I think what is worthwhile discussing, however, is this notion that the blogosphere is self-regulating; many “a-list’ bloggers contend that the issue of such a code of ethics is moot not only from a feasibility point of view, but also from the notion that anyone can put up a blog to offer a counter opinion.

However, I think this is false, because its based on a two false presumtions: that the attention is equitably shared amongst blogs and that bloggers are reasonable.

#1) Attention isn’t equitable.
The whole notion of the “A-list” blogs irks many (mostly, I think A-list bloggers), but its an indusputable fact — there is a hierarchy to bloggers in every corner of the blogosphere, often governed by the fact that many of them have been the first, or older than other bloggers, but also because many of them offer valuable content that people cannot find elsewhere. They offer genuine a combination of news, entertainment or opinion that is unique — and more often, newsworthy.

The hierarchy exists because attention is divided inequitably. And that’s where presumption A is false. That is, they are precisely “A-list”, because they are commanding more “attention” of more people and readers. And they do this not only because they already have a large readership, but in many cases, because of their own popularity, have been rewarded with many inbound links, and therefore, rank highly in search engine results.

While its easy for anyone to create a blog to voice their own opinion, the fact that there is a huge divide in where attention goes makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create an environment where opinions have equal footing. If no one listens to what you’re saying, or no one can find where your opinion is because your blog doesn’t rank, or ranks poorly, then the fact that anyone can create a blog to compete in dissenting opinion is specious.

Furthermore, what happens if no one believes your blog?

That is to say, presumption B — reasonability.

#2) Bloggers aren’t always reasonable.
Even if readers found a dissenting blog, one presumes that they would give it an equal weight, and that they are open to new, different, or other opinions at all. Or, that other higher rank blogs are similarly open to different opinions. If they are, allowing equal access to creating a voice through blogging would be sufficient because even if the opinions are hard to find, they would be evaluated on merit alone.

Unfortunately, one needn’t go further than the nearest flame / blog war, or Digg, quite frankly to see that while reasonable-ness is often a feature of the blogosphere, it isn’t always displayed, particularly, when passions run deep. If you have a valid argument but no one is willing to listen, then even then, equal access and an equal playing field still mean nothing.

Having a code of blogger ethics is a nice gesture, because it gives the sense of accountability where there really is none; the idea that the blogosphere is self-regulating is a similarly naive idea — although most bloggers will stand up for what’s right most of the time, they might not do so all the time, particularly if they have a beef against you.

If you have any thoughts to the contrary, try starting up a blog de novo on blogger.com or wordpress.com, and you’ll see how futile your attempts at blogging your opinions gets you, which is really nowhere fast.

So, if a blogging code of ethics isn’t the answer, what is?

Well, if you look to a Wired article a few weeks ago on Second Life, you’ll have read about how the Second life citizens might police themselves in the event of rampant IP theft via the notorious copybot program (which, as I understand it, is really not al that widespread after all). The issue isn’t so much with IP theft as it is with the idea of self policing, and the necessity for new bloggers to become part of a community so that they can rally around its members if any one of them is threatened.

It means, unfortunately, that it is impossible for new bloggers to gain that kind of traction immediately … unless there are pre-existing relationships to leverage with other bloggers. Bloggers need to get involved with other bloggers so that they can be part of a blogger community for the protection of that opinion and their reputation. If you don’t have a blog, and if online opinion means anything to you, it means you need to get involved with the system, rather than trying to gamely shout into the void of the blogosphere, or trying to sue the system out of existence.

And I think this is true in terms of any online community. Whether it be in social networks, or in online voting systems, if you want to make sure your opinion or reputation is protected, hte best bet is to work within the system and play within its strengths. If there are people with opinions voting you down (literally or metaphorically), you’ll need to find a group of friends to vote you up and support you.

Herd immunity, I suppose.

But what happens when you don’t have any friends, can’t make any friends, or don’t have time to make any friends? Well, if that’s your problem, you might just have a hard time with getting into social media — in any of its forms.

(But if you might feel tempted to, the answer isn’t in puppet friends … that way lies disaster).

But there are two issues with Digg’s moderation that I take exception to.

i) they are clearly ineffective — as evidenced by the three leaks over the past few weeks; the fake story about the 650k PS3′s that needed to be recalled (attributed to Reuters, clearly false); the spammer’s post hitting the frontpage, getting free, free, traffic; and most shocking, the results of a phisher’s exploits posted to the frontpage of Digg. The problem here is that Digg is so big and so popular that time spent on the frontpage is like throwing up whatever it is in giant headlights for thousands and thousands of people to see.

