By Jacob Terry
French Professor Wilfried Decoo sat at his computer on a Saturday morning, refining a story that will never be presented in class and will never be printed. It will, however, be published to a community of eager readers: the bloggernacle.
The bloggernacle is the nickname the Mormon blogging community has given to itself. A community that has grown from just a few Web sites two years ago to several dozen today, mirroring the national blogging trend.
Blogs, or Web logs, are online journals. New entries appear at the top of the page, the oldest at the bottom. Readers can usually comment on a blog post, and vigorous discussions sometimes breakout between readers in the comments section.
?It?s just personal, what are you thinking about right now, what are you doing right now,? Philosophy Professor James Faulconer said.
Faulconer, Decoo and Economics Assistant Professor Frank McIntyre post on the popular group blog Times and Seasons. Four Mormon lawyers started Times and Seasons in November 2003, and soon after they invited others to join them as authors.
Faulconer got involved with Times and Seasons shortly after its creation. The blog?s creators, several of which Faulconer taught at BYU, invited him to join. The site invited McIntyre and Decoo to join last year.
?I got on the team to stress international issues,? Decoo said. ?My first posts had to do with the international perspective of the church, but then I switched to personal stories with an international slant.?
Times and Seasons has 15 permanent authors. The readership has grown along with the number of writers; the site averages 2,000 visitors per day. Some of the blog?s popularity can be attributed to bloggers? desire to discuss topics not likely to be heard in Sunday school or even religion classes.
?It?s not like you?re going to walk around and find dozens of people that want to talk about the law and Mormonism, but you go on a blog and you do find a dozen people,? Faulconer said.
Discussions range widely on Times and Seasons. Authors and visitors have discussed ?game theory and the Garden of Eden,? LDS church members? susceptibility to financial scams and links between Mormons and obesity.
On a popular site such as Times and Seasons, one post can generate over a hundred comments from readers. The participation of the readers is one of the keys to the vitality of a blog, Decoo said. Most readers post comments with a pseudonym or just a first name, forcing others to assess them purely on their ideas and writing, he said.
?I think sometimes we?d be surprised to find that someone that is commenting with a lot of insight and wisdom is a 16-year-old student,? Decoo said.
Topics are even more disparate when other blogs are taken into account, from the blogger who identifies himself only as ?the angry Mormon? and rants on the annoyances of testimony meeting to blogger David Sunderwall who regularly posts about Mormons in politics.
?Almost anybody can have their own little printing press,? Sunderwall said, a staffer for Orrin Hatch in Washington, D.C. and author of the blog, A Soft Answer.
The growth of the Mormon blogging community is in line with national trends. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 27 percent of Internet users in November 2004 said they read blogs, a 17 percent increase from February of the same year. The numbers calculate to 32 million American blog readers by the end of 2004, and 8 million reported that they created a blog in 2004.
Authors write blogs for various reasons. Sunderwall started his blog in his senior year at the University of Utah to improve his writing abilities. McIntyre and Faulconer participate to share their ideas.
?We want to get our ideas out and let people be aware of how the world works, of our view of how the world works,? McIntyre said. ?It?s an extremely low cost way of having people look at our thoughts and critique them.?
McIntyre and Faulconer said although it?s a positive force, blogging could have negative consequences. Faulconer said he has seen topics that led into negative discussions, but has yet to see a blog that is overall negative.
?They are sounding boards in the same way that hallway chats with friends at BYU can be,? McIntyre said. ?Whether or not that hallway chat is a positive force entirely depends on the person you?re talking with.?