Pajamas Media: A New Challenge For NZ Bear

Most bloggers know NZ Bear does incredible work to keep up with us through his ranking system - TTLB. Many may also be aware of a recent controversy centered, in part, around in line track backs and seemingly focused, fairly or unfairly to a degree, upon this fellow - Don Surber. Unfortunately, I've found what could be an even larger, likely unintentional manipulation of the TTLB resulting from affiliation with Pajamas Media.

See this comment by Daily Pundit Bill Quick left at Hog On Ice.

You folks do know you are beginning to sound like a bunch of obsessive-compulsive whackjobs(sic), don't you?

Anyway, the rss feed on the left side of my blog is for "Best Of" PJM contributor posts. I put it there myself. I'm trying to generate a sidebar that aggregates the 100 or so most recent PFM(sic) blog posts, but I can't quite get it to work yet.

There's a sound reason for this. The business of PJM is business, that is, making money for us, the contributors. Sorry that just drives some people bonkers, but there it is. One way to do that is to increase our collective page views as a group - which means that ways to encourage readers of one blog to click on links to other PJM blogs will increase the overall hit count. If we could raise every PJM blog to Instapundit readership levels, we'd have a huge profit powerhouse.

One way of encouraging that cross linkage is to do what I have done - run an rss feed to other PJM blogs in a highly visible location.

The result? Here for Roger Simon and his 65 and counting basically unearned links from Bill Quick. Or here for Protein Wisdom and its 83 and counting basically unearned links from the same source. Obviously the list goes on.

In essence, implementation of this practice has probably already fed thousands of useless links into TTLB for Pajamas Media bloggers rendering the link tracking system all but useless, if not worse for non-PJM bloggers. PJM'ers will most surely simply all rise to the top, regardless of the viability of the blog, excepting in the opinion of one individual, or some relatively few other colleagues.

Sorry for the bad news and possibly more work NZ, as I'm assuming this issue will be seen as significant as other recently highlighted issues impacting TTLB.

Update: NZ was kind enough to respond in email. It seems that link scoring issue is going to be the one to watch. Does the Bear ever hibernate?? lol And what of his poor wife?

I haven’t applied this approach to PJ’s yet (for no reason other than not noticing / not getting to it…) , but the recently-implemented functionality I created to deal with “blog networks” and other issues should also handle Pajamas blogs just fine as well. Some of the most drastic effects are already being handled --- in particular, the examples you give below of Roger’s 65 links and Jeff’s 83 links are already being filtered out (notice the difference between each site’s ‘link count’ and ‘link score’ on their details page). Feel free to post this response if you like, and thanks for the heads up… NZ

Pajamas Media

Comments

[splashtc]

Who has time to click around and read everyones' blog? And-it takes away readership from your own blog. Macys sending customers to Gimbels! ? Won't the google model work.

[SondraK]

splashtc, it really doesn't have anything to do with that, it has to do with bastardizing a legitimate tool and rendering it meaningless.

Kinda like getting an A on an exam when you've cheated and the rest of the class gets graded on a "curve". Sorta.

[SondraK]

BTW, Dan...it wasn't that it was "fairly or unfairly" heaped on Surber....he was just being the biggest whiney dick about being busted.

[Dan]

BTW, Dan...it wasn't that it was "fairly or unfairly" heaped on Surber....he was just being the biggest whiney dick about being busted.

And, uh, I was just being objective like a good, you know, Citizen Journalist. ; )

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

Well, good bloggers are good bloggers irrespective of PJM- and bad bloggers won't get any better if they are in the PJM stable.

Bigger 'numbers' don't mean more visitors, and sooner or later, advertisers are going to figure out the inflated PJM numbers are like the inflated newspaper subscription numbers that caused the brouhaha a while back.

What I can't figure out is why PJM would even engage in a 'numbers racket'- I mean, you called them on it, pretty quickly. Do they believe advertisers won't do the same? Do they believe this kind of behavior will engender goodwill with the advertisers?

[Elmo]

Hey, I fell seven phyla .... marsupial to insect. In a day. But, I've scrapped, now I'm a highy evolved .... fish! I ain't knocking the bear. The differing weights across the entire net/sphere can easily be seen.

Doing the same search for either content/topic, will yield wildly different results on Google Blog Search vs. Technorati vs. peeking at the Bear vs. taking a looksee at Memeorandum vs ...... ?

One has to be very careful what world they isolate/inuslate themselves in. If they don't want to miss out on the entirety of the available field spread out before them.