Digg’s ninja moderators work in the background, but its clearly not their chief occupation — in many cases, people have to email digg to let them know about an abuse AFTER it hits the front page … and in some cases, like the phisher’s exploits, this is clearly unacceptable.

ii) they are completely opaque – their roles are often hidden under the role of “spam killing ninjas”. That is, although they probably perform other functions, their chief is to find stuff that is inappropriate, and then kill it. Obliterate accounts, delete posts — so that they are never found again, as opposed to the fairly benign “bury” button. The problem with this, as with the fact you can’t tell anything about buried items (who did it, how many “buries” did it take) is that the pricess is completely opaque. Moderators do what they do without a trail, and without any evidence. Whether or not its a function of how big and popular its become (and how much mail they receive) is sort of immaterial — trying to email Digg to restore your account once its been obliterated is difficult if not impossible. What is also difficult is getting much of a response on anything unless you’ve got real juice with any of the Digger’s back there, or are an elite Digger.

Digg’s “moderation system” is really comprised of both Diggers and moderators; it relies on Diggers to bury items that are potentially offensive; the problem is that people “digg” things without reading them, so stuff can reach the frontpage that is clearly inappropriate. On the moderator side of things, either because they are understaffed, overworked, or just don’t have a strong enough mandate, most of the time, they are acting AFTER the fact.

Again, even an a single hour on the frontpage of Digg can result in a post being exposed to thousands and thousands of pageviews — which for some kinds of news is again, clearly inappropriate.

So does Digg have moderators? Sure they do. Unfortunately, the system of moderation that both Diggers and moderators take part in is clearly broken. Digg needs a better system of checks and balances in this respect that protects both its own reputation (from fake posts, spammers) and others (those who risk their privacy being violated).

tip: Stephen’s blog on Digg’s Moderation Ninjas

Want to know what Google thinks? Matt Cutts, Google software engineering guru, was interviewed at the recent PubCon in Las Vegas — and its quite revealing. Check out the inteview over here, and fast forward to around the -7:30m point. At that point he starts talking about how Google recognizes social media optimization, and how some marketers might want to use ReviewMe, PayPerPost, or even Text-Link-Ads, and its other brethren to create backlinks to their sites.

The money is in this phrase: “… I’ll put it to you this way — I’m not a fan when people don’t provide total disclosure … if you want to pay for links to generate traffic — totally OK, just make sure it doesn’t affect search engines”.
So basically what he’s saying is that using these sites to create traffic is a legitimate reason for using these services; but to use them to boost your search engine placement is a bad idea. Instead, he suggests using the “rel = Nofollow” attribute to those links, so that Google won’t be fooled.

Matt Cutts doesn’t explicitly say that sites who use these methods in an effort to improve their Google rankings will be penalized in any fashion; however, his language suggests that he is keenly aware of their usage for this purupose, and that it definitely seems a no-no in his book.

And there you have it.

Now, whether or not they have the technology to tell that an advertiser has paid for that link or not — particularly through PayPerPost — is up in the air. But, iIf Google is a god to you, then you’ve just heard it from the lips of one of their high priests — paying for links for the purpose of improving your SERPs is known to Google … and you should use it at your own risk.

tip: Amit Agarwal [through Facebook!]

• I switched to our own domain, deepjiveinterests.com
• I realized that I had accidentally aped another wordpress theme by a virtual doppleganger of myself in my own city (scary, actually) so hastily made my own.
• I was glad I did that, because I liked it better — and some others have liked it too.
• I got accepted as an SOB (thanks Liz).
• DelightfulBlogs seemed to think this was a … well, delightful blog.
• I was also accepted into the BlogBurst Network, and am ‘syndicated’ at TheStatesman.com (more on that later)
• I posted endlessly about Digg.
• My naive notion that that A-List bloggers reply to their email got quashed.
• I got a mention at the BlogHerald (thanks Matt!).
• Then, I got hired at BlogHerald (thanks Matt!).
• People wanted to start contacting me
• So i put up a contact page.
• I chatted with Jason Dowdell on the phone (a classy guy with a fascinating story).
• I discovered that a top Digger was in my City (go TO!).
• I met some really nice people.
• One of my more creative rants were picked up by Chris Pirillo and News.com
• Bokardo, the Guardian Unlimited, Jason Calacanis, and Techmeme seemed to have appreciated a post on Digg’s controversy.
• In fact, Techmeme really seems to love me now.
• My feedburner subs have peaked at around 120.
• I started getting enough spam I needed to install Akismet.
• Stephan Tual thought of me as an influential blogger.

