Marvellous though it is to come fourth on Iain Dale’s big list of Lib Dem bloggers, I have to admit to being a little dubious about the list as a whole. The lower ranking places seem to be essentially random. Nor does Iain Dales’ reassurance on Lib Dem Voice put my mind at rest:
Just to clarify, that last year a panel of half a dozen LibDem bloggers ranked the blogs. This year they were all voted for by blog readers – 1,142 of them.
That may be true, but since each one of them only had ten votes and they will inevitably be skewed in a rightwards direction, it seems highly unlikely that even a significant proportion of them voted for a single Lib Dem blog.
Anyway, I thought I’d have a little experiment to see what Lib Dem bloggers think of the top 50 that Dale has come up with (excluding myself, because including myself in such a poll would be ridiculously vain). Simply follow this link and rate each blog, giving them between 1 and 4 points (unrated blogs will be given a score of 0). Then I’ll publish the top 50 based on these responses and see how it contrasts with the Dale version.
You have until Wednesday 10 September to vote. Hop to it!
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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A thought: blogs that I haven’t read/do not read will essentially score worse on this than blogs I vote for as poor. Could the scoring system be tweaked so that it is -1 for poor, then 0, 1 and 2 points? And then unread (and therefore unmarked) blogs are not disadvantaged?
I thought about this, but reasoned that the one thing worse than a bad blog is an unread blog. There are certain blogs out there that I am contemptuous about – but that doesn’t stop me going back to them.
Being a geek though, I will probably end up producing a number of iterations of the list. For example, the way I’ve done it means that I can calculate an “average” response quite easily based on responses alone.
(I say this having already voted. Really I should have waited for a yes or no, shouldn’t I, since the answer would drastically change my responses. I’d be ticking “good” for all the ones I haven’t read just to make sure they got more points than one or two of those on the list)
Well, the few that I voted for as poor tend to be ones that are unread NOW, even going to the point of muting them on Lib Dem Blogs. So they are AGRESSIVELY unread, as opposed to unread because I haven’t got round to it, or perhaps have been read a couple of times, but the name hasn’t stuck in my head…
Bah. My spelling is awful tonight, sorry.
I would still argue that a blog that stuck in your mind as awful is better than one you read and forgot about.
Well, I wouldn’t, and I want to change my votes!
* stamps foot, Violet Elizabeth Bott style *
Dude, who the hell is Steph Morgan?
Sister of Rhodri Ashley?
Isn’t everyone in Wales called Morgan? Anyway – now corrected.
I’m not even considered a Lib Dem blog, despite the fact I’ve stood for election as a Liberal twice.
As I said above, I’ve only included the ones in Iain Dale’s top 50. I’m not pretending that is a comprehensive list of every single Lib Dem blog in existence.
I mean, Iain Dale’s lists count me as generically “left-wing”…
James will you do me a huge favour and take my blog out of the deathmatch list please? I’m really not into having my blog being judged like this, it’s not my thing and makes me really uncomfortable.
Thanks
Respectfully, no.