Lots of Sites added to Blogroll - UPDATED
After some thought I couldn’t let this go without saying that I feel alot of gratitude for this suggestion and realizing that I do have a broad audience and that the Buddha Dharma is not just for myself, but is meant to be shared with everyone, I will be keeping myself open to suggestion and continue to do my best to make this a site from which all people can benefit.
I think that what I have written below doesn’t reflect that fully.
Hi everyone, another Buddhist Blogger contacted me with an admonishment to link out to anyone who has linked to me. He said:
You are perhaps deficient in NOT returning the courtesy of listing blogs that you like and read and adding to the synergy and connectness of the Buddhoblogosphere.
So I am adding any sites that I can find that have linked to Authentic Personality in the sidebar - under blogroll. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I have read through them and that I am aligned with them in some way - I’d just like to return the favor of them bringing some attention to this site.
Tom said,
04.20.06 at 9:42 pm
Jeez. I guess I seem to have put my foot into it. Like, THAT’S news.
First off, I am decidedly not suggesting that you engage in link exchanges. I hate that . I was suggesting that you do what the paragraph you quote of mine that I sent via your feedback feature says.
It is just that in your “beesucker’s world” post — which you have changed to “getting personal” — you call your readers “sillouhetted unknowns.” Well, they and I are not sillouhetted unknowns to ourselves.
A lot of people don’t like blogrolls [And really, by that I mean any kind of list of blogs a blogger likes posted on his blog]. Jeff of ZenDiary wrote about that and got a lot of supportive feedback. I certainly agree that blogging shouldn’t morph into a popularity contest or a matter of being overly aware of one’s metrics.
But the means by which blogs of a genre are found by interested readers is through the highway of links. We each have roadside stands on the edge of that bustling road. What comes to us in the way of readers are sent to us.
As I write this, your posted stats say you have had 8,819 visitors since 10/20/2005. Imagine that many people in an auditorium training their attention on you. Doesn’t that blow you away. Some of them will stay for two seconds and leave, but others will attentively pour over your every word during a stay of thirty minutes and their lives will be altered in some real way because of it. I just think that it is an incredibly humbling thing to be a blogger. But, admittedly, I am weird.
Tor said,
04.21.06 at 9:52 am
Hi,
It’s always a balancing act to decide whom to put on the blogroll, and whom not to. I even make a practice of coming to my blogrollees regularly just to make sure the links are still good, they’re posting at least semiregularly, etc.
Good luck in your blogrolling practice!
Note from Beesucker: This post was actually sent yesterday at around 6:00, but I accidentally deleted it, so now the timestamp is wrong and I can’t figure out how to change it
beesucker said,
04.21.06 at 10:06 am
Hi Tom,
At first I was put off by your suggestion, thinking ‘hey, its my blog, i never asked to be part of a buddhistoblogosphere!” But then I calmed down and thought about it more and I totally agree with you. I like the idea of having a lot of Dharma on the Interenet and I think practitioners putting up blogs is great. This is a great way of practicing generosity.
Now regarding the “sillouhetted unknown” statement, that was actually a reference back to one of the first posts I ever wrote when I didn’t have anyone coming to Authentic Personality and didn’t know anything about driving people there.
So here I am just musing that now I do have an audience, there is some sort of feeling like that - that there are people reading, so I was addressing those people.
Anyway, no hard feelings. I think its a good idea to keep up with a blog roll, but I will take Tor’s advice and be sure that the links are quality - i think for the most part they are.
Ahistoricality said,
04.21.06 at 5:36 pm
Beesucker: One advantage of a blogroll is that links attract attention! Like me, who isn’t a regular reader of this blog, but of Blogmandu; I’m a rather profligate linker, actually, because I like noting the good stuff I find (and, in the currency of the blogosphere, it’s something I can do that costs me nothing), but I don’t expect people to link back to me just because I link to them once (if they did, I’d be up there with Glenn Reynolds and slashdot!). I’m on record, as being rather opposed to simple link exchanges.
I have a few sites on my own blogroll that I wouldn’t have if they hadn’t linked to me first, but they are there because I’ve read them and found them of sufficient interest to note. If you find something you like in my collection, by all means link to it; if either of us finds ourselves linking repeatedly, then it’s time to consider the blogroll option.
That’s the way I think of it, anyway.
Most of what I do at Ahistoricality seems to be out of your blogging interests, so I’d be neither surprised nor hurt to find my link gone when you actually think through the blogroll. I enjoy the Blogmandu reading because I’ve got a pretty extensive background in Buddhist studies and find the respite from Judeo-Christian (and that’s about the only time I’ll use that term) commentary refreshing; OK, I’m a bit of a carnival junkie, but they’re good carnivals! But I’m not really part of the community.
Thanks for listening.
William Harryman said,
04.21.06 at 6:28 pm
Howdy,
Thanks for adding me to your blogroll.
I agree with Tom. There is a nice community of Buddhist (and integral) bloggers out there. I find new blogs all the time from the blogrolls of blogs I visit (I get feeds from all the blogs in my links sections, and then some). I am constantly amazed at the brilliance and beauty I see.
Peace,
Bill