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November 10, 2003

Blog Ecosystem

As I continue on my blog-roll review, I got to The Truth Laid Bear and (as with all my audit sessions), I started reading (which explains why it takes so long to get anything done). The main story (at least when I read it) was about changes to the ecosystem. These changes revolve around the counting of duplicate links. To put the matters into perspective, it was possible to stack the ecosystem in your favour by creating multiple blogs with multiple links to each other. The so-called "cut & paste" syndrome. NZ Bear decided, in his infinite wisdom, to try and reduce the damage that this causes to the ranking system. What was really interesting is thta he received complaints about the changes :-O (go read the article and find out why).
Now here is my take on the matter (not that my opinion is relevant but I like to listen to myself talk read my own words). The whole blog ecosystem is meant to be fun, i.e. enjoyable. I think it is cool to have some sort of ranking system where I can watch my friends blogs go up (and occasionally down). To encourage the interlinking of blogs (as opposed to cut and paste) I try to make sure that trackback links and comments are credited on the main page so that they will count as links. This is a type of incentive for some people to leave comments. Others are not interested but that is cool, it still remains a carrot for others. My reasoning for this is twofold - firstly it means I can effectively "thank" someone leaving a comment (or backtrack) by providing an ecosystem link, and secondly some of the best blogs I have ever found have been due to similar links in the comments on other blogs. Note that this policy does not directly help my own blog ecology ranking but that wasn't the point of the exercise.

I would like to say "Thanks!" NZ Bear for the whole Ecology and for your efforts in maintaining it.

Oh, and for the curious:

P.S. For the really curious, here is my brother's blog (which is now called Aussie Courier but the ecosystem update is still pending):

Posted by Ozguru at November 10, 2003 12:11 PM

Comments

Nobody complained about "changes to the ecosystem." In fact, the League of Liberals posters supported and applauded the changes which NZ Bear made. The only changes he's made have been: (1) Splitting the showcase into "political" and "nonpolitical". (2) Only counting unique links. The first one was completely uncontroversial. The second one was widely hailed by LoL members, as per this discussion. The discussion you link to has nothing to do with changes to the ecosystem, and only to NZ Bear's misunderstanding of LoL policy. League members were complaining about his unfair stereotyping, not about any alterations to the blogosphere. --Kynn

Posted by: Kynn Bartlett at November 10, 2003 12:11 PM

Thanks for dropping by to leave a comment. I appreciate new readers from all walks of life. I hope that you won't mind if I beg to differ with you. I wrote this item after reading the article it links to. In the linked article NZ Bear states clearly that he had received negative feedback:
He [Barry] then proceeds to accuse me of bias ...

and elsewhere (near the start):

... members [of a certain group] weren't terribly happy with my commentary on their tactics yesterday. There's quite a bit of feedback ...

I figure those two quotes justify my use of the phrase "complained". As to the substance or validity of the complaints, my readers can check the original. I deliberately did not identify the group concerned. This is not because of political beliefs, sorry but your political stance is irrelevant to where I live and what we do. I don't generally pay a lot of attention to right/left/liberal/whatever when it comes to American politics. Nevertheless I did not want to malign a particular group so I talked generically about NZ Bears post. I am sorry that it appears to have upset you but nothing you have said so far has changed my mind. By the way, the "cut and paste" phrase is also in the article.

Posted by: ozguru at November 10, 2003 12:11 PM