[the dale lists] perspectives

On December 9th, 2006, a small blogger said this, about the American Weblog Awards:

The whole thing is a total w—k. Worthy candidates like Norm, Samizdata, Jon Swift and one or two others aside, this poll is flawed for these reasons:

1] top blogs are left off both in terms of content and in terms of traffic;

2] it’s completely swamped by the Americans, who have five times the population. And what about tiny New Zealand or Australia?

I mean, seriously, who’s going to compete with Malkin, a most overrated blogger or with Instapundit? As I say, it’s a w—k.

He then went on:

It annoys the hell out of me to see some big names promoting themselves shamelessly [not those on my blogroll], getting major traffic and they’re truly neither quality nor well laid out. Of course, they say people visit for the expertise, to read the pearls of wisdom but this seems a very MSM thing to say. Why are they emulating the MSM? Is that what they’re trying to get into?

He then called for a collective of little bloggers to be set up. It was eventually called Blogpower. So how does this malcontent feel now that he finds himself on a 100 list?

Predictably proud, especially as it was 12 peers who did the voting, not one man. And equally proud of the little association we have called Blogpower, who featured well in the rankings and it vindicates the belief that there are some truly great blogs out there largely unsung and some of them now recognized. This is largely Dale's doing.

It's part of our job, methinks, to find them and promote them too. This is the Blogpower ethos in a nutshell. On the other hand, there seemed some anomalies but that's what happens when people vote on things.