Saturday, August 15, 2009

Lib Dem Voice needs a blogroll

The other day I posted the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Liberal Democrat Voice is devouring the rest of the Lib Dem blogosphere. There has been some enlightening debate in the comments since then, so let me make a few comments on those comments here.

The suggestion that people who want to promote their own blogs should write something for Lib Dem Voice does nothing to soothe my original fears.

I do agree with those who say that Lib Dem Voice should have a blogroll or at the very least a prominent button taking you to Ryan Cullen's LibDemBlogs aggregator. If we all decided to do without a blogroll then the Lib Dem blogosphere as a whole would be the loser.

It would be petty to remove the link to Lib Dem Voice from my own blogroll in retaliation. I link to plenty of people to who don't link to me, and I don't promise to link to all the blogs that do. But I do think that Lib Dem Voice, as the preeminent Lib Dem blog, should make an effort to send readers over to the rest of us.

More than that, to me maintaining a blogroll is one of the great pleasures of blogging. If you treat blogging more as a process of exploring and engaging with the outside world, you are less likely to become dissatisfied with what you have built.

6 comments:

Nich Starling said...

I agree 100%. LDV should lead by example.

Ryan said...

But Jonathan and Nich which blogs do you pick.
I have no problem with yourselves actively selecting your favourite 20, however if Lib Dem Voice did that we would be accused of favouritism.
At present there are over 200 active bloggers on LibDemBlogs, listing them all ends up with one very large list filling the sidebar.
(That said, I've been fixing my LibDemBlog Box which hadn't been working for sometime after a major code rewrite and it's currently beta'ing on LDV)

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!) said...

Good work Ryan.

Andrew Hickey said...

I don't think there'd be much comment about favouritism - there seems to be a set of Lib Dem bloggers who are regarded as being 'the ones to read'. If you chose, say (off the top of my head), Jonathan, Mark Pack, Jennie Rigg, Alix Mortimer, Alex Wilcock, Charlotte Gore, James Graham, Millennium Elephant, Liberal Vision, Social Liberal Forum, Lynne Featherstone, Mark Reckons and Costigan Quist, I doubt many people would say you were showing favour, as much as just linking the *obvious* choices...

Anonymous said...

They might be the 'obvious' choices but then a year ago the 'obvious' choices would have been very different. LDV's neutrality is what keeps things open and flexible.

There is no definitive list of 'obvious' blogs to link to that couldn't be out of date by the following month :)

I think even just linking to LDV award winners/nominees would prove to be controversial.

Keep things open, I say. I think the Golden Dozen and the 2x2 thing are a far better way of drawing attention to the rest of the LD blogosphere. :)

Niles said...

I think Charlotte is spot on here.

G12 is quite an elegant solution to the problem of link-love because although the selection method is arbitrary and near-random, it's also unquestionable. LibDemBlogs hits drives most of the choices; reader picks, or LibDig picks or author picks gets the last few. Over the year, there's plenty of chance to take in a wide variety of voices, and there's an element of healthy competition to write captivating titles and first paras in order to get into the list.

2x2 is a little more related to author picks, so mine almost always come from my own feedreader list; but with a variety of authors that should pick up a variety of blogrolls.