Blogs are blogs if they say they are. 2007 may be the new year but the old year left us with an old discussion jumping up again. This time Zoli Erdos began the discussion with his post saying Google's Blog is not a blog. The post suggests that Google's self-proclaimed blog is not a blog because it does not enable comments. None the less, Google calls their publication a blog.

Dave Winer joins the conversation and points to his post on the topic "What makes a weblog a weblog". The functional essence of Winer's definition is "as long as the voice of a person comes through, it's a weblog." Back in February Winer engaged in a conversation about the need for blogs to have comments in order to be considered blogs. Winer said on his Scripting.com blog "whether a blog has comments or not does not effect its blogness." Read more about What is a blog?

Until recently I'd kept pace with several blogs that I'd come across for various reasons in the past. Many were former colleagues or people who I'd bumped into at one time or another. Some are interesting and good, some are more hair-shirts but enough curiosity about how people react to failure or success kept them interesting. In these traversals of the web I've come upon several sure-fire ways of making your blog fall off my RSS Reader's reading list.

Without further ado here are five surefire ways to make your blog worth less.

5. Profess knowledge of things you know little about. Just because you liked to cook mac & cheese in college and you have taken a class or two at the local chef's school doesn't mean you should start blogging a series of articles about cooking. If you must remember these are your experiences not anything related to well-researched or reasoned methods.