I don’t go by Shirkey’s Law, I think there are far better models especially within subculture non A listers.
Seems to me a lot of this is looping. I found your comparisons and hits, sessions, uniques interesting.
Those that don’t understand logs and hits will find it useful. Blog on!

The Blogdom is a runaway train, with anything, and everything “god-related”. It is, quite simply, just a huge, huge “train station” for God-blogs. It doesn’t do anything whatsoever, but aggregate all the posts and links, for all the godblogs on the list, with an accompanying blogroll. Nothing else.

The Blogdom is the biggest (as of now), and it should be. In my humble opinion, it provides a way for all of us to “connect” on the macro scale - regardless of theology, denomination, or what have you. That is what is cool about the Blogdom.

The Reformed, Un-right, and Evangelical aggregators, (not to be confused with Joe’s blogroll only Directory) do much the same thing. They are just big fat clearing houses. However, they are putting together (roughly, macro-scale still) like-minded/theology believers onto a common roll.

Then, you get to the more specific ones, like my apologetics aggregator, or the denominational aggregators. See, I look at the Blogdom as a “kingdom of God” scale aggregator. There are macro-level aggregators under that, and then more specific ones under that.

We are all still connected in the larger “umbrella” - but, we are also connecting via “common theology”, and “common purpose” in the more specific ones.

Now, for your actual question: Nothing is “under” the blogdom, as of now. Their links are included (to the aggregators), I think, but nothing else.

The “Decablog” is more or less a group of ten higher-traffic bloggers who are trying to “bring up the tail” for the smaller bloggers. They all happen to be evangelical/reformed, because they are the highest traffic, it seems to me.

So, there’s the “layout”, in a nutshell.

Blogdigger looks like this: http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=1530

It has an RSS feed, which the usual server.com aggregators do not - which is why he’s promoting them. That RSS feed can be added to the Blogdom’s aggregation, and multiply the coverage - server.com aggregators don’t have that ability.

Did that help somewhat?

Please refer to the terms specified in http://blog.revmike.us/archives/000715.html, or you will get a trip to the Board Room, where, to paraphrase Donald Trump, someone WILL be anathematized.

Would you help me understand? Are they being fed through the Blogdom? I’m unfamilar with blogdigger.

This is from Dr. Warnock’s blog.

*Handily he is using blogdigger which means that like the PCA blog, anyone who joins that blog will now automatically be aggregated also on the BofG page since blogdigger has an RSS feed. From my point of view it would be cool for the new God aggregators to set themselves up that way, so that BofG can increasingly become the central port of call aggregating the other aggregators and pointing people to more specific lists. So if you already run an aggregator do consider blogdigger- it would even be possible to include the RSS feed from there on your existing server.com page. O, and by the way, do make sure you submit your aggregator page to google for spidering.*

Hey Joe: No, I couldn’t tell.:^)
Thanks for your apology, no need. You own your own feelings, rant away - it’s a tough job setting things up and getting them running. I don’t handle my anger nearly as well. It would get under my skin to. People need time, a chance to sort things out and an opportunity to see others holding to their promises.

I understand where you are coming from, but I grew up in an area with a lot of anti-Catholic animosity. I also have a lot of Catholic relatives and I am sensitive to how they perceive feelings toward them and as to whether or not they are considered Christians by the conservative Protestant evangelical community.

Sorry that I went off on rant. I’ve just been seeing a lot of that sort of thing and it has been getting under my skin.

***You grew up in fundamentalism Joe?***

You can’t tell? ; )

Yeah, it moved from fundamentalist Baptist to fundamentalist Pentecostal so I got the full effect.

***If your efforts are analysed and met with suspicion by all means express your discontent.***

I can certainly respect people expressing their concerns and pointing out where things might go wrong. But to view *every single effort* with suspicion just because it comes from a certain country (the U.S.) or a particular movement (evangelicalism) or because many of the bloggers may have similiar political inclinations (conservative) is rather uncharitable.

Joel,

***Is it really try to create a sense of Christian community or just to create a sense of community among people who think exactly like the ten bloggers, that is, mainly conservative and mainly Calvinist?***

I think we have to move in stages. You start by finding members of your own intellectual “tribe” and create a sense of inclusion. Then — as a group that is accountable to one another — you move to the next stage and expand the circle. For example, I think that evangelicals and Catholics should be able to join together on many issues while still respectfully disagreeing on others.

By reaching out as a group of like-minded individuals we can temper the extremes on both ends. A single individual evangelical may feel free to bash Catholics and denigrate their faith. But if he feels part of a community of fellow evangelicals he will be less likely to resort to the extremism that can stem from radical individualism.

Will it work? I don’t know. I hope so. But I will never know unless I do what I can to make an effort.

In my experience the largest effect of these mass blogrolls is to give many, many more links to small bloggers who then will have more exposure and will be found more easily than others. The second largest effect is that people who are good at getting into a few of them will have much more noticeability than would otherwise be even close to possible. The first effect seems thoroughly good and hardly bad at all. The second seems to be good when the blogger is good and should be noticed. I have some mixed feelings about that effect, though. I don’t judge an action to be wrong merely because its effects, though, so I see no problem with blogrolls.

When it comes to aggregators, that seems to me to be largely a place for people who want to to go to read a set of blogs on similar topics or with similar features. This is really no different from using a news aggregator yourself and putting in whichever blogs you want. The only noticeable difference is that someone has selected some blogs, often with a fairly open acceptance (perhaps subscribing to a statement of faith or being willing to blog about a particular issue now and then) and then made it publicly available. I presume the only real worry, then, is when certain blogs are highlighted as special ones, which is how many people are trying to view the Decablog, contrary to its stated purpose and intended effect. That seems to be what spurred this on, and that seems to be the only one with even a hope of showing a moral issue with. Why not have a place to go read pro-life bloggers? Why not have a place to go read blogs that are Christian and politically liberal? Why not have a place to read blogs dealing with apologetics?

Is it really try to create a sense of Christian community or just to create a sense of community among people who think exactly like the ten bloggers, that is, mainly conservative and mainly Calvinist?

For one, Catholics make up about half of Christians, I think. Why not invite someone such as Justin Katz in?