Well its been about a month and a half … and I’d have to say “Wow”, time flies. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from blogging, I’ve met some fabulous people, and I hope to continue it all until my wife says “No really, time to stop now”, or my hands fall off.

The next 50 days will take us into the middle of November sometime. Which would probably be time for Thanksgiving. And my wife will have delivered by that time as well — so these times of transition and flux will probably carry and continue for a while. Hopefully it will also be a period of continued growth as well. For everybody. ;)

What I am really interested, however, is in a little feedback. Blogging is a participatory medium, after all. Do you think the Blog is great? Should I continue it in my present form? What areas need improving?

Lastly, thanks to everyone I’ve met and apologies to everyone I’ve offended.

I write only because I love. ;)
Cheers,
Tony Hung.

Well, I’ve written about this sort of controversy before, but there’s a new spin on things this time — which, to be honest, I’ve noticed, thanks to some work by Chrisekblog, a few days ago.

Basically it goes like this:

If you look at the stories that are in the FrontPage, a disproportionate number of them are actually submitted by the same small number of people — who happen to occupy the first 10-20 position s as “Top Diggers”. I’ve already written about this as a comment, and I think its worth expanding on.

The big deal here is that FrontPage traffic is A LOT OF TRAFFIC. Chrisek mentioned that the times when he’s hit the front page, he sees a spike of 30 000 uniques that day.

That’s huge.

Traffic is the lifeblood of e-commerce. Granted — its up to the site to determine what to do with that traffic once they’ve gotten it (i.e. conversion), but traffic is not only expensive, its what _drives_ many business models to profitability. You cannot make a profit when no one sees your site. People essentially “purchase” traffic with ads. How much money do you think it’ll cost to get 30 000 visitors in one day? Its the equivalent of a “clickthrough”, since people are landing on your site. But if the cost per click is, say 0.05 (a ludicrously low value), that’s $1500 worth of free traffic. For higher priced “keywords” it might go even higher … 0.50 per click is about $15 000.

Have I got your attention now?

Now, imagine a small group of diggers controlling that traffic. Its essentially what is happening right now. How does it happen?

Its based on the critical assumption: certain diggers’ submissions and votes are worth more than others. I haven’t done the legwork (yet), but when you see others work on the subject — and how certain stories end up on the front page with a miniscule number of Diggs, its the conclusion you cannot help but reaching.

Since it is easy to check what your Friends are submitting, IF the top 10-20 or 30 diggers have each other as friends (nothing malicious there), BUT they automatically “digg” each others stories, since they NEVER have to see the upcoming stories for this, then you can see how

1. a small group of diggers promote stories
2. their friends in turn promote those stories … because they’re friends
3. because their votes are worth more — those stories float to the top
4. the exposure to the rest of the community results in an explosion of Diggs and Traffic.

Now, certain people might say “well, voting in blocks is a vital part of the democratic process — no one votes in isolation”. Others might say “stop being such a damn crybaby! who cares if certain people vote together!” And to that I’d say — you’re absolutely right. What’s not right, however, is how certain diggers (one’s who already have boat loads of ‘reputation’ and ‘karma’) have votes that worth more than yours. Is that how a democratic system works? Is _THAT_ right?

How can Digg solve this problem?
The best way would be to elminate the weighted “digging” by different diggers. That way, all votes would be equal. Alternatively, its echoed by a few people already — just eliminate the friends list. OR — eliminate how easy it is to see what your friends are digging. It eliminates the “circle-digg” effect of powerful friends digging what their friends are digging.

Yes, it still leaves the avenue open that people are still able to organize themselves OUTSIDE of Digg to promote stories — but at least this way, all votes are equal, all “block-voting” is equal (because all votes are of equal strength), and it isn’t as easy to promote certain groups of stories to the front page.

Yes, its in Digg’s best interests to solve this problem (and others) — particularly if VCs take a harder look at this model. One would hate to think that this Emperor has no clothes.

