Greedy Goblin

Friday, September 3, 2010

Removed links

Adam the noisy rogue noticed that several bloggers removed him from their blogroll, over the recent controversial posts. He wrote "[the blogroll] can be construed on the part of the blogger as, “who I like and who I don’t like.” ... but it is an extremely facile and juvenile one. It is akin to being in a popular group and not much else. ... But what I consider to be of extreme importance is the final level, and that is people who write things worth reading, even if they hold dissenting views to ones own. These are still bloggers that I feel are worth a look, even though I may not necesarily agree with them."

He misses two points here. The first is that the "first level" aka "I like it or not" is the only level for a social. If I don't like you, then you are evil, dumb, worthless, lying and most probably abusing goats. On the other hand if I like you, you are smart, worthy, bright, interesting and live a perfect family life." This is called the halo effect.

Please note that every adjective usable do describe a person is judgmental on the "good-bad" scale like "trustable-untrustable", "decent-indecent", "beautiful-ugly". The decision of socials, especially if they are about people are based on emotions. These emotions evolved to find mates and identify foes. That's what they do.

The ideas of the "respectable foe" or "I disagree with him but ready to fight for his right to tell his opinion" are incompatible with a social mind. If he has negative emotions about your post, than he finds you as whole worthless. So removing your "worthless blog" is the logical move from his point of view.


The second point is nastier and belongs to the "group of friends" effect, the most harmful nonsense of the socials. If I like A and B, then A and B must like each other. Every reasonable person must see it is nonsense, but "social" is the opposite of "reasonable" for a reason. So if I have you on my blogroll, I like you (why else would I have you there?), and if I like an evil person, I'm evil too! He might likes my blog but he doesn't like yours, so he must choose. By choosing to keep liking my blog, he feels that he automatically choose to like yours too. After all, we are one big group of friends.

So even a non-social blogger (most bloggers are intelligent enough to be able to control their social tendencies), can find it logical to remove a controversial blog from their roll: he can lose social readers. Also, he can be targeted by further abuses by socials who assume that he is a supporter of the mentioned controversial blog, even if he is obviously not. Some just don't feel like fighting every day with drooling morons and choose the easier way.

The bottom line is that writing controversial posts leads to losing links. It's just as normal as the fish in the sea or the sexism among lolkids.


My blogroll contains several bloggers who have much pinker views than I do. I often disagree with them, but I keep them on my roll. I practically remove only inactive blogs. There was one case when I removed an active blog from my roll: he was caught with extremely sneaky tricks. I'm afraid it wasn't the last so I simply don't consider it safe to visit his site.
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Today's moron added his extremely valuable insights about the blacksmith profession on the official forums (by Jason).

33 comments:

Larísa said...

There isn't really any logic or science or system in which blogs I put on my blogroll. No justice either (with the reserveation that it's possible that I have some underlying reasons that I'm not aware of.)

I link to blogs that I read for various reasons. Some of them I agree a lot with. And there are others that I disagree at lot with - such as yours over the time - but which I still enjoy reading since they give me food for thought.

I will remove blogs that have been inactive for two months or have declared that they're shutting down or changing to write about real life stuff.

It also happens that I remove blogs where I notice that I actually never read the posts since it doesn't grab my interest anymore. Maybe I read some great post back in time and linked to them, but I don't even remember why. It's not to be mean that I remove them, but there's no reason to links to a blog that I don't care about very much.

I want to have a mixture of different sorts of blogs on my roll. So there's everything on the scale from super-casual, silly, to dead serious hardcore. Easy-to-reads and in-depth analysis.

I removed the blog to Adam and I wrote him and explained him why. The whole gender discussion got out of control. He wrote some stuff that really infuriated me even if I made an effort to stay civilized in the discussion. And his followers turned out to be worse, reading the comments on his blog. Finally I realized I couldn't take it anymore so I decided to stop reading and hence stop linking to his blog. This doesn't mean that it's "banned" from my blogroll forever. He has written some good posts in the past and I urged him to send me a poke if there was something up that he thought I'd be interesting in to discuss. I might link to him again in the future.

