So, the Blogtimore site is up. Against my better judgment, I feel compelled to share my assessment. I loathe doing this because it forces me to do the things associated with blogging that I despise; offer my opinion in a manner that says you should give a damn, defending others’ as though they are incapable of doing it themselves, and (ugh!) be nice.

First of all, I like the aggregating functions. It doesn’t bother me one bit that it “takes” my content, as it takes my content in exactly the same way bloglines does. I publish a feed, and it interacts my feed with other feeds locally, right down to the neighborhood level. If I was to change anything, I would have it link back to blogs’ index page instead their individual entries. I like to visit peoples’ web pages and easily read all of their front page entries. I only like to visit their individual entries when I want to leave a comment. The fact that Blogtimore’s corresponding link to the authors’ web pages directs you back to their individual entries takes away a little more autonomy from individual blogs than I feel comfortable with. The way it is set up now seems to compel people to interact only with the individual entries, centralizing their content in a way that makes Blogtimore one big giant blog and making individual blogs increasingly irrelevant.

On the anonyminity thing. Like you, I have no inside knowledge. There seems to be a lot of chatter out there on this subject. The general assessment seems to be that people don’t like it and feel that it’s spawns a level of cliquishness between people who are secretly in the know. This isn’t helped by the fact that we’ve all been reading a lot of gag reflex inducing “I know something you don’t know” posts on individual web pages. Hopefully, now that the site is launched, we will NEVER AGAIN have to read posts like that.

In the long run, I think the anonyminity will help defend against cliquishness more so than it will inspire cliquishness. If it became common knowledge that A, B and C are behind the site that to some degree centralizes all of the Baltimore Blogs; A, B and C could become the Alphas of the Baltimore blog community, regardless of the quality of their content. I don’t think anyone wants that, including A, B and C (and possibly D, E, etc...). Some argue that this wouldn’t be a problem, as the woman behind Crablogs, and Supamb behind Blog Baltimore, never became Alphas whose asses needed to be kissed. I think it is important to remember that Crablogs and Blog Baltimore were both run by individuals and that their sites did not run the risk compromising autonomy in the same way Blogtimore does; which again, I think would be less of an issue if the corresponding link directed you back to the index page rather than to individual entries. Blogtimore seems to actually be a small group of people. When people congregate, human nature takes over. Yes, you may hate cliques. We all do, but we’re also all human beings. Whether or not we believe that we are above cliquishness as individuals, in the end WE ALL gravitate toward them, and then alpha personality types naturally fight for control and betas naturally step into line. Yes, yes, I know... YOU’RE the exception, so am I. Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit, etc....

As long as the personalities are not known, this is less of an issue. Unless, of course, you want to be an alpha? hmmm.

Besides, if I knew for sure who was behind Baltiblogs I probably would have felt compelled to keep my pie-hole shut about the name being cheesy and lame as all hell. There are benefits to anonymity.

Let’s pretend that John Doe is a Baltimore Blogger and that he is one of the people behind Blogtimore. Lets also pretend that that John Doe likes to speak freely about how he feels about others’ web pages, and sometimes his assessments are less than kind. Sometimes these assessment could be fair, sometimes they could be just plain obnoxious. John Doe could hate Jane Doe’s web site. As a site administrator, John Doe really couldn’t get away with saying anything negative or telling about Jane Doe’s web site. Likewise, Jane Doe might feel inclined to not say John Doe is an asshole, or point out that John Doe’s blog reads like wallpaper paste. Full disclosure does sometimes come at a cost and can weaken content, especially in a small community, and the Baltimore Blogging community is small.

And lastly, the buttons. Ugh, the buttons. The buttons were my personal zenith of lameness. My buttons suck, don’t use them. *stupid.stupid.stupid* Mike of With a Side of Gravy made some nice ones, though. If you really want a button for your template, use one of his. But don’t use that last one. That’s just plain faggy.