Welcome one and all to tonight's blog showdown between "Appetite for China" and "Organictobe". I'm Hasan, your esteemed "reviewer", and I will try to be as unbiased as possible.
Before we begin, let me state the general theme of each blog so that we may be impartial judges on the content:
Appetite for China: Chinese food (ok, that was not very hard to figure out)
Organictobe: Organic recipes, Garden/Farm skills (very clearly stated on the home page)
--------------------
ROUND 1 - First Impression
Here's what I get when I first link to the blog URL:
Appetite for China:
Organization & Layout: 3.0/5
Visual Appeal: 3.5/5
Attention-Grab: 4.0/5
Organictobe:
Organization & Layout: 4.5/5
Visual Appeal: 4.0/5
Attention-Grab: 4.5/5 (the frog is a definite attention-grabber!)
Round 1 verdict:
Both blogs were presented fairly well at first glance. However Organictobe certainly scores higher on first-impression basis. The home page is very well organized, and the color scheme and design have been given a lot of thought, along with the top post... all which serve to appeal to the first-timer (like me) more.
--------------------
ROUND 2 - Posts Quality and Variety
Sample post headings in the blogs:
Appetite for China:
Banh Mi Op La!, Vegetarian Food Gone Wrong, Recipe: Chinese Stir-Fried Spinach, A Globetrotter's Guide to Unusual Chinese Restaurants, Chow Mein: An American Classic...
Organictobe:
Our House Frog Liked Beethoven, My Clunker Pickup Is Too Old To Junk, Growing Up Veggies, Herbs and Ice-Cream, Time To Haul Manure...
Topics covered in various posts:
Appetite for China:
Chinese recipes, restaurant reviews, travelogue, odd gastronomic experiences, evolving Chinese food concepts...
Organictobe:
Farming, gardening, organic recipes, compost/manure, farm life, farm tools, farmhouse environment... (this is actually a FARM blog, and not a FOOD blog, Dr. Tiff)
Blog post contributers:
Appetite for China: Diana Kuan (just one person)
Organictobe: Gene Logsdon, Lisa Barnes, Jesse Cool, Jeff Cox, Rosalind Creasy, Greg Atkinson, Dave Smith (a whole host of farming-obsessed people)
Appetite for China:
Post headings/titles: 3.0/5
Post variety: 4.0/5
Post relevancy: 5.0/5
Organictobe:
Post headings/titles: 4.0/5
Post variety: 5.0/5 (they covered literally everything related to farming)
Post relevancy: 0.5/5 (they were very few main posts on food, recipes/food had separate links on the side)
--------------------
ROUND 3 - Pictures, Videos & Other Media
Here's a random sample of pictures from each blog:
Appetite for China:
Photo quality: 4.0/5
Picture appeal: 2.5/5 (sorry, this is where my cultural bias comes in)
Picture relevancy to posts: 5.0/5 (nobody's stupid enough to put unrelated pics on their blog... but anyway)
Picture-to-Text Ratio: 4.0/5 (less text make it easier to go through)
Organictobe:
Photo quality: 3.0/5
Picture appeal: 1.5/5 (those farmy pictures look very boring)
Picture relevancy to posts: 4.5/5
Picture-to-Text ratio: 2.5/5 (just one picture per essay just doesn't cut it, guys)
There were no videos or other media on either blog, so we'll skip to the next round.
----------------------
ROUND 4 - Style & Humor
I consider style and humor very important factors in a blog - they decide whether you get hooked on/subscribe to a blog and whether you enjoy reading them.
Writing Style (grammar, consistency, etc.):
Appetite for China:
Casual, amateur style of writing but with a definite sense of familiarity and comfort. You feel as if you're having a conversation with a friend as opposed to reading a book. The blogger seems pretty competent with grammar and language and possesses control over the narrative.
Organictobe:
Literary style of writing which gives us the sense of reading chapters out of a book. Some archaic/literary phrases and words are used such as "happenstance", "perforce"... I mean, are we in the 19th century? This style is suited more for the printed book than the online webpage. Don't get me wrong. These essays are very well-written.
