"As a community of webloggers, are we participating in a great dialogue or are we each just engaging in self-gratification with our monologues?" Yes. Both. It is the mixture that is interesting. I choose to respond to David. I could have ignored him, and it would seem I never saw it; at least, you'd never be able to prove otherwise. Small communities can form around specific weblogs (even 'communities' of one), keeping some of the small feel, yet interacting within a larger community, gaining some of the benefits of the larger community.