MC, the point of the Decablog is to foster the meeting of new people and the encouraging of new bloggers. It set up some bloggers who are well-known who are go-to people to send good posts to so that others will see them more easily. It’s thus supposed to have the same sort of effect as the Christian Carnival except not as one central post on one blog. I’m not as confident as Adrian is that it will have as much success in this purpose as he thinks it will, but you have to look at why he set it up and not why you would expect someone to set such a thing up. Anyone who complains about this without having read his 4-5 posts explaining what it is and why he set it up is merely acting from ignorance.

What hoo-ha of a few years ago are you referring to, Bene?

One of the things I’m wondering about is the US drive to market, be the best, gain influence and power. My internal jury is still out on that one.:^)

The recent Dobson issue is a classic. Many believers piled into ‘liberal’ blogs, defensive and even rude and arrogant and using the sub-language of religion.
I’ve posted about the rise of protestant aggregators, to applaud any effort that genuinely ‘gives voice to the voiceless.’
We’ll see how it all plays out.

But even though I’m still not clear on how this whole Decablog and what-not stuff is supposed to work, it appears to me that the purpose is to create exposure and increase readership of “smaller” blogs by “using” more widely read blogs.
I think we should give Jeremy and folks the benefit of the doubt at this point. They haven’t even started and some of us are already nervous.

It’s possible we don’t understand exactly what they’re doing. Shouldn’t we take a wait and see attitude toward this and not jump to conclusions about how this will create division/clique-ishness/exclusivity/etc?

Just a thought from someone who otherwise doesn’t “get” all the aggregator/alliances/blog-marketing hoo-ha.

Well, see, this is the thing I’m worried about. When people start defending leagues and groups rather than love one another. Sorry, Jeremy.
Bene, I’ve posted my view on this topic, just to let you know since I can’t find a trackback:

http://messychristian.blogs.com/messy_christian/2005/01/christian_facti.html

I guess I’m being a typical centrist here, but I do have a problem with the top 10 blogs thingy. I just don’t understand how it could help the blogosphere … it does give the impression of being an exclusive club, an in-crowd of Christian bloggers where people should go to to get noticed. Personally, it’s not inline with my blogging philosophy which is to meet new people, blog about things I care about and to encourage new bloggers. But that’s just me…

I’m sure others have different ideals.

10 Christian blogs: decablog

Adrian Warnock
Evangelical Outpost
In the Agora
Jollyblogger
La Shawn Barber
Le Sabot Post-Moderne
Parableman
Patriot Paradox
Smart Christian
Wittenberg Gate
Working with the Blogdom of God

I quoted Dr. Warnock’s purpose.
So the 12 are 10 and are no longer being called apostles?

I don’t believe that there are any apostles in the blogdom, and I’ve never heard of an apostles aggregator. I do know that when Adrian was first talking about the Decablog, people were a little worried than having 12 people in it would send the wrong message, that the people in it were going to represent the 12 apostles somehow. He realized that such an impression would be both false and a bad one to send, so he changed it to 10. Fortunately, it was before he had even contacted the 10 people now in it about it.

Since you listened to me and were glad to change your views before when presented with the correct information, let me try again with the aggregator. The way he presented it was as follows. Some people were asked for permission to be included in an aggregator that was intended to try to give a place for people to go that would include posts from the highest-profile bloggers in the blogdom who link to others a lot and support bloggers without as much recognition. Adrian viewed me as one of those people, and I was happy to allow my blog to serve this purpose if the aggregator does in fact serve that purpose.

I never said I had no reservations about this. I have some. I don’t think it’s going to be incredibly effective at what it’s designed to do. I think it’s more likely just to be a nice place to see what’s up with these particular blogs. Since Adrian extended an offer to anyone to do the same with their own aggregator of whatever blogs they wanted, I saw no harm in going along with it in case it does have the good effects he intends.

As for Tom, I don’t think I said he was accusing me of anything. I do think he had an overly negative tone in his questions. There was all that stuff about tooting my own horn, and then there was the suggestion that the aggregators were causing the division, as if they were at all related to the WorldMag thing.

Here is my summary.

I think your public announcement of delinking was ill-advised. So do some others. You don’t.

I have serious reservations about apostles in the Blogdom aggregator. So do some others. You don’t.
I have reservations about the motivation and marketing behind some of these aggregators. So do some others. You don’t.

I see Tom’s questions above as open-ended, not a personal attack. You don’t.

You have gone to a great deal of commendable effort to correct my mistakes and explain your intent, I trust you feel you’ve been heard.