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Managing and running DesiPundit has been an enlightening and educational experience not just in the way a community functions but also in the way individual people perceive themselves via their written word.
I started off DesiPundit with the singular intention of listing posts that caught my fancy with the thought of providing a one-stop shop for the rest at the back of my mind. Eventually the secondary interest grew to be more popular and blossomed into DesiPundit’s primary intent. I am ably aided by a group of like-minded (almost) individuals who also partake from their precious time to bring out a selection of India’s blogs. At the same time, dozens of readers keep me on my toes by sending in tip-offs to blog posts; some of which land up on DesiPundit.
But occasionally (an extreme rarity) I get a cranky email asking me why am I not featuring their posts in spite of repeated tip-offs (probably they answer their own question), or why we link to the same people (good writing floats to the top on its own?), or the ultimate threat that they have unsubscribed from DesiPundit, and then launch into a litany of complaints that we are guilty of ranging from favoritism or falling standards of our linked posts.
Initially, I was extremely apologetic to such emails and went out of my way to assure them that this is a learning process for us too and we are continually exploring ways to fine-tune our process. The fact that this isn’t our full-time gig doesn’t help our case much and even if it were, I bet we wouldn’t have one-tenth of the readers that we have now. After all who doesn’t love a free lunch? But off late, I have begun to understand the real reasons behind their gripes.
When blogging power was first unleashed on the online world, it was a euphoric moment for wannabe writers (me included). We explored endless worlds and intermingled with people who otherwise led dour lives, who expressed their writer souls on their brilliant blogs. Blogging was fun. I wrote about the time we spent in Starbucks arguing with friends over philosophical issues and immediately I got comments that, hey we do that too in Chicago/New York/Bombay/Chennai but just a wee bit different. Instantly we were connected in this web of familiarity and fun (Charu and I occasionally talk about this in our respective comment boxes). Blogging always was about sharing personal thoughts, impossible dream, insane pranks, and little bit of intellectual masturbation. Then somewhere down the line as the blogosphere expanded, people began extrapolating blogging’s potential to replace the mainstream media, which I always thought was misplaced. Sure, we can make ourselves heard or even be free to support a common cause but revolution was eons away. After all, how many people surfed the net, let alone surf the net for meaningful dialogue?
There are pundit bloggers and there are fun bloggers but there is no rule in the informal blogosphere that one is better than the other. The number of hits may somewhat act as a differentiating factor but try mentioning that to impassioned bloggers who get bare minimum hits and they will stare back strangely and ask, “and your point is?” One of DesiPundit’s goal was to bring hidden gems to light and give them the readership they deserve; these gems may not be whole blogs but individual posts. We rarely care if it is a well-reasoned argument for India-U.S. nuclear deal or simply a humorous analysis of former cricketers. We (at least I do) read a post and think, I enjoyed reading this and think others will to. Probably after reading this post, I may not get up and change the world but heck, the five minutes I spend reading this were better than staring blankly into space. Of course, as our favorite excuse goes, our tastes are subjective and you will not like every post we link to. I read Boing Boing, Instapundit, Marginal Revolutions, Kottke, Waxy, among other link-blogs that are considered among the best out there and never have I clicked on every one of the links they post; even if I click on couple of links a day, I find my visit fulfilling. Boing Boing loves anagrams of transit maps and Goatse references, Sepia Mutiny loves M.I.A, Kottke loves indi-movies, and these preferences reflect their bias quite apparently in the links they post. They would care less if you complain that they have been linking to too much Japanese anime but we don’t have their numbers so we couldn’t afford to. But I have realized numbers don’t dictate response style in fact it is the other way around.
