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?
youre still calling them "trucker hats?" that s so yesterday. everybody knows theyre "gimme hats."
as for links on your page, i use df as my homepage and its my point of departure for surfing. never could warm up to bookmarks. it can devolve into a "hey, look at me" syndrome but the point of weblogging is to some extent to be seen. now, once you get to the point where you are emailing people to ask them to link to you (as i have recently been asked to do) then youve passed the point of good sense.
A lot of the reason I have so many links on my page is that I use them as a web based bookmark repository. I surf from my apartment, and also from my machine in the office. Plus on each machine I have numerous browsers. With the links on my page I always have them, no matter what machine or browser I am using.
But yeah, there is also the thing where since I use those links as my bookmarks, those sites see at least one hit a day coming from my page. So you'd think they would eventually take a look if they watch their referer logs. I guess that's part of my calculation as well. Sort of like saying "Hi". But having portable bookmarks is probably more important to me.
As for the similarity of links exposed by blogdex et al, I wonder what percentage of total blogs are the general purpose blogs? I mean, even though it does seem like almost all general purpose blogs link to similar things, maybe the blogs that could be considered general purpose are only a small part of the total number of blogs. I guess it depends on how wide you allow the definition of 'blog' to be. I think the Times was saying there are "hundreds of thousands" of blogs, but it might be more than that. I believe blogger alone has hundreds of thousands (maybe not all actively updating though.) Add in livejournal and diaryland and then all the userland, movable type, and DIY blogs and it might well be in the millions.
The indexes are all based (I believe) on the weblogs.com index. So maybe it's just that people who choose to ping weblogs.com when they update tend to link to the same stories. But that might be only a small percentage of total bloggers.
Rambling, I know...
I'll have to think more about your last paragraph. I know google tends to purge older pages from it's index, in favor of more recent ones (or more recently updated ones.) I think this is a size constraint imposed by hardware on their dataset. So keeping a snapshot of each index (weekly, monthly?) would be feasible, but maybe still too costly in terms of needed storage. Maybe there are more clever ways around this though.
Completely off topic, but in the new Wired there is a little side panel about pranks at MIT (where this is something of a tradition.) One of them, from 1972, created a new unit of measurment called "The Bruno." It is "a unit of volume equal to the size of the dent in the asphalt resulting from the six-story free fall of an upright piano." Apparently one bruno equals 1,158 cubic centimeters.
about a pint ?
|
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?
- bruno 5-20-2003 9:52 pm
youre still calling them "trucker hats?" that s so yesterday. everybody knows theyre "gimme hats."
as for links on your page, i use df as my homepage and its my point of departure for surfing. never could warm up to bookmarks. it can devolve into a "hey, look at me" syndrome but the point of weblogging is to some extent to be seen. now, once you get to the point where you are emailing people to ask them to link to you (as i have recently been asked to do) then youve passed the point of good sense.
- dave 5-20-2003 10:46 pm
A lot of the reason I have so many links on my page is that I use them as a web based bookmark repository. I surf from my apartment, and also from my machine in the office. Plus on each machine I have numerous browsers. With the links on my page I always have them, no matter what machine or browser I am using.
But yeah, there is also the thing where since I use those links as my bookmarks, those sites see at least one hit a day coming from my page. So you'd think they would eventually take a look if they watch their referer logs. I guess that's part of my calculation as well. Sort of like saying "Hi". But having portable bookmarks is probably more important to me.
As for the similarity of links exposed by blogdex et al, I wonder what percentage of total blogs are the general purpose blogs? I mean, even though it does seem like almost all general purpose blogs link to similar things, maybe the blogs that could be considered general purpose are only a small part of the total number of blogs. I guess it depends on how wide you allow the definition of 'blog' to be. I think the Times was saying there are "hundreds of thousands" of blogs, but it might be more than that. I believe blogger alone has hundreds of thousands (maybe not all actively updating though.) Add in livejournal and diaryland and then all the userland, movable type, and DIY blogs and it might well be in the millions.
The indexes are all based (I believe) on the weblogs.com index. So maybe it's just that people who choose to ping weblogs.com when they update tend to link to the same stories. But that might be only a small percentage of total bloggers.
Rambling, I know...
I'll have to think more about your last paragraph. I know google tends to purge older pages from it's index, in favor of more recent ones (or more recently updated ones.) I think this is a size constraint imposed by hardware on their dataset. So keeping a snapshot of each index (weekly, monthly?) would be feasible, but maybe still too costly in terms of needed storage. Maybe there are more clever ways around this though.
- jim 5-20-2003 10:53 pm
Completely off topic, but in the new Wired there is a little side panel about pranks at MIT (where this is something of a tradition.) One of them, from 1972, created a new unit of measurment called "The Bruno." It is "a unit of volume equal to the size of the dent in the asphalt resulting from the six-story free fall of an upright piano." Apparently one bruno equals 1,158 cubic centimeters.
- jim 5-20-2003 11:15 pm
about a pint ?
- bill 5-21-2003 9:17 pm