Ruminatrix
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Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Links and Oligarchies
I wonder whether to post a links column at left, but every time I get started I think: It'll just have all the same links as everyone else, so why bother? Does anyone still use 'em now? There is the reciprocal promotion angle to linking, of course, that two-edged thing which is at the center of the great "should Google offer a no-blog filter" question. But haven't search engines made front-page links kind of obsolete?
So I get this feeling of being back in high school: do I like something because it's inherently cool, or because other people I like think it is? And how many people can glom onto something before it becomes terminally uncool, anyway? I mean when you live on the Lower East Side, you gotta pay attention to things like "Can I wear a trucker cap today?" As the Fool says to King Lear: Oh, that way madness lies.
BIMBO, the "Blog Intelligent Moderation By Oligarchy", is UK host Mythic Beasts' program for sorting through topical blog stories, with human moderators (the soi-disant oligarchs) deciding on what makes the final cut. It's one alternative to Blogdex or Daypop Top 40, but BIMBO also features its "did not like" list, showing what their reviewers rejected, and why. One rejection footnote for an item called Eating reads "I'm not a foodie." Other sample nixes: [item] "...is incomprehensible (to me)" "...is content-free "...it's a weblog." Snarky, huh?
Most of the time I consult these indexes only to confirm my worst suspicion: i.e. that 95% of general-purpose bloggers are linking to the same 50 stories at any one time -- even in the UK, it would appear. (And I'm not excluding myself here). Yep, everyone's linked the NYT story on "Dating a blogger," and its popularity numbers are depressingly huge...Anyway, I appreciate BIMBO's showing us their sources and rules in the interests of transparency.
As for improving search-engine tools, I would like something that would sort query results by date of posting in some way, so one could trace the ur-form of a meme, quotation or other citation, the hierarchy in time, without having to wade through the original pages. Maybe it would be vulnerable to fakery and other tricks, but it might be made robust enough to help web-etymologists and others interested in precedence. I know of Jorn Barger's various timeline projects for dating , but what I have in mind would operate on a more micro level -- any ideas?