Barry has not responded to note below, and the time I set to have this resolved by (10am PST today) has now passed. It’s time to resolve this issue and move on, and so I have acted: as of now, all the blogs listed in my previous post have been suspended from the Ecosystem, with the exception of Rush Limbaughtomy itself — as per Barry’s suggestion (which he still has inexplicably not posted on his blog, but did send to me and the League mailing list via e-mail), and my extension of his concept to apply to all his alternate blogs.
I’m not going to take the time to respond point-by-point to Barry’s various posts on this subject, but I will address one comment he made, as it bears directly on the need — or lack thereof — to have multiple blogs. He said: “Each of our “Limbaughtomy pages” is usually unique. They have more content and more varied content that the majority of pages on the Ecosystem.”
Ah. Would that be varied content like this?
Anyway. I hope Barry will recognize that I’m not going the final step and suspending him entirely from the Ecosystem. He can still compete, but each of his links will have to be earned from someone other than himself. And if he genuinely does choose to start a truly separate and distinct weblog someday with its own content, I’ll consider lifting his one-blog-in-the-Ecosystem restriction.
As for the League, I hope the members of the League will recognize that I bear them no ill will as a whole or individually. I dislike the tactics that have been employed here, and I’ve been disappointed — until this recent incident — that in general, League members have seemed to display an “anything goes if its not against the rules” attitude to “winning” the game of the Ecosystem. I’m heartened to see many League members publicly denouncing this most recent SiteMeter-related behavior, and I hope this incident will provide a catalyst for the League to focus its membership on individual achievement and merit, and to condemning publicly the attitude of reaching for pure statistical gain through whatever means necessary.
If you’re wondering just how badly these blogs distorted the League’s rankings, I’ll draw your attention to the League’s total inbound unique statistics from this morning, before I suspended these blogs: 8597 unique inbound links across all the League’s blogs. With the removal of the duplicate blogs, the League now totals 5641 unique inbound links. That’s right: 34% of the League’s total unique links were due to these duplicate blogs. To League members, I ask you: is that really the way you want to advance?
Anyway, enough said. That’s it, folks. Show’s over, so move along.
And by the way: to all those who expressed their thanks and appreciation for the work that I do on the Ecosystem, thank you in return. The acknowledgement is very much appreciated, and it does indeed encourage me to continue my own focus on the Ecosystem and related tools — particularly at times like these.
Update 12/1/03:Kynn Bartlett has an excellent roundup of these events, including an extraordinarily revealing email from Barry himself.
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technology meets creativity in a disaster-prone world. confident enough to try; humble enough to learn.