Fair warning: This is just a silly, meaningless post and (like the earlier one on the same topic) it is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek given the illusory nature of the “rankings”… 
A week ago BlogNetNews launched their Illinois political blogs ranking index. Ms. Fran Eaton of Illinois Review was quite excited to learn the group blog she edits was ranked numero uno in the debut top 20 listing. (And the only reason I even mentioned it was because I found it hilarious that Ms. Eaton listed only the top 5 ranked blogs, despite the availability of all 20. This blog, Illinois Reason, was ranked #6 last week and thus didn’t make Ms. Eaton’s cut…)
While Illinois Review’s #1 rank was interesting it was also fleeting as BNN manager Dave Mastio warned. Sadly, Illinois Review has fallen from the #1 spot in this week’s horserace, dropping two spots to #3.
Guess which blog went the opposite direction, cracking the top 5 by jumping ahead two notches to #4… (Sorry John Ruberry that we knocked you out of the top 5 — we even did our part by recently linking to Marathon Pundit).
As I mentioned in the last post about this ephemeral bit of trivia, check out all the blogs BNN ranks this week. They represent a broad base of democracy and freedom of speech in action.
13 comments
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May 29, 2007 at 9:51 am
Rich Miller
I’m glad you’re not taking this crap seriously. The site won’t even disclose how the rankings were reached, which makes their results complete, utter BS in my “2nd place two weeks in a row” opinion.
May 29, 2007 at 10:00 am
David Mastio
Thanks for the constructive comments, Rich. How would you suggest we make our exact system public and not open it to gaming?
You might also send your opinion to Google which doesn’t make their ranking system public. Same for Yahoo.
Of course, another alternative is to make the system so simple it is meaningless. See Technorati where your rank is just built on how many links there are to your site.
Seriously, if you have ideas, we are open to making changes that will make the results more trusted.
May 29, 2007 at 10:06 am
rich miller
This guy sent me an identical e-mail to his comment, and here is my response…
i have no suggestions because i am completely and totally uninterested in your opinion of who has the most “influential” blog in illinois. the fact that you won’t disclose your ranking guidelines just makes it less of a concern to me.
May 29, 2007 at 10:20 am
robnesvacil
I understand BNN not wanting to disclose their proprietary methodologies out of concern that diabolical bloggers may wish to game the system similar to a googlebomb. But you’re right — without knowing whether the ranking index is scientific or simply based on bippity-boppity-boo the numbers are difficult to take seriously (I already know how many readers, links, feeds, etc. this site gets…).
Even Casey Kasem told us how he got his Top 40 Countdown every weekend (ah, the time before MTV).
It’s not quite as bad as all the silly fake awards conservative “charities” and think-tanks create for their candidates… but it’s close.
I will say that the only person I’ve read as taking it seriously is the fine lady mentioned above. She even put the BNN ranking button on the front page of Illinois Review last week ‘cuz she was so proud (it has mysteriously disappeared now that The Swamp knocked ‘em down a few pegs).
May 29, 2007 at 10:32 am
robnesvacil
I should clarify my statement, “It’s not quite as bad as all the silly fake awards conservative “charities” and think-tanks create for their candidates… but it’s close.”
It’s not that I think the rankings are worthless, I just don’t take much stock in someone else’s opinion of how influential this or that blog is. And whereas those goofy “Hero of the Taxpayer” type awards are clearly partisan and useless, BNN’s rankings are at least non-partisan and equal opportunity.
It’s fun as interesting trivia, but not something I would take seriously without further information.
Dave, Rich clearly has no inclination to offer free advice here, but I will mention that at least some indication of the factors which are referenced for the rankings and relative weights thereof would lend some credibility to your work.
It’s nigh impossible for me to believe this blog was the 4th most influential political blog in Illinois last week — especially compared to much more frequented blogs such as CapFax, The Swamp, etc. To me, that implies either the ranking systems is outta whack or there just aren’t that many folks even paying attention to Illinois political blogs (or both). It’s like Coke and Pepsi at #1 and #2 and then RC at #3… there’s a big gap there even though saying you’re #3 or #4 sounds cool. (Same analogy for Bud and Miller … and then Coors or Sam Adams or whatever.)
Thanks Dave and Rich for playing along.
May 29, 2007 at 10:34 am
rich miller
Here’s the thing: Who cares what some out-of-state company thinks of our blogs? I, for one, didn’t get into this business to validate my ego. Every blog is influential in its own way.
OneMan, for instance, doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but I read every word he writes and he has a significant impact on me. The Swamp has the Tribune behind it, but the blog itself is not so useful to me because it focuses exclusively on national stuff.
“Influential” is a subjective concept. Those claiming to have found a way to somehow codify it through technology and then make big weekly shows of awarding the top slots should be held in deep suspect. The Google analogy is also off. Google is a tool, not a perpetual awards show.
