Communities, shared spaces and weblog reading, I

Some of the first posts here will be prior writings that I have posted elsewhere.
I want to archive some stuff. But feel free to comment at any time.

The Problem

Thank you so much for an opportunity to discuss some aspects of weblogs.

I too am learning about blogs and have no great insight about making a blog top the charts. Sorry. But please read on…

The first point I want to make is the concept of blogs being communities Communities, shared spaces and weblog reading. If blogs are little microcisms of society with no boundries, then how does the individual find his “home” and his relationship to his neighbors?

"Can blogging replace communities of practice?" says it nicely about prior attempts to create virtual communities...

Before the development of weblogs, "online community" tools like forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards were predominantly used for community building. Experience seems to show that weblogs are proving far more effective in creating meaningful interpersonal connections than centralized community spaces on the web. Can networks of bloggers be seen as the future of online communities?

I thinks the writer didn't address the other virtual communities such as friendster or Tickle. But let us get back to questions of blogs and how to find the right one.

There seems to be a plethora of search engines and directories (also) and getting RSS feeds and table of contents and weblog ranking system and monitor and keep an eye on your favorite weblogs or create your own Bloglines page and lastly reviews of blogs and of note The GeoURL ICBM Address Server.

But do any of these help you find the right weblog for yourself and where you will feel at home? What is the best way to find alsoalso? Can a key word search find it? Will reading every review in chronological order do it? Will looking through directories find it? Which category will it be in? In Blogorama they have categories: feminism, left, right, and policy. For PunditDrome: liberal, conservative, GLB&TG and centrist/libertarian. Which brings up how do centrist and libertarians get put in the same category? Which one does Also Also fit into?

For now I don't see a good way for customers (potential residents) to find the house (blog or community of blogs) of their dreams. Now it comes down to either picking the highest ranked or most linked or most traffic etc. Instead of doing the random walk of a drunk, it would be nice to direct an individual in the right direction. (Not noted above) there is some attempts to follow behind the footseps of someone else that came before you as in a search party or social bookmarks.

One last question for now. I have been trying to do a taxonomy of the political blogs as my first step into 10 or less categories.

What I think will cover the political spectrum without breaking into advocacy groups is:

*Left

*Right

*Center/Moderate

*Independent/Reform

*Libertarian

*Green/Environmental/Animal Rights

*Mixed

*Policy

*International

*Advocacy (Including religion, GLB, feminism)

What do you think?