One thing I’ve never exactly figured out how to handle is my relationship with other webloggers. I read lots of other weblogs, and I know lots of webloggers read my site as well. That said, I’ve never had a blogroll. I used to not link to other weblogs at all, unless I had gotten a link from them, because I figured my readers were more interested in news from outside the cloistered world of weblogging. As the world of weblogging has grown, and more and more domain experts have started weblogs, often the best and most informed commentary you can get on any issue is from a weblog. That’s always been the case in the world of Web design, but now it’s true in the world of law, politics, economics, and in plenty of other areas as well.

Anyway, I’m trying to formulate how to give some recognition to the weblogs that I read, because they help shape my opinions, but I’m still not comfortable with the idea of a blogroll, because it becomes a tad too political. When you give recognition to a certain group of people, it makes the people not in the group feel slighted, and perhaps gives too much of an endorsement to the members of your blogroll. Besides, it might put pressure on the people in the blogroll to link to my site (if they don’t already), and I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that, either.

What would be nice is to have a system that basically lets you ping someone and say “I read your site.” Wait a minute, that system exists, and it’s called email. Maybe I’ll go on an emailing spree today and let some people know that I enjoy their writing …

I’m also considering posting some notes on sites that I’m adding to my aggregator just to give them the minimal amount of publicity that I can provide.