Bottom line is it looks to me like they’re simply trying to draw traffic to their aggregator site, which is yet another reason to use clipped feeds in your RSS. Notice, also, that in the ranking lists they don’t link directly to our blogs but instead link internally to their own aggregator service. I have no problem with people trying to make a buck, but this gimmick is transparently goofy.
May 29, 2007 at 10:43 am
rich miller
And another thing. Any ranking list that doesn’t include IlliniPundit, Chicagoist, CTA Tattler, Peoria Pundits, Clout City, MoveOnAndShutUp, Spontaneous Solutions, Daily Harold, etc., etc., etc. can’t possibly be real.
May 29, 2007 at 10:52 am
rich miller
(My comment at 10:34 was apparently being written while robnesvacil was writing his own comment. I posted it without seeing his comment. Sorry for the overlap.)
May 29, 2007 at 11:18 am
David Mastio
Robnesvacil,
BNN’s rankings sure aren’t gospel. Take them as another data point along with GoogleRank, Technorati authority, NZBear’s ecosystem etc etc. What makes BNN’s rankings different is that they are focused on a single state, so the data we use is much more customized and the universe we compare blogs against is also smaller.
As for the data we use, we’ve been pretty public about that. If memory serves, some details were in the letters we sent out to bloggers. We use links, traffic, data in RSS feeds, and data from how BNN readers interact with each blog on our site, giving the most weight to data sets that are most complete.
As for some big-blogs not making the top 20 every week, that’s just because some weeks they don’t have content that broadly influences the conversation in the local blogosphere. If there is a bias in our rankings, this is it — we designed the system to be volatile enough to let smaller blogs break in when they have something that gets attention.
May 29, 2007 at 11:26 am
David Mastio
Rich Miller SAYS: “i am completely and totally uninterested”
Rich Miller DOES: makes five comments and sends me an email
Hmm, which to believe?
One thing Rich says is worth talking about: “Bottom line is it looks to me like they’re simply trying to draw traffic to their aggregator site, which is yet another reason to use clipped feeds in your RSS. Notice, also, that in the ranking lists they don’t link directly to our blogs but instead link internally to their own aggregator service.”
You don’t have to use clipped feeds with BNN, because BNN only takes the opening 50 words of a post and every time we publish an excerpt, we link to the original post in the headline and at the little … thing at the end of the excerpt. The page that Rich is complaining about:
http://www.blognetnews.com/illinois/feed.php?channel=55
has more than 100 links to his site.
May 29, 2007 at 11:38 am
rich miller
Um, David, my disinterest is purely in “helping” your goofy site, including whether even to bother asking you to remove my blog from your phony “ranking” list. I am, however, always interested in holding conversations on this and other blogs.
In other words… Bite me.
May 29, 2007 at 1:12 pm
robnesvacil
You kidz are crackin’ me up!
This discussion about a side-show doesn’t really call for comments about mandibles so take it “outside” please. Rich, I’m sure you could ask Dave to follow you over to one of your sites if you wish to continue the conversation.
May 29, 2007 at 2:35 pm
robnesvacil
Upon further reflection, Dave, you prove our point that BNN’s rankings are of unfortunately little value when you write, “If there is a bias in our rankings, this is it — we designed the system to be volatile enough to let smaller blogs break in when they have something that gets attention.” (bold emphasis added)
Illinois Reason was ranked #6 of the top 20 in the debut list. This week it’s at #4…
Illinois Reason is itself a smaller blog, yet it has so far been well inside your top 10.
I understand this may change from time to time but it strikes me as strange that such a small blog as Illinois Reason would be ranked so relatively high. In fact, I fully expected that Illinois Reason would’ve dropped quite dramatically in the rankings last week as we had many fewer readers than the week prior — yet we actually climbed.
Now, perhaps as you tweak the magic formula and tighten the bolts the “influence rankings” will gain credibility and be useful as a reference. Indeed, I think the more interesting tidbit will be based on timescales of monthly, if not quarterly, rankings as trends in your numbers are revealed.
Further, I think the definition of “influence” is too ambiguous here. The BNN rankings seem to be not so much factors of “influence” but of “reference”.
With that out of the way, the Great Mastio-Miller Spat of 2007 isn’t all that germane to my original post.
As I started out saying in this and the previous post, my curiosity was piqued by the fact that Ms. Eaton was preening so about Illinois Review’s now-lost #1 rank. That she displayed the BNN ranking ‘button’ on the Illinois Review front page was evidence of her hubris.
Now that Illinois Review has dropped out of pole position I find the fact that she removed the blue BNN ranking ‘button’ to be further evidence of the fact the Review is so much dark humor, replete with cherry-picked facts, beyond the pale acidic rhetoric, and squat men hiding behind curtains. I’m astonished that Dennis LaComb and she are able to collect so many contributors to such a site, yet the effect is that they each reinforce their own myopic groupthink. (In other words, if Illinois Review is influencing anybody, it’s the small cadre of folks who already agree with their extremism to begin with and the apparently larger contingent of folks who are “influenced” to shake their heads in disagreement and disgust.)