Defining the J-Blogosphere

Over at her blog, Irina has charged Jewish bloggers to create the definitive Wikipedia entry about the J-Blogosphere, complete with an "ever-growing list" of Jewish blogs and the "various events that unite us, including the J [I assume she means the JIBs] and Haveil Havalim." [Anyone who doesn't know what Wikipedia is? A few hands in the back? OK--Wikipedia is a peer-written, peer-edited online encyclopedia. That's the "on one foot" definition.]

Seemingly instantly, the idea has become reality, and now it's everyone's responsibility to complete the entry. At least, to the extent that Wikipedial entries are ever really complete. Currently, the entry is a stub, which means it hasn't yet received attention from the 'pedia's editors, and "as such, do not yet contain enough information to be considered real articles." So I guess it's up to the J-bloggers now to expand the entry to enable this Pinocchio of an entry to "become a real boy" in the Wikipedian sense.

Still, much remains to be determined regarding the J-blogosphere. Is it hyphenated? Or just one word? (J-blogosphere or J-Blogosphere, or Jblogosphere or JBlogosphere?) How do you set about categorizing Jewish blogs? As the JIB nominations proved, some culture blogs are also political blogs, some personal blogs are also cultural blogs, and other blogs are so eclectic that they defy description. Plus, note this entry on "J-blogs," which Wikipedia has proposed be deleted because "Wikipedia is not a dictionary."

Plus, has anyone thought about this Jewish Encyclopedia, which began as a print version and then the contents were put online, with the Encyclopedia Powers-That-Be considering inviting the Jewish internet community to update the entries? (Via MOWoman)

Ezzie says updating the Wiki entry is easy. And in some ways, the Wiki entry is the only way anyone's going to ever have a central listing of Jewish blogs. But the task is an immense one--it should be interesting to see how things develop.

Comments

[David]

Hmm. I don't consider mine a Jewish blog, but I do occasionally blog about my Judiasm.

[Ezzie]

Thanks. The J-blog entry was my mistake - now, hopefully it will get merged with J-Blogosphere.

It should be interesting, to say the least - the hard part is figuring out where to start in explaining what it's all about. Once we have that and it's categorized a bit, it will be much easier to fit all the pieces in. As an aside, Jameel started jblogosphere.blogspot.com which would serve somewhat as a J-blog central, though we're still figuring out what that means exactly.

[Irina]

Thanks! I have a couple of ideas, which I'll post later on tonight.

[Yaron]

Just to clarify: that "stub" designation is user-editable, just like everything else; anyone on the web could un-stub the article at any time.