Is a story more so because particular parts of the b-sphere are focusing on it? As well particular bloggers ..... SDB, Whittle, and Allah would still be the same. Regardless of where Bear's, or Google's algorithms place them.

[Dan]

SDB, Whittle, and Allah would still be the same. Regardless of where Bear's, or Google's algorithms place them.

True, but not the point. As the blogging world becomes larger and possibly has more impact media wise, people are going to need short cuts as guides and access points. YUour statement is fine for inside blogging types. It doesnt translate to a growing reading audience.

[don surber]

LOL
Talk about hoisting oneself on one's own petard!
How come Technorati can do unique links and NZ can't? Could it be that this whole Echosystem is a vain attempt by conservatives to cover the fact that Daily Kos is stomping them in hits? I get more hits off a lefty link than a righty

[Steel Turman]

Yeah Don, but don't you feel all icky and stuff?

Seriously, TTLB needs to impose an actual weight to links determined by virtue of ecological and behavioral parameters.

If a lion is kind to a mouse - that is worth something.

If a dog sniffs another dog's butt - who cares?

My aologies to Aesop.

The intellectual concept of TTLB is sound. But the analogy needs to be pursued to its ievitable end - predation and dominance based on predation and survival.

A pack of lions is effective at reigning - but they can all fall prey to microbes.

[Elmo]

I very much respect that Don quickly came to be able to laugh at the whole affair. And yeah, when them lefty whales splash, the hitmeter bell dings. But ... who wants em?

And, I can understand Dan, you wanting to make the b-sphere more accessible. But I don't see that as a need or requirement. Kids today pretty much grow up in front of a keyboard. I think there was reference over at Winds of Change in a previous PJM discusssion about landscape design and architecture. As being good models for the virtual world (let the paths find/create their own way). The changes in the technology, in the model, even the content. Can not be predicted past the next few years (video).

After that?

[SondraK]

Any dog's ass that tries to make an argument with the words Daily Kos and an implication of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and takes his inbound links more serious than having a blog worth a crap is so...soo....SURBER!

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

[Dan]

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Sondra, I may one day switch to typekey registration here - in case you want to see if the handle Castrating Biatch is availabe. ; )

[Laurence Simon]

I've gone i nthe opposite direction. I've disabled trackbacks and I don't plan on implementing open feeds from other sites.

I want my citations to have meaning. I want them to be a conscious decision to think someone's material, not some robot-gaming routine.

[Bruce -- Harper Blue]

That may explain why I've slid to Crunchy Crustacean; he may be filtering the Indy 500 list as well, which I'm on. I think a number of my links on Technorati come from that; so screening out the effect will lower rankings.

Probably a necessary thing to combat "link bloat"; but it's still a little shocking. I was three places higher (mumble, mutter....)

[Libby]

I never understood the whole ranking system and I've never link whored. Hell I don't even know when I get a link or if someone blogrolls me most of the time. All I know is I got screwed after all the guys gaming the system pissed off NZ.

I worked my ass off at Last One Speaks for three years to get to marsupial and I liked the sound of it. I never understood how The Impolitic rose to adorable rodent so fast when my hit count isn't that great there but I also liked the sound of it. Since the system was changed to foil the "cheaters" it looks like the gamers just found another way to raise their rankings or something because I'm down to reptile on both blogs.

I'm also noticing that the right wing blogs seem to mostly now have better relative rankings than they did before. I was ranked ahead of a couple that I follow regularly and they're now ranked above me even though I have thousands of more hits.

I don't really care, I don't blog to feel popular and I never expected to make money at it. I just love to talk/write, communicate in whatever way with my readers and hope to change some minds with my views. And maybe if I wasn't already feeding my ego by also blogging for a major metro newspaper I would care more about it, but I have to wonder what the point of the ranking system is anyway if it ends up bloggers are caring more about their status in order to trick potential advertisers, than they care about informing their readers with their content?

Isn't that what the MSM does and aren't we supposed to be above all that?

[SondraK]

Libby gets it!!! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

[Mister Snitch!]

I'm glad you caught this.

[Jeff G]

There was nothing to catch. Bear had already noted that excessive links from a single blog ot another would be monitored and a check automatically triggered.

For close to two years I was listed in the ecosystem under two separate URLs -- my old URL and my new one. My place in the rankings jumped considerably when the two were married into one. But that was well before Bill set up his feed. Since then I've moved up a few places, but I'm guessing that has more to do with the work I've been doing on the NSA program than any gaming of the system.