Sometimes there’s a whole controversy going on and you just aren’t aware that it’s going on. The Blogroll debate is one such. The core of the debate seems to be around the way the linking and ranking works in search engines and blog listing sites such as Google and Technorati. The more links, the more your page will show up in a Google search. Also, there are those rankings on such places at TTLB and Blogshares. All of this, say the critics, favours the established elite over the new voices. And, the established elite are, for the most part, middle class white men.
This is where my irritation starts to kick in. I can understand and empathise with the core argument – i.e. established voices drowning out new ones. But, for me, the argument is undermined when people start to play the gender or race card. Gender and race are irrelevant. As I understand it, TTLB came in for flack because someone asked the question “Where are all the female political bloggers?” The answer is that they were here all along, but their voices were drowned out by the noise created by top 100 popularity lists and this noise is being fuelled by the tendency to blogroll. There’s an in-depth analysis over at Burningbird where Shelley says that such things as TTLB and Blogshares are hurting the blogsphere by enabling the noise. Although, as one commenter, Melanie, on this, similar posting points out, Shelley is speaking for herself rather than the blogging community as a whole.
“I disagree with Shelley’s assertion that people don’t find blogs through blogrolls. I also don’t appreciate that she deigns to speak for all bloggers when she uses the word “people” – she should have said “I” feel that… how can she claim to know the consciousness of 9 million plus bloggers?”
As an aside, I delisted from TTLB and Blogshares myself quite independently of this debate and frankly hadn’t given this angle any thought. I delisted because I objected to the “opt-out” philosophy being employed – particularly with Blogshares where my intellectual property was being used as a playing chip in someone else’s game.
Okay, back on topic, I can see the point Shelley is making, but I’m not sure I can get worked up about it. Certainly, I don’t believe anyone is being “hurt”. Unless, I guess, you want into the top 100 yourself and feel excluded because you aren’t in it. I’m not in the top 100 and couldn’t give a damn. Indeed, I couldn’t tell you who is, I care so little for it. But then, perhaps my attitude is coloured by being white, male, middle class and English. Indeed, it’s probably just as well I don’t smoke or Satan’s little demons would be making the bed and dusting down the room ready for my arrival. Yes, the top 100 blogs are dominated by white men. Life is full of such anomalies and it is tough sometimes to break through. Accusing white men of hurting you because they dominate the top 100 or because they don’t agree with you doesn’t help the case one little bit – it merely raises hackles. In the case of blogging, if what you have to say is interesting enough and well written, people will stop by and read what you have to say irrespective of your background or gender.
I don’t write this blog to make the top 100, I write because blogging gives me an incentive to try and write something most days – and to exercise my brain a little into the bargain. Yes, it’s nice to be read. It is nice if people drop in and discuss what I have written, but none of it is essential. And if this blog isn’t in the popularity poll de jour no one is hurt by it.
My blogroll is there for the same reason that I provide links on my main webpage and on my forum; because they link to places that I think others might want to visit. I can’t change the way that Google ranks pages and I’m not going to lose any sleep about it. I mentioned on the comments section of a recent entry, that Internet “rules” are artificial nonsense made up by people who try to impose their will on others. These rules only work so long as we concede to them. The whole blogging hierarchy is one such nonsense. So, too, is the campaign to do away with blogrolls.
This blog’s blogroll – like it or lump it – stays.
I agree Mark. I started blogging to keep the old brain active after I retired. It’s a bonus that I have ‘met’ such interesting people because of it, and who cares about ratings and statistics anyway…BTW I got 6,000 hits last month.. 🙂
They also miss something, at least with Google. The more links on your page, the less value each has to pagerank, so adding all the blogs in the world to it doesn’t mean a thing.
Technorati, of course, is different, but they care more about links within posts anyway.
Where are all the femala bloggers? On livejournal, which due to its set up, doesn’t count as well for rankings, etc. Ah well.