According to a list compiled by A Dime a Dozen I’ve been ranked as one of Canada’s top political blogs. Last month I think I was something like 17th, but this month I’ve rocketed to 5th place.
The accuracy of any blog list can be contested (and with so many political bloggers not making the cut, this one certain is being contested). So readers should make up their own mind on whether a list is good, helpful or important. That said, it is in nice to make anyone’s list, be it one built around strict criteria, or just a list of someone’s favourite blogs.
As an aside, I am surprised to find my blog ahead of Warren Kinsella and Michael Geist and pleased to see it ahead of Ezra Levant and The Western Standard and SteynOnline (whose critique of the American legal system after Conrad Black’s guilty conviction still stands as one of the worst pieces of blog commentary ever written by a professional). To see them ranking lower than my site says more about their limited appeal than it does about my readership levels.
Of course, not everyone is happy with the list and so other, alternative lists have been proposed – and I appear on some (13th), but not on another.
In the end though, it is great that others enjoy stopping by to visit and linking to me from time to time. I owe readers a big thank you. Two years in I’m still trying to stay true to some sage advice from a good friend who told me to write for myself – as though no one is going to read what I post. In part that was because in the blogosphere there is a good chance few will read what you write, but it is wiser still because blogging should be about letting your audience find you, not about finding an audience (I could get larger audiences by writing outrageous things – that temptation is often there for bloggers). So in that spirit I continue to try to be guided by my tag line: this place is my gym, somewhere to exercise my writing muscle and my mind. If it spurs others to exercise their brain muscles – or even their own writing muscles – all the better!
eaves.ca 
The whole point of my contesting Robert Jago's list (which is anything but objective, given that he pre-selects his own favourites and then applies dubious pseudo-parameters to rank them) was to show that no ranking of blogs is satisfactory — including the 100% objective ones I generated through Google and Technorati. This is why I recommend to every blog reader that he or she should choose the ones he or she likes and forget about what others think.
Werner, people over at this site are pretty respectful of one another, which means they generally don't go around makes accusations they can't back up. Do you know that Jago picks his favourites? I've never met Jago and don't even know who he is. And given the conversation we had I'm pretty sure he'd never heard of my blog when I first found out about the list.As for your suggestion that every person forget what anybody else thinks and choose their own blog… I'm fairly certain there are over 250 (maybe even 1000 or 10,000) politically minded blogs in Canada alone. You're asking a lot of readers to sort through them all. Indeed, one of the joys of the internet is the ease with which we can recommend others – via links, or lists, or blogrolls. It helps sort the noise. Since all us bloggers are living in The Long Tail I'm going to side the Chris Anderson and advise people to follow recommendations they like. I'm sure they are smart enough to drop the ones they don't care for. The ironic part of all this is that the more you complain the more popular you make Jago's list…
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