Recently, I’ve been thinking about writing some critical reviews of other religious blogs. But what makes for a good religious blog? Below, I’ve listed some of the criteria I use for judging religious blogs (of course, no one blog will meet all these criteria).
I’d love to know what criteria you use to judge the quality of religious blogs, or of blogs in general — leave your criteria in the comments.
- Good writing
- Well-crafted prose or verse
- Distinctive voice
- Aimed at a recognizable audience
- Worthy subject matter [added per Jess’s suggestion in comments]
- Good blogging practices
- Posts that appear with some regularity (daily, three times a week, weekly; but at least weekly)
- Comments enabled and responded to; nasty comments and comment spam removed in a timely fashion
- Posts corrected and/or updated as needed
- Adherence to some style book, including consistent style for hyperlinks
- Social networking in the form of some connection to other blogs
- Significant content about the faith tradition, including for example (examples are for my faith tradition):
- Exploration of the distinctively Unitarian and Universalist theological traditions, and/or
- Exploration of the Unitarian and Universalist historical traditions, and/or
- A willingness to engage in defining boundaries of the tradition, and/or
- Serious, frank, thoughtful discussion of contemporary issues facing Unitarian Universalism
- A focus on lived religion, including for example:
- Reflections on what it means to live life as a Unitarian Universalist (or insert other religious tradition), and/or
- Connecting events from everyday life with spiritual or religious concerns (at least sometimes), and/or
- Discussions of politics and social action, if discussed from a religious perspective, and with a clear distinction made between, e.g., liberal religion and liberal politics
- An openness to those from other faith traditions
- A majority of the writing is not aimed at “insiders”
- All acronyms explained in every post; technical language explained frequently
- Significant religious content or discussion that is not specific to the faith tradition
Those are pretty high standards, Dan. Kind of leaves out non-professional bloggers. Do you have standards for the part-timers?
Christine — Three of the best UU blogs are written by non-professionals, and get high marks based on the above criteria — Never Say Never to Your Traveling Self, Arbitrary Marks, and The Chalice Blog. Perhaps I should explain my criteria a little bit more, to prevent misunderstanding:
I feel #1 and #2 above are pretty much non-negotiable for any blog — if you’re going to write in public, you need to write coherently, and you need to administer your site reasonably well. Note the “and/or” for criteria listed under #3 and #4 — meeting any one criterion in #3 and any one in #4 would be sufficient. The criteria under #5 really just reflect good manners in a religiously pluralistic society. Finally, I’m presenting criteria as categories for judging, but you can have higher or lower standards for what constitutes “good” for any of those criteria.
Now tell me what your criteria are….
How about the criteria that the subject matter be interesting? Well-crafted prose is one thing, but if it’s about something duller than dull, who wants to read it?
(Not saying I’m never guilty of this…)
*Blush*
CC
It just occurred to me that you are the “Dan” that recently posted a comment to my complaints about public education. I didn’t realize (or else forgot) that you even read my blog. Yours is great, and I value your opinion. However, I do think I am a little iffy on the first bullet point of #2; I should be more consistent about posting.
I think these are excellant criteria. Not everyone aspires to be a 100% UU blogger or 100% Religous blogger, but to the extent you hit these criteria tells us where your at on the spectrum.
This by the way is interesting: A willingness to engage in defining boundaries of the tradition. I’d like to see UU bloggers address it.
Jess — Good point. I added your suggestion under the first point above.