# There was some talk about blogrolls a few months ago regarding whether they might make a comeback and could still serve a purpose.
James Shelley has reignited that discussion in the most compelling way:
"It’s an honest question: who are the people whose ideas and words have so much value for you that you access their writing directly (blogs, newsletters, etc), without depending on your social media channels as your primary conduit to their work? I guess another way to put it: if you were going to rebuild a blogroll today, who would it include?"
James is someone whom I have only recently discovered but have found myself quoting a few times in quick succession. There may be more than a touch of confirmation bias involved but I like the way he thinks; he seems to be on a similar journey or, at least, a familiar one.
Micro.blog is now my only (quasi) social channel and it has been good for facilitating discovery but when I find a blogger that interests me I won't rely on that social channel.
I never have.
I've always used RSS, even when the cool kids decided it was dead, and often end up on a blogger's site even if their RSS feed provides full text.
But their words have to draw me there, give me a reason to make that investment, provide the value that James mentions above.
While I have my Directory as a means of discovery it is without explicit recommendation; a blogroll goes that step further by saying "these people, and what they say, matter to me" - a deliberate choice rather than an automated process.
While I haven't (yet) looked at creating an actual blogroll, if I were to do so I have no doubt that James would be on it.
Comments
# I completed the first small module of my philosophy course last night - it was just an introduction covering things like: why we study philosophy, the main schools of thought, and the big names throughout history.
Nothing too heavy.
I say I've completed it but in each module there is an "introspection" section where you are invited to write or journal about a few key points - presumably to get you in the habit of thinking analytically. I haven't done that bit yet.
I probably won't do it for this module, because it is just an introduction, but I've been considering making those introspections public, putting them here on the blog.
I think it could be an interesting experiment.
@colinwalker In the interest of sharing, here is mine. It's due an update though since I have started following a few more people here on Micro.blog.
@matthewlang Thanks. I was looking at that the other day and I like the way you explain why people are on it rather than just giving a list of links.
@matthewlang @colinwalker I made a blogroll a while back with Dutch blogs but I am inspired now to update this list with why they are on it.
diggingthedigital.com/blogroll/
@colinwalker Maybe the modern incarnation would be a
/whopage, to go with/aboutand/now(which I must get round to creating). With reasons, like Matthew has.@devilgate That's a really interesting idea. Good thinking.
@frank @colinwalker It always helps to add a bit of context!
@devilgate interesting. I currently call mine /following, although like many here I need to do some updating.
I like blogrolls. I don't care that they're old school (in fact, that's part of why I like them!). I've discovered a number of good blogs by following links from people's blogrolls.
I have completed the first version of my blogroll plugin and you can view the results here. At present it includes ten people as I wanted to stay true to James Shelley’s notion about value. Spoiler alert: he made the list. As previously mentioned, the blogroll stores entries using a custom post type then displays them by way of a shortcode which can be placed on any page. Each time the shortcode is triggered the blogroll.opml file is recreated so it is always up to date. I have updated the site footer to show links to both the directory and blogroll. The directory is still valuable for discovery purposes but nothing beats explicit recommendation. The plugin is available on GitHub - usage and styling info is in the readme.