At thanks for not being a zombie: “links in search of a thesis”:

It is not yet possible to classify and explain what academic blogging is, to create implied rules, to assume that there are neat generic boundaries that define the different kinds of bloggers. The genre is too new. We’re still trying things out. If you’re going to write about academic blogging, write about it as an emergent form, constantly changing, not yet (if ever) settled.

There are plenty of venues in which the only thing the reader sees is the starched shirt facade of the professional academic, and it would be foolhardy to argue that there’s nothing wrong with leaving things this way. May we please give ourselves permission to explore a genre of writing where something different might take place?