μετά
Of all the blogs I post, few are more fun than those in which I blog about blogging itself. Every month here on Cabel the Pauper, I will go meta. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do drafting, editing, and publishing these Monthly Metablogs.This may be more for my own purposes than for my readers. See, as long as I've been writing on the Internet, I've often found that when I'm writing about writing on the Internet while I'm...well, we have this prefix in order to not repeat ourselves so often, don't we? The dictionary can define this better...in fewer characters than I seem to be able to keep to:
In the case of a metablog, we're after the second entry in the above-linked definition of this useful prefix. Just as metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy, primarily concerned with the question of what philosophy is (basically, philosophy is just thinking about thinking) a metablog is a blog about blogging. These have been happening ever since The Blog as a genre of Internet literature first appeared. The Wiktionary has a nice clear entry on this:
A Metablog can become self-referential. In fact, it has to be. By definition! This can get humorous, become confusing, and possibly annoying. Indeed, many see it as a waste of time or a load of nonsense. I recall when I was working on a the wiki page during the Great Designer Search 2. I often had more fun writing about how to do the tasks than actually doing them! It didn't take long for somebody to post a lamentful quip: "The Wiki has gone meta." This poster was using the word accurately as defined above, but was also very likely hinting at the term's more vernacular use. The Urban Dictionary is always fun to consult:
You got it: Metagame! We use this word very often, fellow Paupers, Peasants, and other proletarians Magic-players. Yet in drafting the metablog on metagaming for this month, I could not find a single, definitive definition expressed in dictionary times like those linked to above.
Now the Urban Dictionary did have an entry linked to on the "Meta" page, but I found unsatisfactory for Planesalkers. We need something more specific for our Magic metagaming purposes. There's much more to any Magic: the Gathering format's existence, and quite a bit more thought that Magic players put into the action of metagaming than a single dictionary-style entry just can't define. One really should read (or re-read) an entire article on the topic from a verified professional:
This piece may be several years old (about as old as Standard Pauper as a Format Magic Online) but it's by no means out of date. It remains one of the best places to familiarize yourself with the a metagame is and how to do metagaming. Just in case any of you reading this were not yet familiar. And to lead in to the second reason a blog titled something like "Monthly Meta" will appear early each month: to report on a Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive Magic: the Gathering Format's metgame!
With all that out of the way, I'm done blogging about why I'm blogging right now. Let us proceed with the Monthly Meta and take a thoughtful look at March 2015's Format of the Month, Standard Pauper...
...tomorrow :-)
Yes, dear reader, the one metablogging point I'll make in this entry is that my others are often very long. Perhaps too damn long! So the goal for this new month of April will be to "go beyond" my usual writing habits and shorten things up. A bit.
That makes this entry merely an introduction to the Monthly Metas here on Cabel the Pauper. And it means it's over. Expect the March Metagame report for Standard Pauper tomorrow and the Metagablog for March on Cabel the Pauper, featuring the M's of the Month, later this week.
Until then, thanks for reading and good luck & have fun! Peace,
-C
meta blogging is most important in any kind of directory's database...
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