My blogroll is a living creature. Blogs come and go on that roll. I'm the one in control over it and that's quite satisfying. I don't need to go around being angry with bloggers. I can simply turn away and focus on something else. There's no need to make such a big drama out if it. Some bloggers link to you, others don't, links come and go. That's life. Get over it.

I think it's a good thing to have a blogroll that changes. It's sad to see bloggers who put up a blogroll once for all, never linking to someone new, never removing blogs that haven't updated for years. Makes me wonder if they read the blogs on their roll at all and gives a sloppy impression.

Anonymous said...

"The second point is nastier and belongs to the "group of friends" effect, the most harmful nonsense of the socials. If I like A and B, then A and B must like each other. Every reasonable person must see it is nonsense, but "social" is the opposite of "reasonable" for a reason. So if I have you on my blogroll, I like you (why else would I have you there?), and I like an evil person, I'm evil too! He might likes my blog but he doesn't like yours, so he must choose. By choosing to keep liking my blog, he feels that he automatically choose to like yours too. After all, we are one big group of friends."

I remember seeing this exact point on a "list of geek social fallacies".

A true socialite would have made this mistake early in life and realize that it isn't guaranteed to work out. It's basically a mistake of someone who's trying to be social but doesn't actually have the social experience to realize it.

Anonymous said...

Found the list:
http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

I notice a lot of your criticisms against socials follow the same lines. It's basically like giving a child a loaded gun - they may have the general concept, but no clue on how to actually use it properly. The ideal would be to have a social guild that doesn't make such mistakes, though in a geeky social game like WoW, there are social fallacies abound.

Pewter said...

I think Larisa makes some good points about the way a blogroll changes, and I think the 'updating blogroll' of several blogs has been key to expanding the community, introducing new writers and new opinions. That doesn't mean that any of us are under any obligation to link to ANYONE for any reason. Ideas of reciprocity are practised 'etiquette' for spreading links and sharing readership, but they're no obligation. I won't link someone just because everyone else does, but I also won't link them because of some sort of 'moral obligation' to share as many view points as possible.

Even if you're adding people despite the fact you disagree with their opinions, you're still making value judgements based on their topic choice/writing/value to your readers (or yourself.) Something needs to have prompted you to add them in the first place.

Shintar said...

I would think that most bloggers have some blogs on their blogroll that they disagree with, at least on occasion, simply because it's impossible to agree on everything all the time. Hell, I don't agree with a lot of your posts, but I still find them interesting to read.

I really think that most people that remove blogs from their blogroll just don't care about reading them anymore. That can be a personal judgement of the blogger, but more often the reader probably just doesn't find the actual posts themselves engaging anymore (whether due to writing style or subject). Unless you're desperate for hits, that's really nothing to get hung up about.

Bobbins said...

' He wrote some stuff that really infuriated me even if I made an effort to stay civilized in the discussion. And his followers turned out to be worse, reading the comments on his blog.'

Some of the comments on Larisa's favoured blogs were less than shining examples and yet she seems to be keeping these sites on her blog. To say people aren't baised and that they are totally free of prejudice is a lie.

If being honest with oneself and your readers gets you removed from some blogs so be it. In some peoples eyes if you are dishonest and play to the crowd you are a better person. I do not think so!

Euripides said...

I keep Gevlon on my blogroll, and I disagree with just about everything he's ever written! :P

Markco said...

You know you might as well add me to your blogroll with how much you link to me.

You're on mine btw.

Cheers and best wishes!

Markco

PS: Could you explain how my site is "not safe." I could use a good laugh :D

Gevlon said...

@Markco: I'd just quote the login screen text: "visiting sites that offer WoW gold or ingame services can compromise your account security"

Wilson said...

Saying things people disagree with doesn't necessarily mean someone is "controversial". Sometimes it just means they are a self-absorbed twit. Claiming that NASA faked the moon landings, or that the earth is only 10,000 years old, or that Ronald Reagan's tax cuts lowered the deficit and shrank the federal government will provoke disagreement, but because they are wrong, not because they are controversial. Adam claimed that his contempt for women advocating greater balance between the male and female NPCs in WoW was justified by the fact some girls had been mean to him in high school twenty years ago. That's not controversial, that's an inability to grow up (or a desire to appear that way - the results are the same). If I had a blogroll, I would have no interest in suggesting my readers waste their time with such nonsense.

