“Every incoming link, even to your own diary on a community blog, benefits the owner of the blog. Much the way people started rethinking whether they wanted to shop at WalMart, it’s worth considering where you want to “spend” your links.”

You have links on this blog to people who do not honor reciprocity. Are you going to keep listing them or not? There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between this site and the other.

BTW-all the blogs on the amnesty site DO reciprocate.

Sorry you’re disappointed, but I’ve been straightforward from the beginning that I’m making this us as I go along.

I had proposed blog reciprocity as one thing we could all do. I spent time putting every single member of the alliance on my blogroll. Some others have also added members. However, there are also “members” who not only do not practice reciprocity but do not even have the decency to respond to requests for being added to their blogrolls. That some of these sites are or were former kossacks does not surprise me.

Since some of these sites have ads, adding them to your blogroll when they don’t add you makes them money and leaves you empty-handed.

I wrote a widely-circulated post titled “Blogs as High School.” It appears high school is alive and well even at this site.

It is too bad. It has the potential to be something really positive for blogdom, but if folks who are on the blogroll are only taking up space or helping their Technorati count it does not do much good.

Sorry to be feisty, but this snobbery on the part of the “Big Dogs” needs to stop, at least here.

As for the “free market” approach America tried that back in the 1890s. I would hope we have progressed a but since then.

And groupthink… There is a difference between that and standing for something. A great example of how that works is at My Left Wing which has a manifesto and yet also a no censorship policy. I like a lot of what Charlie says in his post.

1) Establish a set of principles. Publish it and make it a key point of discussion when someone is criticizing the content or tone of another’s post.

2) Establish the discourse (which should be central to the principles). When a post is considered “inappropriate” – TALK ABOUT it – and keep referring to the principles (and you may in time be able to get a consensus on how to better articulate those principles themselves). Perhaps add a rating system to the posts – I don’t know if this blog has that capacity – but it could be one NON-censoring way of getting a FEELING for the community’s view on the particular post.

Its a learning process. And it is what is at the core of a functioning democracy (but what is missing in America). We don’t need censorship – we need discourse. Feel free to speak your mind; but learn you must be mindful of others if you want to be heard and understood. And don’t be afraid to criticize – not the other person, but the content of their post. Disagreement is healthy – it is productive – if we only learn HOW to do it.

Our party system and political system has focused on disagreement as a way to divide. That is what has gone wrong.

Democracy is about the coming together despite disagreements in order to talk about things so as to identify that set of things that we do and can AGREE upon.

This should be the goal of the blogging community. To re-establish political (rather than partisan) discourse in America.

But this is very needed as the parties and the system of politics (disfunctional) have done a very aggressive job of “capturing” the “famous” blogs in order to keep them on the “same page” as their party agenda.

And that is exactly what has gone wrong in America from the start – and what the potential of the blogs provided a cure for – but cannot provide if they are controlled in that fashion.

How do I make a contributing post – I would like to provide one (perhaps each week).

Charlie

http://blogrollamnestyday.blogspot.com

Avoiding groupthink is part of it. I’ve written about the purpose in the introduction here, and some more in the “Coming soon: complete sentences”. Will try to pull together a more streamlined statement soon, but again, this ain’t my day job, so I work on it when I can.

But linking sources, visiting each other’s blogs as often as possible, etc. sounds good. But that already happens and those who do not ususally find themselves marginalized without too much effort.

At the risk of sounding all Milton Friedman, let the marketplace take care of all that. And seriously, forget 501c3 and any kind of business model. That exact attitude is what got Chris Bowers in so much trouble with so many of us.

BG