About ten months ago, I decided to do something a little different with my blog roll: I started two blog roll lists, one for Canadian bloggers, and another for International bloggers. My purpose was two-fold. One, there were several really good Canadian blogs, like Planet Algol, Tao of D&D, and Ode To Black Dougal, that I wanted to encourage people to visit. Since setting up those two separate blog rolls, I have added a dozen more really interesting and inspirational Canadian blog sites to that Canadian list (check out the list, there are some really good blogs there!). Second, there was a little bit of national pride involved in setting up a Canadian blog roll.
That seemed like a sound approach at the time, but recently I've been thinking of merging those two blog rolls back together. Partly, i'm afraid that running two blog rolls is sending a message that I consider there to be two classes of bloggers. For example, while there may be an "A" list of blog sites, whose authors regularly publish quality posts (I wouldn't consider myself among those), the populist -- and Libra -- in me recoils from being the person to make that judgement.
I'm also having a more difficult time managing two lists. There are some Canadian blogs that accidentally appeared on the International blog roll, simply because I didn't know they were Canadian. In addition, there are several blogs that should be included on my blog rolls, but are missing, and i'm wondering if trying to manage two lists isn't contributing to their absence. For example, I just realized I didn't have Lord of the Green Dragons on my blog roll: how the heck did that happen?
So i'm curious: what are your thoughts on the following?
1. Should I merge the two blog rolls?
2. Whose blog sites should I be including on my blog roll? Normally, I include blog sites that are (a) fairly active -- posting at least once per week, and (b) posting about old-school and retroclone rpgs (that includes Pathfinder, and those bloggers who play both 4E as well as older games).
Your responses and suggestions are welcomed, including recommending your own blog sites.
13 comments:
I'd leave them separate I think. It gives you a sense of supporting your local community while not taking away anything from us non Canadian types.
Also I wanted to say thanks for including my blog. Yes its OSR but its also Pathfinder too and as such its neither fish nor foul as they say.
Personally I don't see the reason for adding another division amongst rpg-ers. We RPG, therefore we are a community, and we have the sci-fi types here, and the retro/olde school types here, etc.. is enough division for me.
I'd leave them separate. Where else can we see a list of Canadian OSR blogs?!?
I've divided my blogroll into a main list of ones I actually visit a lot and think are especially good; a list of blogs that are so prominent that it probably isn't really "helping" spread the word about them ("OSR high rollers"; I should probably add this one!); and a graveyard of dead blogs I occasionally click to see if they have come back and keep around mainly to see if any cached versions turn up on Google or the Wayback machine.
Nothing wrong with Canuck pride either.
I also like that you have them separated. I'm torn though on alphabetizing. On the one hand it's an easy way to organize the non-Canadians. I threw a pod up with the other Twin Cities bloggers I knew of after I saw yours. So you must be doing something right! :D
I am intrigued by your plan to explore Canadian RPG blogging and wish to subscribe to your feed.
Besides, if you lump them into one big blogstew that means people who aggregate their RSS get duplicates.
*looks shifty*
Hypothetically speaking of course.
As a Canadian, I'd say merge the two.
There is no need to further ghettoize blogs like the MAPL/CANCON guidelines have done for radio and television. I have a hard time believing that someone would choose a blog based on the criteria of it's nation of origin, rather than that blog's content.
Merge them!
I've got my blog roll split between my RPG blogs and my miniature wargames blogs.
As for the Canadian/international split... there is nothing wrong with highlighting and supporting your fellow Canadians.
I can see it from both perspectives, but I kind of like seeing the Canadian blog roll. I grew up in the Detroit area (watching Channel 9/CBC out of Windsor--"The Friendly Giant" and "Mr. Dress-Up") so I enjoy the Canadian flavor.
I think you should decide based upon how much extra work it might be to maintain two lists and whether you want to do it.
Do a Canadian vs. American thing like Hitman Bret Hart did in the late 90's. You can be a heel for the American blogs, but a heroic babyface in Canada! It...it kinda worked...
If you feel it adds flavour to your blog, then keep it. I don't think there are other places where one could check that information if so inclined.
I just noticed it, and it strikes a chord with my patriotic core. Though as a true Canadian, I also worry if it offends anyone :P
The biggest thing this post gave me was to double check which blogs I read aren't on my blogroll and congrats, your one of them. So I fixed that up.
I think it's pretty interesting to see the Canadian blogs split out, even if it's largely irrelevant to the subject matter.
I prefer blogrolls organized by time of last post, as opposed to by title alphabetically.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm very tempted to merge both lists together, but I think i'll wait until the end of August, and see how I feel about it, then.
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