Criteria for Cleaning Up Blog Links

Gradually I add blog links to my right-hand side section by the name of "blogtastic (of all sorts)". And once in a while I go through the list and weed out some of them. I think that is an important activity, because the idea is to make the blog link list as digestible as possible.

Just recently I've given some thought to the criteria of weeding them out. Here is what I came up with. I intend to go through the links a couple times a year and judge them by this criteria:

1. Has there been a new post in the last three months? (in other words: is the blog semi-alive?)

2. Have I ever met the author in person?

3. Does the blog contain posts that are extremely interesting to me and my readers? (assuming I have readers, that is..)

4. Does the blog link to my blog?

5. If they link to my blog, do I ever get traffic from them?

6. Does the blog have more than 20 posts?

7. Out of the last 20 posts, are more than 5 of those posts actually unique content? (not links to other blogs, links to youtube videos, etc.)

8. Has the author ever commented on my blog?

None of these individual questions would become absolute in my decision to remove a link (or not). If 'yes' is the answer to all of these questions, the link is a definite keeper. If 'no' is the answer to all of these questions, the link should be eliminated. For those blogs that fall somewhere between those two extremes, more consideration will be required and some questions will be given more weight than others. If there is only one 'yes' and it happens to be on #2 or #4, chances are I will keep the blog link. And if a 'yes' on #1 is combined with a 'yes' on #3, I'll be inclined to keep the link.

Why am I talking about this? Because it is fun to "meta blog". And maybe this will be helpful to others? I'm an optimist..

Blasts From The Past

This blog has been in operation since November 30, 2005. Here links to a few selected posts from 2005/2006. Many of these posts get lost in the grip of obscurity, so I thought I do something to bring them back :)

• Penn Jillette's Belief - A response to an essay from Penn Jillette of the Cato institute - Dec 13, 2005


• A Fix of Trimethylxathine - On a menacing drug - Dec 1, 2005


• Personal Peace & Affluence - Part One - Feb 26, 2006


• Google Reader! - A review of google reader - Feb 8, 2006


• Wildlife in Leviticus 11:29-30 - May 23, 2006


• Hair & Facial Hair & Theologians - A humorous look at hippies and theologians and their hair - March 2006

Tim O'Reilly Weighs In

Tim O'Reilly posted some initial thoughts on what a Blogger code of conduct might look like. If you are a Blogger, I suggest you look through them. I wouldn't say that I unreservedly support every single thing he says, but it looks like a pretty good effort. With some work, I'm sure it will be a very handy set of guidelines.

You should read the article if you want details, but here are the major headings that Tim presented:

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments..
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

As I've already mentioned, time would only tell how widely this sort of a code would be adapted. However, I do think it would be a good start for bloggers who are in fact concerned about these sort of things.

Anyone Out There?

Am I really that boring as of late? There has been an eerie echo here as of late. I haven't had one single comment on any of my last 10 posts!!! That is nearly a month! I'm unable even to solicit comments even by making a post that explicitly solicits comments. I've been crafting a theory about this. I suspect my profound insights and clever reasoning has scared away some of the more feeble minded readers (ie. all of them).

New Template!

Well, here it is. A new template!

I thought it would be a matter of 5-10 minutes to pick one of the available templates and slap a few custom things on.

Way too much time later, I'm finally satisified with one of the simpler templates blogger offers, with some heavy modification.

Sigh! That took waaaaaaaay too long. One of the biggest headaches was to get some of the spacing work properly in CSS.

The design is a bit picture heavy, but perhaps there are enough large monitors and fast connections to make that a non-issue.

Feedback, anyone?

Related Tags: blogging, templates, design