A new blogroll policy
Disclaimer: This policy obviously does not apply to those I consider my friends..
Er... no, I'm not going to move my blogroll to a separate page of its own.
Rather it's something I've been annoyed about for a while now. It's called "reciprocity" and it's a word I've used recently in a different context. I've removed a couple of links from my blogroll as a result of this.
When I link to a blog, I do expect some reciprocity from the other side. When I say that I have given people a fairly prominent link on my home page. What I don't appreciate is my link being buried among hundreds of others in an obscure blogroll page. Mind you, I don't care about the SEO benefits. What I care about is (there is that word again) reciprocity. If I give you a prominent link, I expect a prominent link in return or your friendship and regular participation on my blog's discussion page. If I get neither, I am naturally upset. 
So here's a new rule I'm going to follow on Hari's Corner from now on. If you want a link back from here, I expect one of the two (or both if you prefer 
):
- Being a (reasonably) regular commenter on my blog. (Obviously there's no need to comment on every article I write; I just need to know once in a while that you're still following my blog) OR
- Giving me a link on your home page or finding some other way to link to this blog meaningfully (for example, in articles.)
I'm sorry to have to implement such a system in any case and if I had been more careful in the past, such a rule wouldn't have been necessary. But I have been generous enough in linking to other bloggers and even commenting on their blogs (most of my regular readers will confirm this), so naturally it's time to expect something in return.
Link or comment - it's your choice. Fair enough?
23 comments
This rant is a result of annoyance at the lack of response from some bloggers in general.
.On a somewhat related note, I'm curious as to how you get commentluv to recognize your feed on other blogs. Since we've both got b2evo, I'm wondering if there are any special steps I have to take (right now my feed is not recognized).
That plus it allows me to be more flexible with the contents.
Now, PR isn't worth chasing after, but newer bloggers don't understand that -- they buy into the crap that Google shovels out.
I'm considering removing the blogroll altogether and replacing it with some other method, or moving it back to the main page and sliding it into a scrollbox. The key is to provide decent backlinks and generate traffic for others at the same time.
Ultimately, Hari, reciprocal links is a matter of courtesy, not PR or backlinks. In my opinion, it doesn't matter where the link is as long as it's there. Prominence is an issue that requires more thought on my part.
RT, I agree with most of what you say. The linking issue is minor compared to the issue of reciprocity. What annoys me is continuing linking to bloggers who (a) obviously don't read my blog any more and (b) don't find ways to reciprocate even if they don't have a blog roll.
So what is your take on this? A lot of bloggers continue to link to me from their home page and it would be unfair on my part to remove their links at this point.
Maybe I should just restore the links I've removed recently and be done with it? 
On the other hand, dead blogs should always be removed (inactive for a log time) because they become a spam haven and a bad neighborhood according to Google. I removed two like that so far and I'm sure there are more.
The part about them not obviously reading... well, sometimes it's not so obvious. They may be reading without commenting if they're here, or they may read it through the feed only.
I'm not convinced that there is a real fix for this. The main page tends to have the top post as the focus and the seperate page can be hidden.
If somebody wants to link to me, that's great, but it has no bearing at all on whether or not they appear in my own blogroll. In fact, I think there's an even split between those that do and those that don't link back..
A blogroll that consists of everybody who links to your blog really doesn't tell the reader anything useful - especially when it's one of those blogrolls dozens-strong. A blogroll that holds only the blogs you regularly read is far more useful, IMHO, and also more likely to get attention paid to it.
Hence my blogroll being under a dozen entries, and very easy to maintain
I suppose it depends on what your blogroll is there for. If it's there to show what blogs you consider worth reading, it should be unaffected by reciprocal links. If it's there for social networking, then linkbacks are a definite courtesy if not a requirement.
My view is that regular readers leave comments with links to their own blogs, so why bother with managing a blogroll for them too?
Interesting views there. To me, I always appreciate people who link to me, so I give them a link back. Sometimes I also link to people without expectation of any link back.
Regarding regular readers of my blog, a link to them is my way of showing my appreciation
As always, thanks for your support. First off, I still can't figure out why my feed is not recognized
Also, when I do have a blogroll (which should be very soon), I always thought I'd do it Dominic's way: link to blogs that are:
- Full of good content
- Updated regularly
- In a related niche
- Read by me
If there's another blog that has linked to me and I want to show my appreciation, I'll probably find some relevant content of theirs and link to it, or just put a reference in a post like RT recently did with his personal guide to titles. That way it doesn't look like I'm running an exchange just for the sake of it.
Good ideas, Troy. I think you've got it about right. My ideas are to link to my friends and link to people who are courteous enough to link to me.
As for why your feed is not recognized, I have no idea. Are you sure about the "link rel" part?
It should be something like this in your website's <head> section:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://hari.literaryforums.org/?tempskin=_rss2" />I do this to keep the front page clean (I used to do it to avoid losing search rank, but I don't care - 90% of my bandwidth is from the various search engines crawling their insidious little spider feet all over my pages - yes, you, Yahoo!). I do order them by category, though, and I've constructed the category names as such to fall alphabetically in importance. That way, what I most often read or respect gets placed "above the fold" and sites I read rarely but feel worthy of a link get placed lower on the list.
Just a small input on my part.
Drew, you're a friend. Besides the least I can do is link to you as you've been extremely generous.
Ernie, why do you need an expert when you've got Papa Hari to answer your queries?
Papa Hari Commission for Monitoring links and comments (PHCFMLAC) will be busy now onwards....
Leave a comment
Search
Poll
Pages
Categories
- Bits and Bytes
- Cartoons and Art
- Humour and Nonsense
- Internet and Blogging
- Life and Leisure
- My software
- People and society
- Site management
- Software and Technology
- Tutorials and HOWTOs
Links
Personal
Communities
Blogs
- Brads Blog
- Corey Thompson
- Creative Hedgehog
- eJabs
- eNidhi
- François Planque
- Human Psyche
- LinuxLala's Temple of Wisdom
- LoggyRhythm
- Loggyvazhi
- OneAndOneIs2
- Person Without a Clue
- Ramshankar's Realm
- Ray's Place of Stuff
- Redneck Bar & Grill
- Son of Bosey
- Sudipta's Life
- Trickykid
- Untwisted Vortex
XML Feeds
User tools
Misc
Credits