The central issue that I wanted to talk about as reflected in the title of the post is the attitude of our Indian blogosphere. Of course, DesiPundit brings you (or at least tries to) the best in the Indian blogosphere but we are people with limited means much less limited time. We appreciate as much help as we can get. We get if not hundreds, dozens of tip-offs but disappointedly at least 80% of those tips are to their own blogs. Of course, we don’t judge you on that and understand that you might think every post you write is a masterpiece and deserves to be featured on DesiPundit. But get real, people not every post! As mentioned in our tip-off policy, 1-2 tips from your own blogs is also way too much self-promotion. The intention of our tip-offs link was to reach out to blogs that we might not be reading or those that have popped up recently. That said I still feature posts that are self-nominated if they are well-written but I am starting to get irritated now.
Maybe it is the side-effect of numbers but blogs increasingly are deteriorating in quality. People in their need to publish more and more are giving scant attention to quality, writing style, or even presence of a coherent point in their posts. Sure! It is your blog, go ahead and write your innermost thoughts but don’t get peeved if we don’t feature them on DesiPundit. My brother had a desi version of Digg ready to roll sometime early this year as an addendum to DesiPundit but this self-laudatory behavior of the desi blogosphere would defeat the purpose if everyone posted their own posts and every story got exactly one Digg. The excellent writers would still get ‘dugg’ the most and end up at the top and we would end up with lot of noise and an extremely long tail. You are frowned upon if you post a link to your own blog on Digg and credibility is lost overnight as blogger peers can be merciless. But in the desi blogosphere, ‘frowning upon’ wouldn’t work because everyone is guilty of the deed. We scrapped the idea as we didn’t want to end up with a messy product. Sepia Mutiny and Indian Pad have come up with a similar thing although they have smartly tagged it as news and not blogs; we wish them all the best.
One of the DesiPundits, Neha had commented in the Global Voices summit that the Indian blogosphere is insular and too obsessed with rankings and hits. I agree with her completely. We have lost the essence of blogging i.e. to have fun. Larger impacts and social repurcussions are a natural by-product as bloggers inadvertently get influenced and write passionate opinions. Blogs are an alternative medium for public voice? Sure, they are; but let us not forget that they are reflections of individuals first and only by mutual consent can they aggregate to form a unified voice. Having fun while taking on IIPM made it a success and not the other way around.
Let us not confuse serious blogging with writing on serious political and social issues. Some of the best blogs out there talk about absolutely nothing significant and they are popular in their own right. DesiPundit falls in the same category.
Mostly we are a reflection of your tastes and preferences and we try to temper it sometimes by pushing up content we think deserves attention. You cannot blame us if you prefer to click on some blogger’s personal life and pass up on posts on science, politics, and other ‘serious’ stuff. Heck, we care less. We try to give you a mix of everything. If you think DesiPundit is not doing a great job, the blogosphere is wide open. Do your own searches, build up your own blogroll and surf without raising your blood pressure (and ours too); probably that would lead you to appreciate our time better.
We are desperately trying to balance quality content with popular demand; most of the time as we can see by TOI’s example, it isn’t the same thing. We can’t help it if the most popular search term by which people come to DesiPundit via Google is “desi babes”. And I thought the percentage of the population surfing the net is supposed to be highly educated and supposedly informed. Guess we aren’t ready for ‘it’ yet, whatever ‘it’ might mean. TOI hasn’t created their ‘reformed’ newspaper out of thin air but in fact, it is the reader’s demands that have done so. I’ll not let DesiPundit go down that way but it is not just my responsibility to ensure that; after all the blogosphere is a community-headed effort.
Thankfully, the goodwill I have received via DesiPundit far exceeds the negative feedback I get and it keeps me going. If I find it fun no more, DesiPundit might die a quick death and I care little about pulling the plug if it ends up as something other than what I envisioned. I have great plans for DesiPundit (will reveal shortly) and envision a bright future for blogs but it cannot be achieved without ‘having fun’. Many have volunteered their help and I was greatly encouraged by the great response to our donation drive which is allowing us to make changes to DesiPundit. I hope to stick around and serve you the best of the Indian blogosphere even if it means featuring a select number of blogs because they make it worth it.
