Perhaps, on reflection, guild might be more appropriate, but a guild implies standards, and I’m not sure that I would want to go that way.

The thing about blogs is that on any given day I have musicians, chemists, physicists, lawyers, historians, economists, IT people, artists, architects, and multiple other specialists that I read and interact with. I have people from all over the world dropping by my little patch. That’s a massive amount of experience and knowledge available, and I wouldn’t want to restrict it.

there’s a lot to be said for attaining his degree of professionalism, and i’ve considered aiming for something like it myself, but then i’d feel constrained in what i want to say at times. it’d be a difficult tradeoff: shape up and fly straight and get mutual assistance, or wing it on your own, free as a bird.

i dunno, any guild that would have me probably isn’t worth joining. then again, we have bill o’reilly, robert novak, rush limbaugh, … as examples of a professionalism that i can never hope to aspire to.

Whig, I think it is multi-layered, with the first layer being mutual assistance in a formalized structure. In addition to things that benefit from numbers, like insurance, it could also act as a clearing house for problems. Until the process is further along, there’s no real way of knowing what it will become.

Elayne, you are a professional at ComicMix and a “hobbyist” at Pen Elayne. To be worth anything, a union/guild has to truly be voluntary. There are people who only view political blogs as serious, but I spend time on blogs that cover a lot of different areas, just as I subscribed to a lot of different news groups a few years ago. If you are adding to the knowledge base, on whatever topic, and doing it via a blog, you’re a blogger. If Peggy Noonan can be a journalist, I don’t see why Meg at Cute Overload can’t be a blogger.

I am interpreting “professional” as simply referring to blogging, i.e. the “profession” or process of blogging as a distinct activity or skill, and nothing more. In precise terms, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison were “hobbyists,” as were most of those now considered scientists in the 19th century.