Justin Hall and I have been having a little go-round about Boing Boing's format — specifically, why BB posts have the link at the end. Justin's put together a page to sum it all up:
I read BoingBoing online often. It's a lively locus of geekery, pop culture and technology activism. Still on each post they don't inline their links, they restrain them until the end. That's passing up on the fun fluency of the web, when links are sprinkled in, references resting behind words. Often their stories have multiple points of reference; often their stories could use more explanation. Their single-linking seems like a bit of a straightjacket.
"BoingBoing" began a print publication cataloging fun/weird culture published on the side by a co-worker at Wired, Mark Frauenfelder. So BoingBoing.net is an evolution from a funky old print 'zine into perhaps its more perfect incarnation as a leading culture weblog. Perhaps that explains the single-linking? It reeks of clarity, an attention span dating back to print publishing! BoingBoing.net is today maintained by active professional writers who cut their teeth making words before the web; this might explain the site's wide appeal, a weblog that's not too far floating in the hyperlinked ethersphere.
(Thanks, Justin!)