I know that this will receive lot of flak and negative criticism especially from the people guilty of the transgressions I have named above. But tell me, would I care if I have bothered to pen down my thoughts? That said; feel free to share your thoughts. I’ll gladly give them a read and even offer a response if it deserves one.
by Patrix | on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 4:28 pm | 
India, Society Culture, Weblogs . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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March 4th, 2006 at 8:42 pm reply
Very well said, P (as always!). Honestly, I had no idea you even had a tip-off policy(perhaps that’s because I access DP through bloglines and rarely go to the site). And I am surprised there are actually some people who would stoop so low as to push to have their posts featured.
You’re right - blogs shouldn’t tbe about hit’s and trackbacks and awards and all that nonsense. It should just be about saying what you want to say, something most of us couldn’t do previously.
I think you and Ash have a damn good thing going here, and I can imagine just how difficult, not to mention time-consuming, it must be. So here’s a big ‘Thank You’ to you and your team … carry on the good work!
… and from now on if there’s someone who insists he deserves a listing, tell him to bugger off and leave a link to his post in as many places as he can!
Cheers mate!
March 4th, 2006 at 9:02 pm reply
Patrix, you raise a lot of interesting points and I like your reasoning behind them.
The Indian blogosphere has exploded in 2005. Even DP itself is not even a year old but is considered a mainstream desi blog. Therefore as in any movement, it will take time for the blogosphere to mature.
A lot of bloggers are on the train just now because it is cool to be so. Only the real good ones will stay on for the long course. The perfect analogy will be a 100 m race vs the marathon.
March 5th, 2006 at 1:10 am reply
Well said Patrix. You and your team have done a great job with Desipundit so far. If you bar the complaints, most of us are thankful. Good job. Keep going.
March 5th, 2006 at 4:24 am reply
Waiting for the “have great plans for DesiPundit ” to be unveiled soon… :)
Its so easy to see the fierce passion you feel about DesiPundit….despite all the probs you mentioned…great going…and your post is absolutely justified :)
I think this is gonna be the longest comment I’ve ever written…so brace yourself…
One thing I’d like to say…”We have lost the essence of blogging i.e. to have fun.” perhaps yes…but who’s to decide whether its fun anymore blogging or not?
The bloggers or the readers? You and I and everyone else here started blogging , as you said to have fun. Expecting the reading experience to be equally, if not more fun is IMO a tall order, dontcha think? Of course there’ll always be the splendid ones scattered around, but mostly we all put up with mediocre stuff. Heck, the stuff we churn out too, is at times (or mostly, in my case :D ) mediocre…so who decides what is fun?
As long as you have fun blogging, bloggin stuff that you find blog-worthy…and basically have a ball while doing so…it should be okay, right? Sure, when at the end of the day you’ve read through most of your feeds…and as luck would have you find nothing particularly inspiringly, sure it’s a let down. But as you said, with an increase in numbers there is a decline in quality…nothing can be done about it :(
well basically what I’m trying to say is, why take something that started out as fun so seriously?!
Of course I can understand this from a Desipundit point of view…you are the guys who bring the cream of the blogs under one roof…so understandable when you lament about the fact that quality of posts has declined around blogosphere….well I hope this disillusionment doesn’t lead you to shutdown DP one day! fingers crossed!
March 5th, 2006 at 11:40 am reply
SwB, I am fine with people sending in their own blog posts as hat tips but doing that for every post they make is what gets my goat. Thanks for your words of encouragement though.
Arzan, you are right about the coolness factor that got people blogging. While numbers can be good, the desparate urgency with which people seek tons of hits without quality writing irritates and I can’t say much because it’s their blog. But I sure can not feature them on DesiPundit.
Smiley, thanks dude. Courtesy people like you, the hope is still alive.
Shub, When I talk about blogging as fun, I mean that you should enjoy the process of blogging and interacting with your commenters. Sometimes, people just write on a current issue because everyone is doing so. Their opinions are neither original nor new; instead if they wrote about the quirkiness of their paanwallah I bet people would love to read that as much as they would love to write that. Sometimes small things are the best things to write about. Also, it matter for whom are you blogging and why? If it is for hits only, you aren’t going to get any…trust me.
