Tuesday, February 3, 2009

It's BAD Here

I'm not one to claim familiarity with all internet traditions, but I'm a decent learner. I've been seeing this B.A.D. thing all over the place, but wasn't really clear on the idea. Turns out, basically bloggers are supposed to blogroll (list on the side) blogs that are "smaller" (get fewer visitors) than their own. In a discussion over at E.B. Misfit's place, Connecticut Man linked me up with the post from a couple of years back that was apparently the inspiration for this particular tradition.

Well, first, I'm not sure how to tell if a blog gets less traffic than mine if they don't have a counter up. Second, in nearly every case, when other blogs have counters they get much more traffic than I.

So I almost concluded that I should just blogroll every blog I read that doesn't have a counter. Instead, I found I could have Blogger just list all the blogs in my RSS feed. The lists down the side are organized more or less as they are in my feed. I have combined "Political Humor and Satire" with "Fun," the latter category often including cultural/social buzz. I also combined US News with International News, but I kept Oregon News separate. The distinction between "Mostly Harmless: Liberals," "Politiblogs," and "This 'n that" has become a little fuzzy, but originally was as follows: Politiblogs are almost strictly political news and commentary. Mostly Harmless members are generally people who's views are much like mine, but post about things other than just politics. This 'n That blogs may post politcal stuff, but that's not most of their material; these blogs may have anything show up... you just never know. That is, incidentally, where I have this blog listed.

If your blog or site is listed here, you have my thanks. At the very least, I skim over everything you post. If you are a science blogger (geo, astro, phys, weather, bio) I pretty much read everything you post, unless it's so esoteric I can't follow it. Likewise with funny, Mostly Harmless, and This 'n That. I tend to skim over the politiblogs; first there's a lot of repetition, and echoing, which sometimes leads to useful disagreement and discussion, but sometimes is just noisy reverb. Second, too often people have the misconception that blogging consists of copying and pasting whole articles with a one-line exclamation at the end. That's unfair to the original author. Explain why it's important or noteworthy, take an excerpt, and give me a link. I have little patience with those types of posts.

I do tend to at least skim over the international news feeds I have listed here, even though the averge number approaches 150 posts a day. Oregon news and National News tend to be the categories that get "marked as read" at the end of the day, again, each with 100-150 posts per day.

You guys rock my world, and it does seem the least I can do is list you in my sidebar.

Even if you do get more visitors than I do.

1 comment:

The O'Sheas said...

Speaking of fellow bloggers, I'm tagging you to post a specific photo from your collection.

More info here, my friend:

http://surferondryland.blogspot.com/2009/02/photo-tag-youre-it.html

Aloha!