I would love for my faithful LDS blog to have a listing on your aggregator, but I’m sure I cover topics that you would be uncomfortable with, and in the words of Silver Rain, I “need not apply.”

As more and more people participate who are interested in different types of content, I think you are correct that other popular sites will emerge. I don’t think, however, that LDSBlogs.org will be all things to everyone. Dennis, what you describe reminds me of what the “bloggernacle” was four years ago or so. You also seem passionate about what you describe. Perhaps you will have some great ideas and innovations that will lead to the success of that vision.

“Of course connections matter. That is how networks work. The guys at the JI have amazing content and many bloggers have met them in real life (i.e., they are real people – always a question in blogging). What more, they are exemplary in many, many ways. Why wouldn’t we want to move them up.”

What you say here—and elsewhere in your comments—is certainly understandable. And, for the record, I must say that I do admire all that you and others have done for LDS blogging. But I would simply suggest that LDS blogging is beginning to be (and soon will definitely be) much wider than what is now termed “the Bloggernacle.” Now, a lot of this will be crap, frankly. For this reason, I think it’s good that there are respectable “gateways” like MA. But I would suggest that there are (and will be more) blogs that are excellent in terms of content, but they are very different than the popular Bloggernacle blogs. One way that my blog aims to be different is that I don’t really care about talking with Bloggernacle regulars. (I do obviously do this, though, on others’ blogs, and I certainly have posts that are of interest to some Bloggernacle regulars, but that is simply a coincidence.) My audience is thoughtful Latter-day Saints—a MUCH wider audience than those who frequent popular LDS blogs (and will be even more so in the future, I think) and for this reason I strive to not fall into in-group references. But for this very reason, the blog is somewhat outside the mainstream of the LDS bloggernacle crowd. Anyway, I bring this up simply to suggest that excellent blogs can pop up completely independent of the in-group bloggernacle bloggers. I certainly sympathize with your giving time to make sure they stick around and are relatively faithful—but one thing you might consider is including some “out group” people on your decision-making at MA. This can help ensure that your decisions are not prey to the groupthink that comes from people who have a similar mind set. Just a suggestion.

My criticisms with the popular Bloggernacle blogs is not like Max’s. I’m not questioning faithfulness (at least not as a whole). However, I do think that there is a thick elitism (and occasional arrogance) and an in-group phenomena that is very apparent to someone who is an outsider. This claim of mine is certainly not to be overgeneralized, but I think it is quite rampant. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with in-group cliques, but let’s hope that there are intelligent LDS blogs with content that can stand apart from an in-group understanding! From my experience, none of the popular LDS blogs pass this test (in terms of their general content—individual posts often do). Because of this, I wonder if blogs that don’t cater to the in-group crowd are not judged highly by the MA decision makers. They might think, “Well, this blog is not valuable to me.” But how can they determine how valuable it would be to other Latter-day Saints—perhaps even in attracting new readers (who currently could care less about the “Bloggernacle)?

I suspect that what I’ve observed locally is happening throughout the Church. I think there are LDS family and ward blogging communities all over the place. If they follow the pattern I’ve seen – they are less hierarchical, less cliquish, more local and more personal and family-oriented in nature. These LDS blogging communities may in some ways be more authentic than the Bloggernacle as we know it.

These people don’t have to write scholarly posts about Mormons to be Mormon bloggers. They just are.

I write this simply to say that there are other alternatives to the narrowly-defined Bloggernacle. You can find a Mormon blogging community to be a part of without comenting at BCC: or T&S or being listed at Mormon Archipelago.

1.) As noted by J. in comment #4, he did indeed help design the blog template we use, and assisted us in other ways. In addition, contrary to your suggestion that “he is not an active participant,” J. visits and comments at the JI as often as just about anyone that is not a permablogger. We have made no secret about our gratitude for J.’s generous assistance. The fact that you’re unaware of all of this is frustrating, if only because you seem so sure in making such sweeping generalizations about the JI.

2.) Contrary to your suggestion, the JI was started roughly four months before Thinking in a Marrow Bone. Thus, we’re not exactly “equal,” as you suggest, in terms of seniority. Given the rapdily-increasing number of LDS-themed blogs every week, that’s a larger difference than at might first appear.

3.) Lastly, it is important to note that the JI started in a conscious attempt to fill a gap in the bloggernacle. We post (almost) exclusively on issues dealing with the academic study of Latter-day Saint history and culture, something no other blog I have found attempts to do. Though I am obviously not naieve enough to believe that connections have played no part in the prominent position given to the JI at ldsblogs.org, I do hope that the intent and content of the blog has contributed to its relative success as well.

I don’t see how the overlap between BCC and the MA effect the MA (and as a brief sidenote, I think it is only five not six). I can’t think off-hand of any conservative blogs being pushed down on the page (though I can think of more liberal blogs that have been moved or removed). Also note that your blog wasn’t removed for conservatism, it was removed for your antipathy. There is a big difference. I am also interested in what you mean by liberal-blogs being promoted. Do you have any examples of this? Unless you have some specific evidence, I would appreciate you updating your post to reflect the facts. To me it just appears that you are just making stuff up.

I did write a “Roll Your own LDS Blog Aggregator” post, but it represented a geeky experiment with new client side technologies. It recreated the MA using only JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. URL: http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/lds-tech-roll-your-own-lds-blog-portal . It hardly fits into the history above and it is used by nobody that I know of (including myself)

So a good number of folks would defend a blogger’s right to criticize the official LDS position on SSM and avail themselves of that right … but say it’s beyond the pale to criticize the Bloggernacle? If the Church deserves criticism from time to time, doesn’t the Bloggernacle too?

A fun exercise is to go through the web archives and check out the evolution of LDSBlogs.org. If I am not mistaken, when we started, there were only 3 boxes, then as more blogs came on the scene we kept adding. As there are a lot of new blogs every week, it is a hard job to manage content. Still, there are a couple of rules of thumb:

-because there is a high burnout rate, we typically let new blogs get at least a month under their belt before addition.

-because there are a lot of people antagonistic to the Church and its members we typically let new blogs get at least a month under their belt before addition.

-If you are a regular to LDS Blogging and are known to be stable, smart and engaging, you typically get preferential treatment (e.g., new blogs like Waters of Mormon, or Keepapitchinin, started above the fold) (see the previous two rules of thumb).

Of course connections matter. That is how networks work. The guys at the JI have amazing content and many bloggers have met them in real life (i.e., they are real people – always a question in blogging). What more, they are exemplary in many, many ways. Why wouldn’t we want to move them up.

Also to design work, I typically don’t have time to do design work, I did the older work some three years ago or so, but I do have a couple templates that I can modify on the fly quite easily and so did the JI and Keepapitchin sites. They are friends, and I was happy to do it.

The other problem for MA or any other LDS aggregator is that there are now thousands of LDS blogs. No one can list them all. Delisting, of course, is a different issue.