Update: Now includes the Digg Revolt. 

Update: If you feel you have something to add about Digg’s history let me know at anthony{dot}hung{at}gmail{dot}com.

After blogging about the “Aliwood” incident, which was received with deafening silence, I looked into whether or not this was the first time anyone had been interested in controversy over at Digg.com.

Sure enough, it wasn’t.
What follows is a short and incomplete, I’m sure, collection of information that constitutes a brief history of Digg controversy.

ForeverGeek-Gate
This past April those guys over at ForeverGeek noticed a pattern of digging going on at Digg.com and called Digg out on it . They noticed that a group of dedicated Diggers (nee the Digg Army) were digging each others posts, foisting their submissions to the front page. What added a bit of special sauce was that apparently Kevin Rose was part of this circle as well.

Although this probably wasn’t the first time it happened, it was the first time it received the level of attention that it did, which was significant. Boing Boing weighed in. As did Slashdot . There was also a story on RealTechNews as well. Thomas Hawk seemed to be in Digg’s corner. The Inquirer had some coverage. As did Wired. So had a few other not inconsequential blogs which verified ForeverGeek’s findings. What happened next, however, was particularly troubling.

ForeverGeek was quickly found “banned” from Digg. That is, it was impossible to submit stories from ForeverGeek.com. Things spiraled out of control: as more and more Diggers picked up on the story and began submitting less-than-complimentary stories, they found their stories obliterated or buried, and in some case, the posters themselves banned.

Kevin Rose eventually weighed in on the issue himself explaining that ForeverGeek was thought to have been using fake accounts to digg up certain stories; therefore, it was banned. This appeared to be difficult to prove in and of itself, and in time, ForeverGeek was un-banned. Some people believe one explanation is that Digg is very heavy on spammers , ergo, it was easy for the domain (ForeverGeek) to get banned. After the fact, it appeared that many users part of the “Digg Army” disappeared as well.

More Group Digging Controversies
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that group digging was thought to occur.

AOL “Spamming” : Apparently Diggers with links to AOL have been group digging their own submissions, although similar submissions never make it to the front page. One of the Navigators on Netscape replied back , suggesting that it was coincidence alone, and that “natural groupings” had explained their group vote.

Liberterians get in on the act: BigDaveDiode catalogues his adventures with a Liberterian group pushing stories with a certain (liberterian) agenda. If his account is to believed, it sounds like that a small group of Liberterians organized themselves on a Yahoo! group and deliberately digged certain stories to the front page. Apparently 9 of 12 stories on their website had, at one point, hit the front page. Seems like once BigDaveDiode started asking a few questions (that were apparently pointedly ignored), their group disappeared from Yahoo!

Michelle Malkin Encourages Group Digging As Well : In a recent post, Michelle Malkin encouraged her own fans to sign up at Digg and Digg her own articles. Taylor Hayword does a nice breakdown of the new signups, how they’ve been digging, and just how many posts from Michelle Malkin’s own blog have been dugg. Ms. Malkin fired back in her own chipper way .

Recursive Humour
July 2006, John Graham-Cumming decides to post dual-post Digg and Reddit in a joke playing on the idea of “recursion” . One submission referred to a reddit submission, and, vice versa. By submitting both to each site pointing at each other, each separate submission got bongo results. It was meant to be a bit of a joke, but Mr. Graham-Cumming found out that Digg takes a dim view of anything that smacks of manipulating the system.

Sure enough, his post got deleted, and his profile banned.

Apparently, the explanation was that his efforst had violated their terms of service … although the part they quote didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, because he had, apparently, mistakenly submitted his story twice. And, apparently it had nothing to do with their “lack of humour”. Perhaps due to the spirited discussion both on Digg and on his website, or even a contribution by the Register, his account was re-instated some time later, although. It required Leo Laporte to intervene on his behalf (his initial emails weren’t answered) before his profile and posts were unbanned.

AOL Poaching Posters
July 2006 (again), Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc, and now AOL, and also Netscape makes an offer to all prodigious Diggers that some of them can’t refuse — cash for participating in the New Netscape . Netscape has transformed itself into a new social news website a la Digg, and Mr. Calacanis offers to compensate them for their hardwork. Many gurus / pundits weigh in on the situation, as does Kevin Rose. As it stands, Netsacpe is making some headway, but according to some analysts, has a long long way to go.

