Dear Featured Questions,
I answer you, most of the time, because I can always make some dead body reference or something equally awkward, it makes me giggle and as the doctors say, laughter is the best medicine. Sometimes I secretly read the ones that friends answer, and it gives me a special tingling feeling inside, you know the ones. But lately, Ive grown more and more concerned.
Xanga, is a blogging community, and a great one at that. We have some of the most brilliant bloggers who started out, right here on these meager pages. How they would be turning in their graves (filled with money) when it comes to these so called Featured Questions.
Featured Questions should be logical, intelligent, thought provoking, and ultimately BLOG INDUCING questions. When you throw stuff at us like
"Are you a morning person or a night person?"
or
"What is the weirdest food combination you enjoy?"
I suddenly feel a marked drop in my IQ. These questions do not spur conversation, These are questions you can answer with one word, and that does NOT help in a blogging community. The Featured Questions should be a catalyst for discussion among similar bloggers.
Featured Questions should be the yeast in the rising bread of piping hot nutriment, made only by the blogging public itself. They should be topical, and relevant to what is happening right now, in our world, today.
To ask if one is a morning or a night person, is merely a passing pleasantry extended upon neighbors in line at starbucks. It is not a question to induce a series of contemplation, deliberation, contention, or controversy.
So I ask you, Dear Featured Questions, reconsider the questions you post so unconstrained. Lead us to a land where we may be inspired by the beauty of the featured questions, and let us once again drink from the tasty waters of intellect.
Sincerely and with best regards,
December
Comments (120)
There are bloggers in graves full of money? Cool.
Anyway...no kidding. I never even look at those. I have more trouble pacing myself than I do with coming up with topics.
You should have your own featured questions, december. If I did that, I would ask things that I was actually interested in like...do you fake it...or...what do you tell your guy when you aren't in the mood, but don't want to bruise his sensitive ego...or...have you ever met another xangan in real life?
i agree. more thought should be given to a question before it gets featured. soon, no one will bother looking at the questions anymore if they don't make us think... ~sarina
@A___Beautiful___Disaster -
should we? I could do that.
@TenderVoid -
thanks for coming back! and reposting your comment, sorry again
@antisoccermom - Totally. Reciprocal linking.
I suggested: "If someone killed everyone you ever loved, took everything you own, beat you and left you for dead in an ally, how would you get your revenge?"
I think that's blog worthy. I mean, I imagine you could go into pretty good detail with that one.
You rock. And this is a great post. It is true. The questions can be rather...lackluster. Kind of a like a glorified poll.
I don't think I've ever answered a featured question. Mostly, I'm too busy picking them apart...hehe
@Blue__Summer -
you Do pick them apart, dont you/.
@antisoccermom - It's fun! Hehe I know...I have a strange sense of humor. :)
Sort of off the topic but. It is amazing the number of really big time bloggers who once had a xanga. who started on xanga and now run very large blogs. The sort that actually make a regular income.
@trunthepaige -
Do you have names!? Id love to pick their brains
I will start thinking and get back with you. I cruse a lot of blogs and they all blur together. one of them I remember because of his weird name, is no longer as big as he once was. but here he is
http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com
Still bigger than most but not huge like he once was There are more, i will get back at you with them
I agree with you at some of the featured questions posted. While I answer some of them, the mundane ones I tend to cringe and make face at because...well, because it does nothing to help me expound on whatever thought's crossing my mind regarding the said featured question. Featured Questions needs to be revamped and be categorized or something.
Amen. I've been thinking the same thing, but I usually just ignore them than comment on them. But I do agree, you should deliver your own. Heck, maybe all xangans should make them up since the ones who get paid to do it are lacking imagination.
amen sista!
Agreed. Makes my brain feel like over cooked rice pudding.
I like the though provoking ones too. These "general conversation" ones aren't worth answering. I submitted a question,but I forget what it was now...
Very good post and well made point.
Agreed, I never answer and just pass them on by!
Agreed, half of them I ignore. Some of them I answer though, just for shits and giggles.
I agree.
This isn't showing up in my universal inbox...it was only when I clicked on my subcription link that I saw this post.
I do not think that I have EVER answered a featured question, or found one that I could work with, or even liked.
feel free to suggest featured questions on the chatboard - that's where all the questions come from.
@john -
Please understand that my letters are mostly satire and I dont wish to offend you or any of the xanga team. I know that you know that some of the featured questions aren't even correctly punctuated, let alone are thought provoking, which was what I understood the featured questions were supposed to be all about. The idea of getting the questions from xangans is a thoughtful idea, but really there are alot of questions out there that serve no purpose and I think it might be better to come up with questions from somewhere else. Perhaps
@FlipSideofMadness - is on to something about the categorization.