by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/06/18 13:59 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/06/18/8617581.aspx
So yesterday via the Contact link, I got the following mail:
Dear Michael Kaplan,
http://www.blogged.com/directory/technology
Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.3 score out of (10) in the Technology category of Blogged.com.
This is quite an achievement!
We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.
After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.3 score.
We've also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed. {Instructions deleted, I did not do them!}
Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!
Sincerely,
Amy Liu
Marketing Department
www.blogged.com
Turns out that out of 5,486 ranked blogs at the time I got the mail, I was #523.
I feel like I was in the Boston Marathon or something. Only without realizing I was running? :-)
I have mixed feelings about this. It is I suppose an honor, and being ranked #523 is interesting. But when I looked at some of the ratings of a few other blogs I was not so sure....
I mean, I am fine with TechCrunch as the #1 slot any day of the week, and some of the blogs given 1.0 ratings (the lowest number the site seems to give) deserve that. But in between?
Let's just say that the wisdom/judgment of anyone who puts my blog over some of the ones that this site did should seriously be questioned. :-)
More seriously, I do have be skeptical about such judgments -- I am not so worried about people ranked higher than me, it is more the ones rsnked lower that probably should not be (and would not be if I were one of the editors).
Plus just yesterday a friend was asking me if occasional reference to pornography and suh were really needed, even if the underlying blogs were about language or linguistics -- shouldn't I have points subtracted for such juvenile things on an MSDN blog?
Anyway, you can see the details here. It was harder than it should have been to find out the overall ranking, since you have to look a the full list and find yours in it. I did it but I can't imagine spending a ton of time doing it again.
I'll keep the link on my blog for now (it is at the bottom of the Disclaimers Redux link, on the right) but I've never been into the cult of me quite enough to want to play king of the mountain with anyone (so I masy remove it eventually).
No naked pictures of any of the editors were involved with this process!
This blog brought to you by ꡰ (U+A870, aka PHAGS-PA LETTER ASPIRATED FA)
Jonathan Rascher on 18 Jun 2008 6:18 PM:
You are too modest, Michael. Your blog certainly deserved to be at least #523. I read your blog for one reason: really good content. You seem to have the perfect balance of (usually) interesting technical details and (usually) funny personal anecdotes. Keep up the good work!
Dean Harding on 18 Jun 2008 7:24 PM:
I'd say "Our editors" is their name for a piece of software that automatically ranks blogs...
Andrew West on 19 Jun 2008 7:32 AM:
I don't know if it is just coincidence or not (perhaps they followed up on the links on your sidebar), but my blog has suddenly appeared on blogged with the same 8.3 score as you (it wasn't there when I checked last night when I first read your post). And when I looked at my blog log I saw that it had been visited yesterday by someone coming from the "blog approval queue" page of www.blogged.com, so maybe they do have real people doing the reviewing.
Vaibhav on 20 Jun 2008 9:03 AM:
I feel like a real dupe... I was feeling happy myself when I got a similar mail as you. I was also rated 8.3 with my rank being 501 (http://blog.gadodia.net/a-pleasant-surprise/)
However, now I feel that the ratings are totally unfair. I think that if your blog is 8.3, then mine certainly should be 7 or 6 maybe...
Anyway, keep up the good work :)