from Amazon
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Peer-reviewing bloggers
Friend of The Book RJ Anderson made a post at 6AM this morning about Longoria probably having the best rookie season for 3B of all time. Less than 2 hours later, Repoz linked to it, where people noticed that Dick Allen was conspicuous by his absence. Rob Neyer undoubtedbly read that thread, did his own research and by noon (no timestamp on his post, but there are on his commenters) noted how Longoria’s Win Shares was simply unimpressive for RJ to have made such a statement. RJ took note of the comments and research and said “I completely missed Allen for reasons mentioned above. Inexcusable on my part.”.
Now, THAT is how blogging works: one big community that listens to each other, even though we are not part of the same family. Furthermore, the “weight” of each blogger is implicitly noted. Neyer for example is highly respected, and he reads a fairly-well respected aggregator of news and blog activity (Primer) that is driven by a well-respected blogger (Repoz) who himself probably has some respect of DRaysBay or RJ. So, the “peer” determination is community-credentialed, much the way that Google’s search engine works. For example, if alot of people link to Tangotiger.net when they talk about “Linear Weights”, then a search for “Linear Weights” on Google will give you Tangotiger.net, even though no one has come out and explicitly credentialed my site as an expert on the topic. (Checking now… yup, my site comes in at #1. Yay! Wonder if I should put that on my tombstone.) The entire dynamics of the blogging world is fascinating on many levels.
And this makes the position of Murray Chass so strange, who has the most insulting ”About me” page around:
This is a site for baseball columns, not for baseball blogs. The proprietor of the site is not a fan of blogs. He made that abundantly clear on a radio show with Charley Steiner when Steiner asked him what he thought of blogs and he replied, “I hate blogs.” He later heartily applauded Buzz Bissinger when the best-selling author denounced bloggers on a Bob Costas HBO show.