…Certain behaviors are rewarded with links in weblogging; certain behaviors are not. It’s just that a certain class of weblogger (white, male, Western, educated, charismatic, pugnacious) has defined the ‘winning’ behavior in weblogging and what must be done to ‘earn’ a link, and this is what we need to change, if change it we can. We have to start valuing the poet, the teenage girl, the middle aged gardener, as much as we value the pundits, whether political or technological.
Bottom line: I want to be respected, I want to be heard, I want to be seen. I want to be visible, but I don’t want to be you.
But I digress, and badly. I’ve been chastized on this in the past, and how I am taking much of this personally. “But”?, I respond, blinking in puzzlement, “It is personal.”? Still, this was about blogrolls and whether to drop them or not, and how this could impact on the hotshot lists and will this end up making everything better – or, at least, more equal.
My short answer is: I don’t know.
She may claim not to know, but she gives thought provoking points for keeping or removing them. Do blogrolls contribute to less voices being heard? Do they encourage the worst or best in us?
For the longest time I had my personal blogroll off the front page of the site. I’m now convinced to put it back there, along with my favorite links. I feel, however, that in some cases, blogrolls can help solidify and surface communities and are a very important tool to do so.
Related: rebecca blood reflecting on her idealism. via dangerousmeta.