Appendix ?: A Weblog Primer

It seems my dissertation has as many appendices as it has chapters. Well, not really, but my committee wants me to do three of them, one of which is a primer on weblogs. It was my idea to do a primer, as most people on my committee are just starting to learn the technology, and probably won't ever be heavy users of it; the idea is just to communicate the meanings and significance of certain aspects of the technology, especially the implications for writer-audience interaction. Derek's CCCC presentation might be useful here. I didn't know where I should put the primer, though, and my committee suggested that I include it as an appendix. Here's a list of terms I know I need to include; can you think of any others?

• History of weblogs (can be moved to the intro later)
• Weblog (for which I'd draw upon Jill Walker's canonical definition and Dave Winer's definition as well).
• Significance of tools (I'd discuss how some tend to think of LiveJournal and Xanga sites as something other than weblogs, and my own opinion of that distinction, which is still in formation.)
• Network literacy
• Networked rhetoric(s)
• Blogger stereotypes (Self-indulgent egomaniacs, plagiarists, etc. I have a great collection of a week's worth of Doonesbury cartoons that ran in Fall 2002 that illustrate these really well.)
• Comment (what makes it different from a post, also comment spam)
• Trackback
• Referrers (If you link them, they will come.)
• Sitemeter
• Technorati (as a tool to find out who's linking to you)
• Ranking tools (Technorati, Truth Laid Bear, etc.)
• RSS
• Blogroll
• Timestamp
• Permalink
• Categories and searchability (indexing)
• Content management system

By the way, the other appendices they want me to do include one on the implications of my research for composition pedagogy and one that's a reflexive essay on my methods and my location as a woman, a blogger, and a blog researcher. I already have a good bit to say on that one. Then there's also the miscellany; hopefully I can work some of the interesting things I find into the bodies of the chapters, to tell more of a story, but I want the miscellany to be in there somewhere, even if it's in an appendix.