He has now whined about being removed from blogrolls two days in a row. This strikes me as a rather shallow attempt to generate attention by claiming to be taking the high road. The fact that both you and Tobold felt the need to talk about it says to me that you both got played.

Markco said...

@Gevlon JMTC does not.

Anyone and I mean ANYONE can go on my site now and see that you're lying.

Good one :D

Justin said...

Gevlon this post looks BAD.

Here's why:

1. Markco has really changed since that post a year ago. I've seen more useful information on his site YESTERDAY with his carnival than your site has ever published.

2. You are preaching letting someone have an opinion without shunning them and then you go and shun Markco.

3. Since when has markco compromised an account? The guy is so popular I'm sure blizzard konws about him by now. He would be shut down if he was.

I find it disturbing that you shun a genuinely helpful site because you don't like that he has more subscribers than you in your 'niche' which you don't even write about anymore.

Gevlon said...

@Justin: yes, Markco changed a lot. Back then he was selling his guide that contained only freely available data. Now he sells wow gold: "This month's carnival has been sponsored by Dominate Wow Gold. Check out their special 20% off deal for JMTC fans which is for a limited time only."

@Markco: I never claimed you DO compromise account security. I just said that I'm not going to send there anyone to find it out the hard way. Let's cut this discussion: you will NOT be linked here. So you can stop writing anonymous comments, ask your 2 friends to comment here, comment here yourself. You will not be linked. Now piss off!

LeetGreg said...

I think Justin may be overplaying his/her? hand just a little bit.

Sure it's ironic that you shun someone who disagrees with you on a post where you talk about not 'shunning' bloggers of opposing opinions, but I don't think it deserves the tyrade you just got.

That being said, I am more upset with the fact that you are lying about markco. That shows that either:

really believe he's that bad (he's not)

or

you are lying

I think you should pick one and investigate it yourself.

Markco said...

Dominate Wow Gold is a gold guide that was recently released, not a gold selling site.

I don't WANT a link on your site.

YOU PISS OFF.

JeanLouise said...

On topic: blogrolls are whatever the hell you want them to be, you shouldn't have to explain them. They are a reflection of hwo you are, depending on if you regulate them or just let them collect dust.

Semi-On topic:
Markco doesn't get it. Gevlon is egging him on hoping that he will get another post from markco and he seems to be playing right into Gevlon's hands again. It's so painfully obvoius that he is going to write a blog post now and probably publish it this weekend about how mean and nasty Gevlon is and how he's not selling anything illegal.
We all KNOW how mean and nasty Gevlon eis, and we all KNOW that markco is selling a legal guide, so why post about it? Sigh. I hate when these two blogs go at it, no one wins.

wow_detox said...

Very interesting discussion in the comments (as always from this site). One thing to note however is the obvious fact that you're once again trolling markco. If he honestly believes anyone reading these comments hasn't already seen that link he's fooling himself. He's not going to win over any hearts in goblinville.

That being said I appluad him on his success in terms of reader subscriptions. I hadn't looked at his blog in about a month and back then he had I believe 2400-2500 readers. To go from that to 4400+ is pretty good.

TheGrumpyElf said...

If you "normally" like someone's blog and they write something you disagree with and you remove them because of that then I think you really need to take a chill pill.

I read a lot of blogs and I most definitely do not agree with everything I read. It would not stop me from linking them and it would not stop me from reading them.

As long as the disagreement did not reach the level of "lolnoob, you r a lozer" and the conversation kept an adult tone to it I think disagreement can sometimes be a very good thing when it involves intelligent people with a difference of opinions.

Personally I like a good exchange of different ideas from people that are not lacing in insults in every comment, it makes for a fantastic read and I have surely learned a lot from reading things I disagreed with to begin with.

I noticed that BS one yesterday on the forums and thought the same thing you did apparently. :)

Anonymous said...

@Larisa Do you really read all the blogs on your blog roll?

@Gevlon Do you really read all the blogs on your blog roll?

@Markco do you really read all the blogs on your blog roll?

