Starting the community river on Scripting News was one of the best things we've ever done. Some of the people who read this site are also great bloggers. I didn't know! Now I do. (Makes sense.) 

In the process I noticed something that was glaring, but somehow I didn't see. 

People don't put much effort into titling their feeds. Or they use the wrong perspective. They title it as they see it, calling it "The Blog" or something like that. Yes, to you it is the blog, to the rest of us, it is just another blog. Better to tell us whose blog it is. 

News orgs title their topical feeds by the topic and leave out the name of the organization. The Podunk Sun's local news feed, might be titled "Local News" but that doesn't help much unless you know it's from Podunk (just an example, for all I know the Podunk paper does this right). 

The title on my feed used to be "Scripting News" but now it's Dave Winer's "Scripting News" weblog. To many people the name Scripting News doesn't mean very much. I think it should, but the fact is that for a lot of people my name is a lot more meaningful than the name of the blog. I wanted to set a good example. 

The title of one of my favorite feeds is Untitled. I don't think they did it deliberately, I think it was never set.  

Anyway, this is something that won't take much time that we can all do to improve communication. Include your name, or the name of the organization it represents in the title. Look at it from the point of view of the reader. That's who you have to communicate to. You already know who you are, but the reader might not.