of the “biblioblogging” community, with emphasis on community. Jim opines that although Bible-related blogs go merrily on along (if some of them a bit abated), “bibliobloggers” are not interacting online as much as we once did.

Without getting too much into Jim’s epidemiological take on the situtation, I wonder whether his diagnosis is warranted. Or, to give a nod to Duane Smith’s abnormal interest in Mark Twain, I suspect that the reports of the “death of the ‘biblioblogging’ community” have been greatly exaggerated.

There are two publicly-accesible ways to try to gauge whether “bibliobloggers” are interacting with each other: (1) comments left on each others’ blogs, and (2) overlapping quasi-parallel posts dealing with each others’ posts.

The problem with comments is that they’re not really all that convenient to follow. Depending on what software you’re using to compose your blog, you might be able to get an e-mail notification when someone leaves a comment. However, if you then go and leave a comment interacting with that comment, the only person who gets a new e-mail notifying you of a comment update is, as far as I know, you yourself. Readers have to keep going back to the same blog entry over and over again to see if there is a new comment, and this eventually gets to be “old,” especially if there are no new interactions taking place. Ditto for leaving a comment on someone else’s blog. I read blogs powered by Blogger, Moveable Type, and WordPress (never mind Deinde’s use of phpBB), and in none of these cases do I get an e-mail notification if the blog author responds to a comment that I have left on their blog. After a certain amount of time passes—and I think for blogs that time is very short—readers stop going back to see whether new comments have been left on old posts. I also hypothesize that readers who have not left comments on a particular post are even less likely to go back and check posts for discussion. For some reason there seems to be more “buzz” on the science blogs that I read than on the Bible-related blogs that I read, but quite often (by no means always) that “buzz” consists in large measure of “me too” comments rather than substantial discussion.

As for parallel postings or cross-references, it seems pretty clear that “bibliobloggers” are at least still reading and noticing what each other are doing. In the months since the SBL meeting in Philadelphia—tagged by Jim as a watershed—we’ve seen the introduction of the montly Biblical Studies Carnival. April was the fourth month running for the carnival. Tyler Williams’s delightful April Fool’s Day joke certainly received its share of attention in the blogsophere, I thought it was hilarious, though Claude Mariottini may disagree (wink, wink). Speaking of Claude Mariottini, his posts tend to be spurred initially by things interesting him offline, but it wasn’t long ago that his post on the nephilim sparked responses from Joe Cathey and Duane Smith (who probably wouldn’t think of himself as a “biblioblogger”), to which Claude responded in turn. Jim Davila’s posts do tend to be more like news blips instead of conversations with other bloggers, but he’s given a lot of exposure to other bloggers’ comments on the Gospel of Judas, and of course Joe Cathey had his own mini-carnival about Judas a few days ago. Jim recognizes the Gospel of Judas feeding frenzy, but complains:

That is, there has been a strange silence among the bibliobloggers in terms of discussion between themselves about the document. All have spoken about it- none have spoken to other bibliobloggers about it.

Maybe that’s just because, in reality, the Gospel of Judas is just not really interesting enough to generate a conversation among us. On the other hand, I admit a little disappointment that so few bloggers seemed to show any interest in my Ten Commandments coverage. But you know, Duane Smith may be disappointed that so few bloggers seem to show much interest in the short cuneiform alphabet. All of us have our own interests, abnormal or otherwise, and so the level of discussion and interaction is likely to fluctuate.

I also wonder whether the decline of interaction that Jim bemoans may be nothing more than a part of the rhythm of the semester. Most of us who blog on biblical topics are also academics—either professors or graduate students—who are nearing the end of the current term (at least for those on the semester system). With papers coming in, final exam to write and grade, and that sort of thing, perhaps many of us are just pressed for time.

Besides, the very existence of this post ought to indicate in a kind of funky self-referential way that dialogue among “bibliobloggers” is still alive and kicking (against the goads, as it were).

Jim commented:

Regarding comments you are right on the money. My chief lament is that the collegiality and interconnectedness we shared leading up to and immediately following the SBL seems gone. Though your last point (the last sentence) proves indeed that there is some interaction.

As always, I am indebted to your clear-sightedness with which I agree 71.9899882% of the time.

Justin Jenkins commented:

I’ve noticed some of the effect Jim is talking about, but now that it is after Easter I hope some bloggers will be resurrected.

Your thoughts on the problem of “comments” really square with me — I read most of my “headlines” via RSS feeds, so the post needs to be sufficiently interesting for me to read it on the actual weblog (as this one clearly was.) Therefore, I don’t always see interesting comments. I suppose that’s my fault, but if I do happen to see some interesting comments there is no way to follow up on them as you stated, and “buzz” dies down pretty quickly — or the comments are out right ignored.

I don’t quite see the elitism, at least not by many. I don’t have a PhD in my name but have been kindly linked by a number of people that do. I also doubt that being seen as elitist is stopping anyone from posting; they are just busier I suppose.

I’d say I agree with you more like 82.346% of the time, however its heavily weighted by subject.

Kevin A. Wilson commented:

Although it would double the amount of RSS feeds we receive from each blog, many of the blogging tools, such as WordPress, do offer a RSS feed of comments.

As trackbacks and pingbacks gain ground, I think this will allow us to interact with each other through our posts instead of merely by comments. It will take a while for everyone to incorporate that technology (and I say that having just incorporated it this past weekend).

Loren Rosson III commented:

Frankly, I’m puzzled by this whole business. My perception has been that the biblioblogging community is growing, if anything. For everyone who goes on blogging sabbatical (Michael Turton, Alan Bandy) there seems to a new face to fill the void (Michael Barber, Chris Petersen). Nor have I noticed a significant decline in the interactions between bloggers. I receive about as much comments on my blog now as I always have; recently I interacted with Michael Bird’s thoughts on atonement; etc. And yes, I think the biblical studies carnivals have helped keep the community interactive.

Mark Goodacre recently mentioned that it was getting hard for him to keep up with blog reading since the community has been growing. So, indeed, maybe the growth of the community, rather than a supposed decline, has proven to be a problem for some. Here is what Mark said:

The massive, healthy and to-be-encouraged expansion of the blogosphere in our area, as in every other area, makes it impossible to engage with all the blogs one would like to engage with. I remember a time when reading the biblioblogosphere was a matter of looking at Paleojudaica, Hypotyposeis and a handful of others. On the whole, where you wanted to reference or engage with a given post, you had time to do so. Not so now…

That is to say that there is a problem with the current blog scene in Biblical Studies. The growing number of great blogs and interesting posts makes it far more likely that one can miss some gems. The Carnival steps in to help us here, and month by month isolates a few key posts of interest.