And I’ve stayed out of this one.
My own opinions, views and thoughts on sexism, feminism in games and the other myriad of subjects covered recently have been discussed with my close friends/boy, and I will be leaving it at that.
There is no reason at any point to add any fuel to any fire.
What I am going to pick up on briefly is what the topic moved on to – Blogrolls.
Now, as I’m sure you’ve all picked up on, I’m more than a little mad. I’m OCD, a bit loopy and utterly obsessive about organisation.
I like lists.
I love lists. I don’t just have on category in my feedreader, I have thousands. OK, well that’s an exaggeration.
I was, however, very poor at keeping my Blogroll up-to-date. Because I was always adding more and more blogs to my feed reader, I couldn’t come up with a solution which meant I could get everything I wanted on there in every way I wanted it, so I’d sort of given up.
However, whilst reading Tam’s finishing-the-topic post, I came upon a comment by Pewter linking to this post. Praise the lord, I’ve found my saviour.
So, now, my blog roll is complete.
What I’m reading in my feed reader is now on my site. Which is awesome.
So, thanks Pewter, Tam and most importantly Mystery Buttons, you legend.
Anyhow.
You will see, if you can be arsed to look, that my blogs are split into class info. So, I know when something appears in my feed reader roughly what I’m gonna be reading about. I also have categories I haven’t hosted for my friends, for technology blogs, for careers blogs (thrilling stuff, careers information and advice, like you wouldnt believe), and things often have multiple tags. For example, everyone in SAN is also tagged with a SAN tag. OCD much?
People are on my blog roll because they are on my feed reader. I read them for a variety of reasons:
1. They are informative (WoW.com, World of Matticus)
2. They are druidey and keep me on top of what’s happening druid wise in sensible coherent text, as I’m a moron and can’t comprehend blue posts (Beru, Lisanna, Qieth, Graylo and many many more)
3. They help me understand other classes (BRK, Kurn, Mental Shaman, Mana Obscura and too more to mention)
4. They make me giggle and brighten my day (Righteous Orbs, Disciplinary Action, Big Bear Butt, Murloc Parliament and soooo many others)
5. and most importantly I enjoy reading their posts, I enjoy reading what they have to say and they write good quality, fun, interesting, thought provoking posts (Larisa, Cass and Lathere, Altaholics Anonymous and every single one of the other blogs I mentioned above.)
I have only ever taken ONE blogger off my blogroll, and that was after the previous blogosphere explosion. That caused me to remove the blogger in question from my blogroll and I truly no longer had any interest in what they had to say.
And that’s the only reason, in my opinion, someone should get taken off my blogroll.
Not because they post something controversial, or something I disagree with, but just because they don’t interest me anymore. That may well have been inspired by the fact they said something that caused such an issue with me I no longer “liked” them, but at least there was a fair and solid reason.
Adam is still on my blog rogue. Pewter is. Larisa is. Tam is. They are all on there because I enjoy reading their blog posts, and I enjoy reading what they write about. Sometimes I might disagree with them, sometimes I might not read a whole post as it’s not something I’m interested in, sometimes I might snort diet coke out of my nose in the office (thanks, Tam).
I don’t expect other people to do what I do. I don’t expect people to look down on me or dislike me because of who I have on my blog roll. It had, to be honest, never even occured to me that a blog roll could be used as a sort of…method of separating friends from enemies, social networks one moved in, stating who you liked and you disliked. I’ve always just used is as… a list. An objective list of things I like to read.
Does the fact I like watching Jeremy Kyle make me a (stereotypes incoming, ok?) sit at home scrounger who wears velour tracksuits and ugg boots? No, I work 9-5, am studying for a degree and consider myself to be contributing to society (in that some fucker takes a load of money from my salary every month).
Does the fact that I horse ride mean I spend all my day “guffawing”, walking around in jodphurs and asking daddy to buy me a new car? Hell no, I scrimp and save pennies every month to be able to enjoy my one hour of riding a week.
Just because I read a blog does not mean I share that person’s views. That assumption shouldn’t be made, and therefore we should not feel worried about keeping someone on our blogroll just because they said something controversial.
We should all be judged on our individual merits as bloggers and people. It makes me really happy when I find out someone reads my blog, it really buzzes me up when I find out someone has me on my blog roll. I get a proper buzz out of it.
I don’t know if that’s weird or not, but it’s how I work.
I think I’ve got quite an objective way of managing what I read. I’d be interested to read more peoples opinions on why and how they manage their blogrolls.
sometimes I might snort diet coke out of my nose in the office (thanks, Tam).
Tam owes many people for ruined keyboards, I am sure.
I’ve weeded people out from my reader for inactivity. These days (since I got organised) I now move them to a ‘defunct/bookmarks’ folder that also doubles as an inbox/probationary period box and a place for really ‘busy’ feeds like wow.com and wowhead blogs. As much as I would like to read everyone, sometimes I just don’t. Sadly if someone just posts about their alts or posts rp/fanfic, I’m probably not going to pay too much attention – but generally many alt blogs intersperse with thoughtful posts, or addon guides, or something ‘extra’ to keep my interest.
I don’t think I’ve ever removed someone from my blogroll for any reason other than inactivity.
I found that post on the SAN/Crankyhealer/TooManyAnnas debacle interesting. Zelmaru is an awesome blogger, and while I agreed with Anna’s criticisms at the time, the flamewars were not fun, and it did highlight the…power and responsibility that those with larger and more active readerships have. However the ‘line’ of that power is not immediately obvious, I think.
