As bloggers go, I'm not one of the Big Dogs. My Technorati number is right about where Obama wants you to set your thermostat. Which is to say I'm still proving myself and I am not an expert at blogging.
Now here's my question about the care and feeding of blogrolls: what is the deal with some Big Dogs who haven't updated their blogrolls in a long time? Some bloggers have blogroll links that are years out of date. Check out the blogroll at Instapundit. I did a little research and discovered alot of the links in Instapundit's blogroll are no good.
Here's the list of blogs on Glenn's site which have either moved or appear to be defunct:
Africa Pundit hasn't posted since March 02, 2005.
The link to Tim Blair is to his old site. New location here.
The link to Blogosferics is jacked up.
The link to Keith Burgess-Jackson is to his old site. He has moved (twice). Latest location here.
The link to Mark Byron is to his old site. New location here.
The link to Citizen Smash (Indepundit) is jacked up.
The link to Joshua Claybourn is to his old site. New location here.
Jeff Cooper is defunct.
The link to Bo Cowgill is jacked up. Should be this one.
Ranting Profs hasn't posted since September 21, 2006.
Deinonychus hasn't posted since May 17, 2006.
Demosthenes is defunct.
The link to Steven Den Beste is to his old site. New location here.
Nick Denton hasn't posted since October 30, 2007.
The link to Martin Devon doesn't work. Looks like he has moved a few times... I spent 10 minutes trying to find his new site but gave up.
Electrolite hasn't been updated since March 1, 2008
February 30 may be the Lamest Blog Of All Time... click the link and see if you agree.
The link to Andrea Harris is to her old site. New location here.
The link to Kevin Holtsberry is to his old site. New location here.
The link to Horologium brings you to a well-designed site with a blogroll - but you stare at the site for several minutes and no posts appear.
Instalawyer hasn't posted since March, 2008. (But he seems to wait several weeks between posts, so I doubt he has abandoned his blog.)
The link to Isntapundit doesn't work.
Kathy Kinsley hasn't posted since September 10, 2007.
J.D. Lasica has moved. New location here.
The link to LawMeme isn't working. Temporary problem?
Brian Linse hasn't posted since February 03, 2008.
The link to Megan McArdle is old. She is now blogging here.
Jay Manifold hasn't posted since June 19, 2007.
The Mesopotamian has posted 4 times in 2008, the last one being April 10, 2008.
The link to Chris Mooney returns to "Page not found"
Charles Murtaugh has been "removed"
Robert Musil hasn't posted since March 21, 2007.
The link to Brendan O'Neil doesn't work. He is posting here.
Andrew Olmsted, rest in peace.
The link for Suman Palit is jacked up, should be this. (But Suman Palit's last post was September 26, 2007.)
Stephen Pollard now blogs at The Spectator.
The link to Quare is old; the old Quare site refers to "new site" which unfortunately is 404'd.
Rabbit Blog hasn't posted since May 12, 2008, but posts there are usually a few weeks apart.
The link to Milt Rosenberg is to his old site. New location here.
Matt Rustler has been 404'd.
The link to Doc Searls is to his old site. New location here.
The link to Donald Sensing is to the old site. New location here.
Geitner Simmons is defunct. (Link brings you to Blog City's "You are in luck — this site has not yet been taken" page.)
Tonecluster stopped blogging (temporarily?) in February, 2008 after a death in his family.
War Liberal is now blogging at Thomason Tracts.
Will Warren hasn't posted since December 04, 2002.
John Weidner has moved. New location here.
The link to Matthew Yglesias is to his old site. His new location is here.
Yuppies of Zion is defunct.
The lesson? Instapundit doesn't update his blogroll as often as I do. Which might be one of the reasons he's big and I'm not.
So bloggers: how often do you update your blogroll? How important is your blogroll to your blog? Give me your thoughts in comments. If I left anything out, let me know in comments.
9 comments:
I don't usually "update" mine. I add to it or delete from it, but I don't use it to go to other sites, nor do I check back to see if a site is still "good".
I usually go to my favorite sites directly from my own blog. Not always.
Ever so often I do an audit to see if the blogs I link to are still active. If they aren't active I dump them.
The longer you blog the less you feel like messing with the blogroll, because it involves awkward decisions about people you know. Sort of like deciding whether to keep sending old so-and-so a Christmas card, or drop them from the list. But this list is public.
If the roll is full of dead links, then obviously no one can criticize it or be offended, since it isn't up to date.
Yeah, Feb 30 was pretty lame. Maybe it's an "artistic" blog or something. Anyways, I keep most of my blogroll'd blogs in a reader, so I know when they go down and update appropriately.
I've been on Typepad for about five years now; that's how stale the Instapundit link is. He hasn't responded to e-mail reminders; maybe this might get him going.
I have to "suffer" through a McClatchy paper with our Lexington Herald Leader. What's odd is that it's so dominant here that other than USA Today, it's the only paper in the news racks. I'm used to having multiple papers available; in Michigan, we had the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News as well as regional papers, but here, it's the Herald Leader or bust.
Mark - are you happy with TypePad?
I think blogrolls are not as critical as they used to be in building traffic and recognizing friends. Information overload and RSS readers and the like have made the permanlinks/blogrolls less important.
And as people get busy they have less time to manage the links. I hope to do a much better job of only linking to people I actually read on a regular basis with the new site.
I think I sent Glenn an email about a year ago telling him my new blog site, but I generally let things like that slide because, well, I don't care... Also I can understand if people get sick of changing my blog url on their sites because I close my blog and open a new one elsewhere every year.
BTW, Jay Manifold (...Arcturus) blogs occasionally at Chicago Boyz.
I have no idea why he's left his original blog lie fallow.
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