From looking at all three sites I see a pattern: Tons of linked blogs! Many publish frequently but quite a few are one to two months going with no posts. Maybe all three of you should cut a few off. And markco, there's no reason to get mad at gevlon, just keep on doing what you're doing and ignore the goblin.

Larísa said...

@Anonymous: Yeah, I check them out regularly, which means when they update. This doesn't mean that I read every post from the beginning to the end. Many times I just throw a quick glance and decides: "nah, not this one". But I know there might be something of interest another day, so I keep them on my roll for the time. But as I stated - my blogroll is constantly changing.

Only this week I think I've added at least two new blogs and removed three... not entirely sure. There's a constant inflow and outflow. I hate dead and neglected blogrolls and don't want my blogroll to look that way.

And as I said - I have a 2 month update limit, which works fine for me.

Unknown said...

Heh, i like how in a post claiming to berate 'socials' you did the MOST social of things, in claiming that bloggers are mostly intelligent people. You took your social group (bloggers) and elevated them higher than the nominal average while producing absolutely no evidence that bloggers are smarter than the average person. Good show, prove your own theories, and that you are not above them.

Also proves that all your 'social rules' you enforce, dont make one less apt to succumb to the issues you talk about.

Unknown said...

Are you not entertained!!?!

From someone who follows both blogs I find the Gevlon/Markco feud wildly entertaining.

I wouldn't want either of them to piss off.

@Gevlon - I don't care that you don't write about making gold much anymore. I am fascinated by the adventures of The PuG and social/asocial concepts discussed. Don't change.

@Markco - I first ran across Gevlon's blog because of one of the rants you posted on your blog.

As far as driving traffic to each other's blogs, you should be best friends.

Treeston said...

@Markco: Then why exactly are you commenting here?

Unknown said...

Regardin the "Dominate Wow Gold" thing, sure, they don´t sell gold, it´s just another gold guide. And what a gold guide it is!?!? Talk about snake oil salesmen? Get it now guys, you get something thats actually worth 250$ for a bargain. Go, go, before they run out!

Seriously though, it´s just ridiculous...

Markco said...

Gee Treeston I don't know maybe because Gevlon is claiming I'm a gold seller or supporting a gold selling company. Debunking that lie is probably worth a minute of my time.

I don't really have anything else to say on the matter or on this blog. I'm not going to sit here and sling anything back at Gevlon, he does enough damage to his credibility on a daily basis.

Anonymous said...

All bloggers can read and write, hence they are more intelligent than most people. Especially the "lolers"

Yaggle said...

I am at a total loss why any bloggers care whose blogroll they are on. Is it because bloggers want to be more popular? I thought the reason you make a blogroll is that by linking blogs that you think you are good, you make your own blog site a little better. Is it similar to wanting to have more myspace friends? Honestly I don't understand the reason.

Andru said...

@ Wilson

"That's not controversial, that's an inability to grow up (or a desire to appear that way - the results are the same)."

No, I'll tell you what that is. It's a reading comprehension fail, combined with informally fallacious thinking from mostly everyone who was offended at that. Instead of reading the comment at face value, some commenters just HAD to put on their Freud glasses and psychoanalyze. It seemed to me that some people were just itching to get offended.

Not to mention, even if they WERE right to be offended at that, they committed a HUGE strawman argument. He listed a whole list of things on why things are what they are, and at the very end, he made ONE supposedly poor argument (the whole 'herpdep highschool girls are bad' argument was the very last if I'm not mistaken).

People instantly ganged up on that weak argument and refuted the ENTIRE blog post based on that.

Textbook strawman.

So yeah. Sorry if some of us have the gall to see past 3-rd grade informally fallacious arguments.

@JeanLousie

I disagree. I find this feud very amusing. I would like to give 'Anonymous' a gold medal for pimp-slapping Marcko with the public records in the comments on the last article Gevlon wrote about him. Claiming that he earns more than Gevlon and STILL living with his parents? Comedy gold.

@Marcko

Coming here, asking for a link on Gevlon's site, then saying that you don't WANT a link on Gevlon's site when you've been told to piss off makes you look like a total tool.