March 5th, 2006 at 5:14 pm reply
Before I shamelessly self-nomitated one of my blog-posts for DP :), I read through this tip-off policy and found it way too generous. I thought you guys must either have lots of time on your hands or really love doing this. Given that at least two of you are graduate students I guess the latter is probably closer to the truth.
I used to lurk around several message boards before blogging became popular and found some similar negative attitudes. Best thing is to ignore those douchebags.
Ok, through all this incoherent rambling, I am just trying to reinforce what others have already mentioned - you guys do an amazing job at DP. Keep it up.
On an unrelated note - I ke the new wp format (although I still think the typepad theme was much better) - however, the ‘page’ buttons at the top do not always show up well against some of the header images (not enough contrast).
March 5th, 2006 at 6:25 pm reply
Thanks, Bongo for the vote of confidence. How I wish that the people for whom this is intended actually read this and get it. Self-promotion is not that bad after all if you don’t wanna share what you write, why are you writing at all? But the extent to which some of them take it to makes me think why the heck are they blogging - to vent out their opinions and thoughts or to get noticed?
Regards my new theme, I admit that some images might not be well suited and I am trying to identify which are they (will delete them and add new ones occassionally). Actually, I am fine if the page buttons are not in your face. The ones who use the net frequently usually know where the sitemap buttons are.
March 5th, 2006 at 6:45 pm reply
Patrix: Do what you wanna do, dude. I mean that positively. You and only you (by “you”, am incl. Ash and the other contributors) know what DP is all about. Even if you have explained the funda to someone else, there is bound to be some loss due to translation. We are having fun on DP and hope that you will continue to do so too, mostly at least. We want DP to go on forever… You guys rock…
March 5th, 2006 at 10:11 pm reply
Gosh, all those negative mails have triggered a riot here, and I now know that even a riot can be well reasoned.
I am not sure how many pesky bloggers let their fingers loose on their keyboards to send you those nasty e-mails. The larger their number, the more it says about how great and indispensable DesiPundit has become. If it makes you feel better, let me point to slashdot which has a similar problem too. You might want to look at their policy on accepting tip-offs — they call them ’submissions’.
To me, DesiPundit is still the best place for discovering interesting posts in blogs that I didn’t even know existed. I think you guys have done a wonderful job. Thank you!
Now, can I nominate this post for a mention in DP? I hope you won’t send me to DesiPundit to put in a tip-off …
March 6th, 2006 at 12:46 pm reply
aNTi, yup in spite of few negative vibes our spirits are upbeat and we are still treating it as “our” blog in spite of the community feel that we want it to be seen as.
Abi, I guess I can see that (negative comments) as a success for DesiPundit; comparisons with Slashdot might be a little over the top though :) As for the tip off, I hope other contributors have noticed. I feel a wee bit uncomfortable linkin my own post especially after my diabtribe about the self-nomination bit.
March 6th, 2006 at 6:52 pm reply
This was an interesting and at times infuriating read. I completely understand and empathise with your situation and your need to write this post, yet I guess personally speaking I am not sure whether to thank you for penning this. The post while claiming to address the issue of cranky emails, which you yourself admit to be ‘an extreme rarity’, passes some strong judgments on 80% of your contributors. I think it is unfair to cast the 80% contributors who self-nominate posts in such poor light.