Humor:
Appetite for China:
Really quite funny in the modern sense, packed with the unaviodable situations of humor that we all find ourselves in sometime or the other. I can relate to a lot of the awkward situations the blogger finds herself in... go ahead and read this for good, clean laughter (increasingly rare these days). Excerpts:
"True, there are worse things in life than a mouthful of Cool Whip and lettuce. I just can't think of any at the moment."
"Few children love vegetables... Of course, it helped that my parents never called it spinach."
Organictobe:
This focuses more on rhetorical humor rather than situational comedy (as the other blog did). This is the sort of humor you come across in light-hearted essays, op-eds and good books. It won't make you burst out in laughter, but it will surely make you smile and appreciate the laid-back humor. Excerpt:
"Mr. Frog responded best to a sound that I don’t know how to describe delicately. I’ll put it this way. When you are at home alone and perforce must use the bathroom, you are somewhat more careless about trying to cover up the explosions of wind emanating from your nether quarters than you are when there are other humans in the house…. Are you still with me?"
Appetite for China:
Style/Grammar: 3.5/5
Humor: 4.0/5
Organictobe:
Style/Grammar: 4.0/5
Humor: 4.0/5
----------------------
Well, that brings us to the end of Saturday Night Showdown, and I've spent nearly 2 hours in conducting it. Again, this is Hasan at your service - helping you sort out internet treasure from internet junk.
Good night and good luck!
----------------------
Disclaimer: All pictures and excerpts have been taken from Appetite for China: www.appetiteforchina.com and OrganicToBe: www.organictobe.org
This blogger did not contribute in any way to those blogs. This review is meant for educational purposes only and is not intended to market/advertise a product
Nice commentator-work! But the real question is, "Which of them would win in a monster truck derby?"
ReplyDeleteAs for your scurrilous accusation that I assigned a farming blog, not a food blog...here's my argument: The bloggers of Organictobe consider "food" as inclusive of the growing process, and not just as the edible end-product. That is, one can't divorce what most people see as food from the process by which food is made: it's all food from the cradle to the grave.
Speaking of critiquing blog posts: How'd you get the pics of the websites to come out so nicely? Negative feedback: I'm not a huge fan of the font you used for the post..it looks too big and clunky.
Dr. Tiff
Well, I suppose I'll have to retract my accusation about the relevancy of Organictobe. But your average Joe won't be thinking of which farms produced his cheeseburger just when he's about to bite into it. By the way, what exactly do you mean by the "grave" of food... is it what happens to the food after our digestive system has processed the nutrients? I'd prefer if we didn't go into that.
ReplyDeleteGetting pics of websites is real easy. Just use a good browser like Chrome/Safari with lots of webpage viewing space and do a PrintScreen. Open the Paint application (Windows only), paste the picture and save as a JPEG file. Then upload to Blogger like any other picture.
About the font: right. sorry. I'll edit it just now.
As you may have noticed, the font looks a lot better now.
ReplyDeleteE3 FOODIES RULE!
DOWN WITH G5 & P4!
Hasan you might want to source your pictures properly.
ReplyDeleteWe probably know where the pictures came from but as other people out-side of class can also access this site, things could get messy
Thanks for the heads-up, WonTaek. Now I'm litigation-proof.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE your blog. To be honest, I did not read the entire thing because it is really long but I think that it was a great idea for you to put a picture of the website on here. It is an easy way for people to comment on their 1st impressions because all they have to do is scroll up to the picture and state their opinion on what they say. Great idea! Yay Foodies of E3 :)
ReplyDeleteHey Erin,
ReplyDeleteFor clarity's sake: the term "blog" refers to the entire site (i.e. "The Foodies of E3"). I think you mean "blog post".
Won-Taek, thanks for giving the head's up about citing images correctly! I'm going to remind everyone today...unless you didn't take the pic, you need to cite the source!
Thanks y'all! Next time I'll try and include more website shots... works better than a load of text, (as I'm constantly reminded)
ReplyDelete