Er, sorry about that.

My criterea: be interesting, and/or informative, or be funny and you will make it on my list.

yes, yes, i salute the coining of the A list concept and it’s great, that was my main comment, my side comment was just a side dish.

1. yes, “this new A list precipitates conversation”, like you said so well. file that quote away. it’s a good one.
2. and the pick up and forward worldwide is great, too…
3. and there is nothing wrong in acknowledging one’s gratitude when a friend recognizes you, but this acknowledgement should be done by private email or phone or face to face, not publicly in the me me me public space…. IMHO only
4. too many people are using the blogonet to pat themselves on the back. that should be done in private, i have always felt. just my personal opinion, i might be wrong. i usually am…

But I must say one thing: i hate it when people write in and say thank you for putting me on your A list. it’s like so, er, lame. If you get an award, be humble and accept it silently. whatever happened to humility in today’s blogosphere? ouch!
me me me, everyone is saying me me me. Get over it, everyone. you don’t matter. We matter. Us. not me me me!

jeez.

But I have to agree wholeheartedly here, and to reiterate what I said at Northern Voice when someone asked about gender balance in blogging. It doesn’t matter that the metabloggers are all white males because their actual importance in the grand scheme of things is very, very small. What’s important is that men and women of whatever race or heritage can use blogs to create or tap into a community which is, and this is the important bit, relelvant to them.

Who cares if the top 100 are mainly male and white? Not the other 7.5 million bloggers who are busy doing their own thing, that’s for sure. The 52,000 knitting bloggers have probably never heard of Doc Searls or Dave Winer, probably never will, and almost certainly couldn’t care less.

Sometimes I think this hoopla is not really about diversity in blogging, or diversity in the alleged A-list, but down to the frustration that in blogging it’s sometimes easy to feel isolated from the community you want to be a part of. We are all social creatures after all, and our position in society is important to us (whether we realise it or not), and it gets frustrating if we see a glass ceiling above which we fear we will not be able to go.

Certainly I feel with Strange Attractor that no one is really reading it, and that it is but a gnat on the face of the blogosphere that occasionally gets swatted by the Glenn Reynolds of this world, but is generally ignored. Some days, that feels a bit crap. Mostly, though, it means I don’t have to feel bad about not being able to post every day (and yes, I know that not posting every day is not helping my ranking!). So it’s all swings and roundabouts really.

‘Class’ is nice. Obviously I need to work on the hoity-toity thing, though…