Digg of Oz?
Very recently, there has been posts floating around suggesting that not only do moderators exist on Digg, but they are actively changing and deleting posts without any apparent explanation. Netscape does it with aplomb and is quite transparent about it. One example at Digg involved a cadet “Aliwood” at the the United States Air Force Academy who, as part of her assignment had to participate in Digg. It began innocently enough until she contacted a top100 Digger, who had elected to mention it on his blog , then Digg the article himself. 60% of her posts were then promoted to the front page, with one of them getting over 1000 digs, however, most of the diggs appeared to be based on the story around her assignment, rather than the newsworthiness (or lack thereof) of her stories. In a few days her account and her posts were all deleted . Although “Aliwood” was not deliberately trying to ‘game’ the system, the popularity of her story skyrocketed the number of diggs her submissions would have normally gotten. And it appeared that she payed the price.

Digg Protects TM, Sics Lawyers on Gaming Site
August 2006 — Digg decides to enforce its TM “Digg” and “Digg it”, and sends its lawyers to send a cease and desist letter to DiggGames.com, for a variety of reasons, one of which is to prevent confusion with the parent site. DiggGames.com is a website which hosts games (flash and otherwise) which have been featured on Digg. A lively discussion ensues on Digg, where many opinions, some from lawyers suggest that without defending one’s TM, you could lose it. TechCrunch covers it briefly as well. Others go on to opine that it is not the fact they are defending their TM that is the issue, but the way they are resolving the issue. Some point to how Engadget is dealing with a Malaysian store who is doing a good job ripping off their name as an example; others yet point to Kevin Rose’s own “on-air/net” personality as a geek-cum-dark tipper as entirely disingenuous with the spirit of the cease and desist letter against a small time operator. Although Kevin Rose issued a statement through the Digg blog, claiming the intent was not to shut down any websites … but merely to get a name change. The story does not yet have an ending so far.

Circle-Digging: Elite Diggers Controlling Frontpage
September 2006. Jesusphreak posts an article questioning how democratic the digging processes is when he notices that a significant proportion of the frontpage articles are submitted, then dugg by elite, top20 (or 50) bloggers. It seems like these diggers digg each others submissions, thus propelling those submissions right to the frontpage — primarily because the Digg algorithm places weight on reputation. Something that elite Diggers have in spades. A firestorm of commentary erupts, causing it to hit all kinds of major news blogs, and even eliciting a reponse from Kevin Rose himself, wherein he goes on to state that Digg has plans to change the way top “Diggers” are recognized (Submitters vs. Diggers) in addition to subtle changes to the Digg algorithm so it will, apparently, offer a more equitable way for stories to be promoted to the Frontpage. Hemphill81 weighed on the issue himself, stating that he was just using the tools available; the commentary which followed was energetic to say the least.

Also of interest, p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, the Number One Digger decided to quit Digg after the whole debacle, and how Kevin Rose chose to handle things. [tip: Chrisek at DiggAddicts on this one!]. GregD similarly weighed in with his thoughts.

Interestingly enough, it pierces the consciousness of the blosphere, and quite a few other blogs begin to pick up on the story.

• DiggAddict — Controversy
• GoldenGod.net — “Digg Rigg Drama Bigg”
• ProfitPapers.com — “Is Digg Rigged?”

HD-DVD Encryption Key — The Numbers That Shall Not Be Named, and the Revolt.
Although it was by no means a new piece of information, the hexadecimal key that allowed HD-DVDs to be encrypted with Linux had been vociferously tracked down by copyright lawyers.  The result has been that many blogs have had to take down the key.  Digg users got a hold of it and started submitting blogs with this information. The result? These submissions were taken down, some with as many as 15 000 diggs.  The rationale?  Digg was worried that they would be the receiving end of a DCMA lawsuit, and wanted to protect themselves as much as possible.  The problem?  The geek community that Digg was built upon took exception to the way Digg was handling this, as it was taking the side of the DMCA (albeit for self-preservation), rather than engaging it in some kind of meaningful conversation. The bigger problem?  The Digg community revolted by submitting, then promoting, stories related to this key faster than what Digg could pull down.  The richy irony?  That Digg was built up on the backs of geeks, and now, in this time and on this issue that geeks are passionate about the best Digg can do is censor itself.

