Are All Links Equal?

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Shelley Powers at Burningbird has been discussing >gender and racial inequalities in linking in the blogosphere and has often been met with defensiveness and rudeness for doing so. What strikes me about the discussion is how it mirrors the discussion of Affirmative Action in the US. Shelley isn't calling for quotas, but a lot of bloggers she discusses with take it that way. And they don't like it one bit. I think much of the defensiveness is just people natural dislike of even the whiff of criticism. But some of it reflects the reality that if the observation is true, then for many people the solution follows naturally from the problem - a requirement to link to more women, to in fact achieve link parity. The ironic thing is, most of this discussion is taking place amongst good liberals and progessives, and the other ironic thing is that who you link to matters far less to a blog's quality (the effect is pretty much zero) than who a business hires matters to the fortunes of the firm. But I'm struck by how much the discussion follows the lines of discussion over AA.

But that's not the full scope of Shelley's dissatisfaction - her observations on gender extends to far more than just link patters in the blogosphere, and her observations on linking are far more than just gender/race equality. I'm not always in agreement with her, but she certainly sets a thoughtful and civil tone in her discussions and her points are always worth consideration.

Full disclosure - Funmurphys links to more women than men, more whites than minorities -- at least in the case where I know the gender and race. This is not policy, this just is. When it was just an ordinary website called the Murphy Nexus, which focused much more on just family stuff, my links to and from were in fact mostly to women because they ran similar sites. Should I make more of an effort to link to more women and minorities, or should I try to make more of an effort to link to better bloggers, or should I give up the blogroll altogether? Well, I wish I had more time to do more blog exploring, and the blogroll is really there for me - I use it in my blog readings. So it's not going away, and if you think there is a blog out there I should be reading, please let me know.

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Kevin Murphy published on May 19, 2005 11:38 AM.

Great Minds Think Alike was the previous entry in this blog.

Don't Gore My Ox is the next entry in this blog.

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St. Louis Blogs:

J Bowen
Christopher Johnson
Charles Austin
Archpundit
Random Observations
Brian J Noggle
Shelley Powers
Gateway Pundit
Listless Lawyer
Jim Durbin
Timothy Birdnow
Diane Meyer
Marijean Jaggers
Scott Ginsberg
Steve Boriss
St. Louis Bloggers
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Randall Sherman
Urban Review STL

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John Combest
Blue Girl, Red State
Another Rovian Conspiracy
The News Buckit
The Source
Fired Up! Missouri
Susan "Farmgirl"

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James Lileks
Glenn Reynolds
Rich Galen
Megan McCardle
Scrapple Face
In The Agora
The Brothers Judd
Geitner Simmons
Cronaca
Science Blog
Winds of Change
Da Goddess
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Phil Carter
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Rand Simberg
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News Busters
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Kevin Murphy The Other
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Busy Mom
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Jenne
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King of Fools
Perish the Thought
Patterico
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Michael Spencer
Think Sink
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A J Strata
S K Murphy
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Back Talk
Joe Sherlock
Mark Perry
Daniel Dilger

Pundits

Charles Le Kraut Martel
Victor Davis Hanson
Mark Steyn
Thomas Sowell
Malcolm Gladwell
Robert Cringely
John Carroll
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David Nicklaus

My Interests

The Paralyzed Veterans of America
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Wayside Gardens
The Alliance for the Separation of
School and State

MacSurfer Daily News
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