Your blogroll is… impressive. Do you really read all thos blogs? I feel like a horrible blog community member in comparsion. I may read a lot of blogs – more than what’s on my blogroll – but not as many as you do.
But even if we differ a bit in the quantity, I think we share the reasons for reading blogs. My blogroll is vers shifting and split up, there’s no real logic in it. I link to blogs that I happen to want to keep up with for verious reasons, and I doubt that there’s anyone out there who wants exactly the mix i WoW blog diet as I like. It’s so much a matter of personal taste.
Tam summed it up very well. It will help me to move on.
I think people read political divisiveness (is that even a word?) into blogrolls unfairly – they are ultimately, as you say, entirely personal. I mean, the person you took off your blogroll you did so because you had no further interest in what that person had to say: and that’s entirely fair. Anybody should be entitled to draw that line at any point, without coming under attack for it. Blogrolls are just lists: but all they say is “I am interested in this list.” And what you find interesting is your own business
@Pewter – ooo I have one of those, called “No Longer Updated”. It is always nice when I see that with a (1) next to it, as it means someone I enjoyed writing as returned, so to speak.
I think we should put out some sort of petition to make Tam buy us all new computers.
Thanks for the comment, as well.
I think this has probably actually made a lot of us sort out blogrolls, orders, lists etc, and hopefully made some of us revisit things we may not have looked at for a while!
@Larisa – yup. Thank you for the comment
The glorious Google Feedreader is my friend. I tend to have it open all day at work, which means everything is read as soon as it is posted, essentially. Sometimes, like I said, I will skip guides, posts about things that don’t particularly grab my interest, but the majority I read right to the very end.
The other thing is, I usually have 30-50 posts waiting for me first thing in the morning, which I like to read whilst I’m waking up, and I used our bio breaks and flight paths to catch up in the evening. I’m really a proper creature of routine!!
@Tam – thanks for commenting! You’re very right, what people find interesting is always going to be different. I don’t “expect” people to find someone they like off my blog roll, or vice versa, I see them more as resource lists. As somewhat of a collector, I like building up comprehensive lists of things. I will often stop by BA and swoop through the new authors and add a load. I love keeping things updated and offering people a selection of resources, rather than a, “I like them, but I don’t like them” social network.
There’s a real danger in only reading things you agree with, not just in Wowblogs but generally. I read a number of blogs (wow-related and not wow-related) where I don’t especially “like” the author, or their opinions. I read them either because I value their knowledge, or value my own reaction being something other than the nodding dog: “yup, uh-huh, yeah, agreed, yep, definitely” etc.
I’m totally judging you on the Jeremy Kyle thing, though. /unsubscribe
PS: glad the Google blogroll thingummy is working for you. Don’t forget, you can edit the title of feeds inside Google Reader and those edited titles will show up in your b-rolls
@theanorak I actually did a full alphabetise a few months ago and have clearly added new ones since as I now see ones out of order….I’m going to have to go through and reorder!!
and also, Jezza K ROCKS!
I too have people on my blogroll who I /know/ post things that piss others off, in fact those others are also on my blogroll. Am I bothered? No! That’s what the internet is for! Differing opinions, having access to people who disagree with you and challenging your perceptions is part of the fun in my book.
If people stop reading my blog, following me on twitter, talking to me in the street, because I’m open to others opinions and I like to have more than the ‘yes’ people around, that’s their problem.
No one ever learnt anything only reading/listening/watching what they already know.
@Deme so true and so right! It’s all about, as theanorak said, opening yourself to more than just ideas you agree with.
We’d never get anywhere if closed mindedness and a refusal to at least listen to others opinions was all we did.
Even if I don’t like something, I tend to read it. Better to learn something new and begrudgingly accept an opinion than be blinkered.
Yeah, I’ve certainly discovered a lot of new potential reads, which has been pretty cool, and blogs I would never bothered glancing at before I’ve given another chance.
@pewter really glad you’ve found it useful
I’m always hunting for more as well!
I feel like I should start doing those, link love pages people do. You know, freshly discovered this week, etc etc.
Wow that link brings up memories (of me frantically trying to find a contact email for you so I could say “you are awesome”). The name change was more motivated by the desire to get away from the “healing-only” label, but it did serve to create some distance between me and a thing that took on a life of its own. (Having said that, the people who were nice to me during all that definitely are more likely to be on the “featured blogs” in my sidebar… YES IT IS NEPOTISM!)
Re: blogrolls. I have done my blogroll with the self-updating thing ever since I was on blogspot (bwaha, ty javascript), but I put it on its own static page since it’s so long that it’s gross. It’s very easy to prune the blogroll this way as you’re just adding and subtracting from folders (I try not to put anything on my blogroll that hasn’t updated in over a month, and I return them to the public blogroll if they start posting again). I usually keep the “inactive” ones in a special folder just in case they return. I did clean out my personal feed reader recently – anything inactive for more than 6 months? Something like that. Current count is 630 subscriptions, but I was up to 900 at one point before I cleaned out the never-coming-back-inactives. And now I’m finding that I oopsed on some of them and am having to re-add. I definitely read more than is on my blogroll, but limit the blogroll to active blogs that post semi-regularly and are on topics that I think are of interest to my readers.
This recent turmoil about blogrolls caused me to create a “blogroll policy page” to curb complaining (which is pretty close to what you wrote up). Byaghro (who I have discovered has started posting again a little, yay) wrote something a while ago about the expectation of social reciprocity that I think is very on-point with the recent discussion: http://www.diabolicalminds.com/weblog/2010/04/social-reciprocity/