Notes from the Biomass

Publishing longer articles and trains of thought, which are updated over weeks, is difficult using blogs due to their lack of versioning systems. These measures would both enhance the quality of posts, and ensure a little more persistence as well as take out the need to publish something new constantly. I would like to go back to ideas I had earlier, update the post (or work) and publish it online. In principle, you can do that well in a Wiki but I miss the comments (to particular versions) and I would like to have the edits offline and only release versions that contains significant updates and generally prefer the no-frills blog platforms to wikis.

Many blogs carry links to posts that were selected as highlights but it would be nicer to update them, wouldn't it? Taking that idea a little further, Spreeblick, an influential German blog introduced a feature that departed further from its classical diary form and introduced persistence by what is called 'Main Feature' in its redesign in November. Instead of having one line of articles, articles of higher relevance remain longer visible to the casual visitor and don't get replaced by shorter, entertaining entries or the 'one line, one link'-posts.

It is very unlikely that I am the only one who has come up with that idea. I checked for plugins for WordPress and Serendipity but did not find the Subversion like behavior that I am looking for. All hints are very welcome.

Let's face it - the current way of blogging favours new posts over development of concepts and ideas. Better non-peer reviewed scientific communication (and even the chitchat) over the internet needs enhancements to its platform too.