The undocumented history of Digg
With the rise of Digg as the posterchild of the Web2.0, its pretty fascinating to hear and read about the controversies around this emerging giant of the medium. While group digging is something that will always be an issue with these socially driven news sites, I think the most troubling thing is the rise of moderators on Digg. Evidence is clearly mounting that it is the case, but its difficult to built a case on — since Digg has had no qualms in obliterating posts and profiles, leaving no trace or evidence of any wrongdoing.

Since that’s the case it makes one wonder if there have been any other undocumented ‘controversies’ in Digg’s recent past. A secret history, perhaps? While it acts as grist for the conspiracy mill, one thing’s for certain.

As Digg gets more and more popular, it will (as it already has) start to attract more attention. More attention will mean more people trying to take advantage of the system, and more attempts at Digg trying to give the appearance of keeping things fair. It remains to be seen if Digg will ever publicly announce a more openhanded attempt at editorial control — but in the end, I think more transparency can’t be but a good thing.

I mean, when you look at all of the photos, it really resembles a giant Hollywood style party – I half expected Entertainment Tonight to show up, with Mary Hart or Vanessa Minillo trying to grab 30 second sound bites about “What the Web2.0 Means To Them”.

“That”, you might say, “sure as hell sounds like sour grapes”.
But its not.

I also recognize that many or all of them have gotten to be where they are through a combination of sheer will, innovation (or mashing up), timing, a helluva lot of hard work none of us see, an ungodly amount of networking, and a whisper of luck.

For those of them that are bloggers, those A-listers they’ve been rewarded with a certain amount of power, influence, and credibility (while command eyeballs and traffic).

For everyone else — well, we’re still working our asses off. ;)

Take me for instance.

I’ll be the first one to admit there is nothing original about this blog. How many other tech and web2.0 related blogs are there? Probably enough to fill a Star Trek convention. But I’m pounding the blogosphere everyday blogging about stuff that I’m interested and have a genuine passion for.

And I guess a lot of us fill that boat.

So, as a brief aside, for all of us who wield absolutely NO power or influence — who struggle with a pagerank of zero, and whose “linkpopularity” is so laughably low we would love to be obscure because we border on the invisible, I raise my flagon to you, you blogging-to-the-bone D-listers, you.

But back to my rant: for me, the most frustrating part of being a D-List blogger (I hope I’m at least that), however, isn’t the lack of traffic, adsense dollars, or mentions in prominent blogs. It isn’t even the possibility of being invited to the TechCrunch-allapalooza … as part of the waitstaff.

Personally, its the lack of credibility.

“Sure”, you might ask, “what have you done to earn it?”

“Well”, I might rejoinder, “admittedly, not much”.

I just blog everyday. Sometimes twice. Sometimes even thrice.
But that’s about it.

I don’t do the mulit-post-comment-thing; nor, the submit-to-blog-networks-thing; nor even the buy-text-ads-so-I-can-get-links-thing.

Yes, I don’t know many important people in the blogosphere, and they don’t really know me.
Granted, that’s partly my fault — but I attribute my anti-social traits here to having a full time job.
Its a weak crutch, I know.

But the lack of credibility, and the “who the hell are you” factor, really hurt this week.

I was trying to bring honest attention to the controversy over at Digg with “Aliwood” — because I think it represents something really signficant in the posterchild of the Web2.0.

Sure enough, it got buried after a few days — although shout outs to: ziggyluvsu, robweber, and yodoasama, and everyone else at Digg for keeping it alive in some fashion.

I did end up sending messages to at least two A-listers who I have yet to hear back from.

I also am getting nothing back from Digg itself.

Nor, actually, the few “Alisons” who go to the United States Airforce Academy [who, incidentally, have hit this site a few times -- I know you're reading!], who’ve I’ve tried to contact over Facebook … to try and get her side of the story.

Nor, any real responses on DiggFans, who, as a community, I thought would know something about, or care about the issue.

Anyway, this “wall of silence” is fairly impenetrable … and it just goes to show how little pull a D-Lister has … even when there may be a legitimate issue worth checking out.

There’s a hierarchy, a pecking order, a clique system if you will, that exists within the blogosphere. Most of us don’t hang out with the cool “A-lister” crowd, yet — and we all have our reasons for aspiring to do so.

For the D-Lister crowd, its a bit of a hoe everyday — but I’m workin’ on it, and I’m lovin’ it.
I just wish I could get a civilized response every now and again when I ask a decent question.