Day: December 7, 2003

The latest prank making the rounds in the weblog world is an effort to ensure that a Google search on “miserable failure” turns up pages on George Bush (See Newsday). So far, it seems to be working rather well.
I think I can credibly claim to have functional sense of humor, but I just don’t see much funny about this particular joke. All too often, people delude themselves into thinking that if they keep repeating a falsehood over and over again, it will come true: and here we see that philosophy taken to its logical conclusion. Nevermind argument and reason: let’s just say it’s true, and that’s sufficient.
There is something fundamentally wrong about weblogs being used to such a purpose: in a medium which allows anyone to express their own ideas and logic, this isn’t an argument: it’s just a rude noise. Using your weblog to hack Google like this is like using a master’s paintbrush to scrawl obscene graphiti on the bathroom wall. Sure, you can do it, but aren’t there better uses for the instrument?
And yes, I do find the very nature of the hack objectionable: Google is a big corporate entity and I’m just a fellow with an odd weblog directory, but they are engaged in the same enterprise as I am: mapping the territory of the Internet. They do it for profit, I do it for fun, but the task is the same. So I feel something of a shared offense to see their system gamed, just as mine has been. If you’re going to act like a thirteen-year-old coughing “bullsh*t!” to drown out an argument he doesn’t like, that’s fine, but would it be too much to ask that you do it in some way that doesn’t require you to mess with other people’s stuff?
And ultimately, can’t you make any better argument than this to prove your point? Or more precisely: can’t you make any actual argument at all?
Update: This is a nonpartisan gripe, by the way. This and this are equally stupid as the original Google-bomb.
Update with second thoughts: I take that back. The sites above actually contain arguments which at least attempt to prove their point, which lends far more credibility to the entire exercise, so I withdraw my snipe at them…

A few days ago I for feedback on how many members the Liberal Coalition should be required to have before being allowed to compete in the New Weblog Showcase sponsorship contest — I tossed out 15 as a starting point, and 20 was quickly arrived at as a consensus number.
Well, the Coalition has just added its twentieth member, and so it seems official: they are now eligible for the Showcase sponsorship contest. I see no reason not to allow them to compete in tonight’s count, so if they continue their present lead, they’ll have their logo at the top of the Showcase next week.
Congratulations to the Coalition on its swift growth, and good luck to all in tonight’s contest!

OK folks, promised, I put some serious effort into cleaning up the Ecosystem data this weekend, and major progress has resulted.
I have actually now gotten through the entire queue of change requests, and have also improved the self-service interface a bit to include better data validation (which makes it much easier for me to sweep quickly through the changes on the back end). In addition, I’ve done some surveys through the data to try to identify and eliminate duplicate weblogs (usually due to moves off Blogspot), and cleaned out quite a few of them.
Now, there were definitely some change requests that I wasn’t able to figure out, and almost certainly some that I just plain missed. So at this point, I’d ask for your help: take a look, and if you see a change you wanted made that hasn’t happened, please resubmit it. And please, use the ‘notes’ field on the request form if you’re doing anything but requesting the simplest of changes — it really helps me to hear exactly what you’re trying to do.
I’ve cleaned out the links database and kicked off a nonscheduled rescan which is running right now, so for the next few hours you’ll see screwy data on the individual weblog details pages. I’ll update here when it is done.
But once that’s complete, we should be in pretty good shape. Not perfect, by any means, but a heck of a lot better than it has been in a long time. So as I said: take a look yourself, as I’d welcome assistance in tracking down further areas where we can clean up.
Thanks!
Update 12/7 11am: Scans are done, all data should now be as accurate as it’s going to get — until you tell me what else needs changing!