Comments on: Exposing DesiPundit biases

By: Who reads DesiPundit

Who reads DesiPundit — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:34:43 +0000

[...] back to the question of variety of links on DesiPundit, I pointed you toward Thejo’s innovative tool to track outbound DesiPundit links. I guess, the majority of our readers were already ahead on the curve and were satisfied with the [...]

By: Patrix

Patrix — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 15:29:38 +0000

Blue, I see that your third link was on 18th Feb. The cron job wasn’t running then and probably was restarted only in March. It doesn’t matter how the link was obtained, once it is on DesiPundit, it is recorded.

By: Blue

Blue — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:11:12 +0000

The list has my blog (www.prettybluesalwar.blogspot.com)as one which DP has linked to twice, but DP has linked to it three times. Once here, once here, and once here. Is it because one of the three tips was a submit, and the other two were pulls? Just curious, and to see if submits were included in the rankings.

By: Patrix

Patrix — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:01:16 +0000

Piker, heh. That Google.co.in link was when Google had the Indian flag in their logo. Considering that Google gives us so much link love, our one solitary link is hardly a promotion.

Regarding the evil conspiracy about so-called cartel, well, let us keep that for another day of discussion.

Vijay, I’m just satisfied that we link to more unique blogs that I had ever imagined.

Ashish, gotta keep my loyal fan base that believes in the FSM happy, right? :)

Vatsan, you’re right. But then again most of the blogs are written from the major cities. hopefully we’ll have more blogs from the mofussil areas soon.

By: vatsan

vatsan — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:42:17 +0000

Vijay Krishna, That conclusion cannot be drawn, because data doesnt show the regional dispersion of the links, and qualitative nature of the posts. There can be 600 blogs linked with majority of them dealing with mumbai/delhi/calcutta etc. The conclusion ur drawing cannot be made. U dont have sufficient information to draw that.

By: DesiPundit » Archives » DesiPundit’s biases

DesiPundit » Archives » DesiPundit’s biases — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:24:13 +0000

[...] and comes up with some detailed and surprising results. More details of his results and methods over at my blog. DesiPundit Reader Survey results coming up [...]

By: Ashish

Ashish — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:30:17 +0000

May “God/FSM bless them” ! Hahaha. May they all keep typing away with their noodly appendages.

By: Yes! I’ve Never Been Linked at Kyun.org

Yes! I’ve Never Been Linked at Kyun.org — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:33:37 +0000

[...] defends the long and glorius DesiPundit [...]

By: Vijay Krishna

Vijay Krishna — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:45:33 +0000

Super! The data only confirms what we all believed. Patrix, you should consider this as an alternate tagline: “DesiPundit: as diverse as India!”

By: The Piker

The Piker — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:57:02 +0000

Hmm… Interesting reading. More interesting is the list of sites that DP linked to. I was surprised to see a ‘blog’ that goes by the url http://www.google.co.in in that list! I mean, promoting quality blog writing is one thing, promoting an internet behemoth is totally a different thing :)
Anyways, I always thought the so called A-listers with all their fame would collaborate with one another to form a cartel and (like most corporate scenarios) in the free market called the blogosphere would form an evil empire monopolizing, dominating and eating up all the traffic!

Makes for a nice story line/conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? :)

By: Patrix

Patrix — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:34:53 +0000

Anil, the number of links per category is readily available at the DesiPundit Archives page. I love digging into statistics and numbers but sometimes I have to restrain myself from overdoing it lest it takes my eye off the ball. I have always tried inviting bloggers from different backgrounds, ideologies, and tastes to link on DesiPundit although my personal taste admittedly affects that judgment. But so far, I am satisfied with the variety that each contributor links to and even if they don't, the combined whole provides a varied enough mix of links. Other factors like frequency at which a particular contributor posts also largely determines the posts offered by DesiPundit. But trying to micromanage everything will ruin it.

By: Anil

Anil — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:20:40 +0000

That’s an interesting statistics. But I would really be keen on finding out how these links stack up category wise – as in Politics, City Lights, Travel, photography, Technology, Humor etc. and within this list, a filter on the categories each Desipundit Contributor posted the links in. I believe this would give an idea of which Desipundit contributor favours which category, and if more than a certain percentage of Desipundit Contributors favour a few select categories, and if those few categories in turn have fewer good bloggers then those few bloggers will feature many times, and moreover this would bring up the question as to whether the Contributor list is representative enough in terms of individual tastes to actually sift the ‘good writing’ out there in other categories.

The answer to Sepia Mutiny’s overwhelming presence might lie in this “bias” towards a certain kind of writing in a certain kind of category.

This is just a thought.