Oh also, telling the blog owner to piss off in their own comments section? ROFL. Are you for real?

Oh. And even if you do not sell gold or whatever. Trying to plug TEH INTERNETS to stop slandering you is an exercise in futility.

XKCD said it best, take his advice:
http://xkcd.com/386/

Wilson said...

@Andru-

Touched a nerve there, did I?

Looks like we agree that Adam's "girls who want to voice an opinion on my video game are fucking deluded" statement is dumb. You see it as some "herp derp", off-the-cuff, thrown in at the last minute statement that should have been left out. I (and a lot of other people) see it as his conclusion, and pretty fundamental to his argument. Conclusions do tend to come at end of your statement, after all. But suppose you are right? Why has he not taken a minute to say, "okay, I was trying to be funny, but it came out wrong?" or any other explanation? We've all said things that didn't come out the way we intended, and we all understand when someone else does it. Instead, he has chosen to stick to his guns. Looks to me like what he said was exactly how he felt and what he thought. Appears to me that the people all claiming "Adam is misunderstood" are the ones needing to work on their reading comprehension.

Andru said...

@ Wilson.

Hardly. My writing style is abrasive, irritating, antagonizing and 'not nice' in general. I also have no desire nor the inclination to change it. Deal with it.

As to the other thing. Fine, let us assume that Adam drew the wrong conclusions and stupidly stuck with it. He committed a formal fallacy.

What THAT does not change, however, is despite his conclusion being (supposedly) wrong, the premises for his conclusion are right. Disputing the conclusion does not invalidate his basis, a fact his opposing commentators fail to recognize.

If you want my opinion, reducing lore sexism by writing in cool lore characters regardless of their gender is fine by me. I even support it. There are a lot of points where lore can be improved, not least by developing some cool female lead characters. (As pointed out by my Tyrande/Staghelm imaginary scenario on the other Gevlon post)

What is not fine by me is reducing sexism by filling quotas. That is idiotic, stupid, pants-on-head retarded, and I will oppose any such change. I do not care much for political correctness. And it really grinds my gears when a game I'm using for escapism is being 'tailored' to suit the real world idiocy. What even pisses me off even more is that effort that would supposedly be used to develop the game further, would be drained to meet the 'quotas' of special interest groups. And what ultimately pisses me off is that those same groups, instead of using that effort where it's sorely needed (i.e. Real Life) spend it trying to 'improve' a game that has an estimated lifespan of 5 years of so, of all bloody things.

I do not agree with Adam on his conclusion. (I did not even think it was a conclusion, given how much of a logical disconnect is between his premises and his supposed conclusion.) But I can't let this argument fall in the realm of strawmen and ad-hominems. That is just stupid.

Kurt said...

@Andru:

You are highly misguided. No one is claiming that refuting Adam's paragraph 5 of his original blogpost refutes paragraphs 1-4. Paragraph 1 is about how no one should talk about the topic that he is about to talk about, and paragraphs 2-4 are about his high school days. No one responded to those paragraphs because NO ONE CARES about what he talked in them. That's all. There's no secret agreement to believe that refuting paragraph 5 refuted paragraphs 1-4, really, I don't think anyone thinks that at all.

About the strawman thing...Yes, 95% of the responses Adam got were illogical emotional rants. This is because his original post was an illogical emotional rant, for him to go on now about Straw men and Ad hominem is borderline insane. What really takes the cake is that Adam categorically refused to respond to anyone who actually made a valid logical reply to his emotional ranting, mainly just pointing out the circularity of his arguments (as all emotional rhetoric tends to be). He just called them trolls and told them to stop posting on the topic or he'd ban them. It is incredibly ironic for someone so against logic to now use these latin phrases, and also ironic for someone like you who appears to want to think logically to take his side when he's been so militantly illogical in the past few weeks.

Anonymous said...

I went to this blog to discuss with the Noisy rogue, he just deletes the posts of everyone who disagrees with him. Seems a bit ironic from someone who claims to be against blog censorship in this other way.

Frostheim said...

There's also the annoying social aspect of "I'll trade a link on my blogroll for a link on yours, kk?"

And then if you say no, you are an elitist asshole.