holmanb
Previously I was under the impression that "Blog Posts" were just using the "Question" question with the intent to disseminate information rather than solicit information.
However, **there seem to be some differences**.
**Differences Noticed:**
1. Blog posts are not editable
2. Blog posts are not answerable
The following "Blog Posts" are a couple of examples.
**Blog Posts:**
* [Why we are building TopAnswers](/meta?q=1)
* [TopAnswer's Changelog](/meta?q=498)
* [Additional license grant for original code](/meta?q=24)
**Follow Up Questions:**
1. Can I make one? If so, how?
2. Why not make them editable? As content ages, user edits are an easy way to keep them up to date. Currently this is not possible and [requesting in the comments is the only way](/transcript?room=7&id=12346#c12346), which seems a bit inefficient. Perhaps if you want to restrict edits more for Blog Posts, a different edit approval path than normal questions could be used?
Top Answer
Jack Douglas
Blog posts are different to normal and 'meta' questions, as you have noticed.
Anyone can post a 'blog post', but it should be on-topic for the community. I don't know if TopAnswers will catch on as a blogging platform — I imagine we'd need to (at least) ① be attracting a lot of traffic, ② have implemented a bunch of features around 'following' (or hiding) blog posts, and ③ develop the markdown editor here to quite a high level of sophistication, to attract bloggers to the platform.
In the meantime the 'blog' type of post serves as a useful way of keeping our own TopAnswers announcements 'in-universe' and subject to community feedback.
> Differences Noticed:
>
> 1. Blog posts are not editable
> 1. Blog posts are not answerable
One further difference that you probably also noticed is that you can vote on blog posts. Of course it looks like you can vote on 'normal' questions here on the meta community too, but that's not really the case: all normal questions here are treated as 'meta' questions. The difference is clearer on the other communities where there are three question types:
1) Normal question
2) 'Meta' question
3) Blog post
With that in mind, here is a table of the differences:
|type|can star?|can answer?|editable?|
|-|-|-|-|
|normal[^1]|no|yes|yes|
|meta|yes|yes|yes|
|blog|yes|no|no[^2]|
A fourth post type, 'Wiki', [is being considered](/meta?q=497#a584) and it is possible that more will be added in the future. It is also likely that communities will be able to decide which post types they would like to allow.
Also under consideration is allowing questions to be linked to a blog post — this would be a fifth type. This is not necessary now, but would be helpful on a busier site like meta.se.
So…
> Can I make one? If so, how
Yes, sure, go ahead if you have something on-topic that you'd like to blog about.
> Why not make them editable?
Because I think wouldn't be idiomatic for blog posts — if you spot something wrong in a blog post your options are typically the same as they are here: comment and suggest a change.
[^1]: as noted, 'normal' question here on the 'meta' community are really disguised 'meta' questions, so can be voted on.
[^2]: blog posts are editable by the OP only.