Blog of Note

Just how exactly do you become a blog of note. I should capitalize that, I suppose, since it's so all-fired important and all, but I'm not going to because I'm sticking it to the man, whom I'm also not going to capitalize. Gosh, what a sexy and dangerous rebel I am.

All kidding aside, Blogs of Note got me thinking about metrics, and it's always dangerous when I think about metrics. Because what is a Blog of Note? I'm sure someone knows; they have to have picked them somehow. Maybe it's random, but that's still a metric. More likely, it's either a metric based on site traffic or it's an editorial decision.

You may not think it matters. Consider this, however, mes amis: a Blog of Note is much more likely to be visited, and thus, if said Blog of Note contains advertising or other forms of profit, said blog is more likely to profit. And that's important to some people. Even if the only profit realized is increased visibility for someone's ideas, being a Blog of Note is likely to cause that to be.

What's wrong with that? After all, some things are going to be more popular than others. Well, for one thing, it's a positive feedback loop, really. Suppose for a moment that a blog becomes Notorious (I like that better than Noteworthy) because of its popularity. I'm not saying that I know (and I'll get to that in a minute). But suppose. Now being popular has made the site noticed, and thus Notorious, and thus is likely to cause the site to become even more popular. That's positive feedback; more breeds more.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Blogs of Note became Blogs You Should Notice But Don't. That's positive feedback too, but it only supplies positive feedback to things which are below a certain threshold. After a blog achieves a certain popularity, it can no longer be said to be Unnoticed, and so will be removed from contention for the Roll of Blogs. But this strategy is unlikely to work simply; editorial control will certainly have to be exercised since there are a lot of unpopular blogs out there which are unpopular for a very good reason (they don't deserve popularity, in other words).

But the most worrying factor about the whole thing is that we don't know what it takes to make a blog Notorious (in case there's any confusion at this point, "Notorious," means, "A Blog of Note"). It could be anything from the suggestions given to paying money to the most pictures of naked people. There are more or less likely answers, but the truth is that it isn't made transparently clear. Who knows; there may well be somewhere to go to find out how to become Notorious, but it's not right there underneath the Roll of Blogs of Note.

You may now be asking, "Why are you wasting our time talking about Blogs of Note. It's a picayune little matter of pride and self-importance, mostly." And you would be right. I am slightly jealous of Blog-Notoriety. But more than that, I am using a stupid example to illustrate a frightening problem: people don't tell anyone what metrics they use. And we trust them without knowing.

How many times have you seen a poll and not even bothered to read the fine print, which probably didn't really explain the metric used anyway? How many times have you seen a ranking of something or someone and taken it as gospel without finding out how the ranking was achieved? It happens to all of us all too often; we're to busy to find out, or we don't know enough about statistics, or whatever, and we take the metric at face value without having seen its face.

Any time there is a metric involved, someone picked that metric. You have to decide: either you trust the person who picked the metric to have picked the right one, or you want to see the metric. Either you care enough, or you don't. But don't make the decision by default.

All I do in this blog, by and large, is exhort people to think for themselves. If that isn't stupid, I don't know what is. But maybe it's stupid enough to deserve Notoriety. If there's a way to vote, vote for me so I can see my name in lights.