You begin the sentence with we don’t judge you on that (self-nominating posts) and go ahead and do just that by talking about how you are getting irritated and drawing the line about how many tip-offs does it take to be categorized as irritating and ‘way too much self-promotion.’ You have opened up floodgates for people like SwB here who without having any association with Desipundit can suddenly take a moral high ground and say absolutely insulting things like “And I am surprised there are actually some people who would stoop so low as to push to have their posts featured.” Yea SwB, you rose very high in the minds of us stooping-so-low types with your comment! How does it alter a quality of a post if it is self-nominated or if someone else nominates it? Are you suggesting that somehow just because someone nominates somebody else’s post suddenly that post gets to feature in the haloed confines? Let’s assume tomorrow the blogosphere began behaving in the way you would ideally like it to function and people started nominating only someone else’s posts… You cannot feature all of the nominated posts obviously and will reject some of the nominations. Do you honestly think that there wont be people who think that they had nominated some excellent posts and get angry about this perceived slight and post you a cranky email? And this may not be such a hypothetical scenario as you think. Just two days ago I was speaking to a fellow blogger on the phone and he expressed frustration that posts from different bloggers that he had nominated were being consistently rejected and according to him this was because he thought he had criticized Desipundit and one of its contributors once upon a time. This is not to insinuate that this is true but to underscore the fact that whether you get 80% self-nominated posts or only 20% self-nominated ones, the occasional cranky email will still be very much a reality.
I had no idea that contributors who self-nominated posts were looked down upon so much. One doesn’t get an idea about this after reading the tip-off policy. The statement about restricting posts to 1-2 per day comes across more as a common sense and logistical issue rather than a hint that overall Desipundit don’t favour self-nominated posts. This is not a complaint but rather a frank admission about ignorance about Desipundit’s attitude regarding us. When I had begun blogging I had myself nominated 3-4 of my posts and they had all got featured. I was new to the blogosphere and had no other way to find readership and there are many like me. Today I have a dedicated set of readers and no longer feel the need to nominate my posts. Yet I will always thank those self-nominated posts of mine and Desipundit for my loyal readers. So why write such a post by making self-nominated posts as a central issue and dissuade/demotivate some new blogger from getting discovered. I had encouraged at least three bloggers I knew to nominate their own posts on Desipundit. Had I known about this ‘irritation’ of yours we would very well have come up with a ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ sort of an arrangement and began nominating each other’s posts. Today I would feel so embarrassed if any of them read this post of yours. Inadvertently I have exposed them to derision from you, whose opinion they (including me) value a lot and also the opinion of the readers of this post, and all this simply because they committed the blasphemy of nominating their own posts.
Please also give due consideration to the fact that by rejecting someone’s posts you are in effect criticizing them, passing a judgment on their writing and their ability to understand the issue they are commenting upon. Just as you are sensitive to criticism, they are too. So if you get angry/irritated because they nominate too many posts, it is worthy of writing such a long post for public consumption and lumping 80% of contributors with the 10% who write such emails, but when these 10% get angry about your ‘criticism’ because of rejection of their posts, their writing private emails venting their frustration is somehow less equivalent and totally unacceptable. I am not justifying abuse neither am I taking sides with people who write nasty letters. But the format that you have adopted involves personal preferences being used as criteria for acceptance and rejection of such posts. And as such this judgment will always be subjective and therefore exposed to subjective criticism. Just as a blogger whose writing is part of a public domain and therefore open to comments and linking through Nilu’s pukefests, the format you have chosen is open to such occasional nasty criticism. Learn to live with it; just like thousands in the blogosphere have learnt to deal with trolls and Nilu’s nasty criticisms.
And why should criticism be looked upon so derisively? I am not writing this comment because I hate Desipundit or you personally, rather it is because I love the site and have invested in it so much as a reader and also because I know you are a reasonable man and will take this in the right spirit. Even those who write those nasty emails write them because they think so highly of Desipundit that they feel miffed when their posts aren’t featured. If they didn’t think too highly of it, they could care less if their posts were accepted or rejected. It is sort of a left handed compliment they are paying you guys and since such things are out of your control anyways why not change your attitude and brush off or laugh at their stupidity rather than be irritated by it. And finally, a sincere request could you avoid saying things like “But tell me, would I care if I have bothered to pen down my thoughts?” If you don’t care why invite comments in the very next sentence and also react to them in the comments section?
I hope this is taken in the right spirit and needless to say this was written with an honest intention of a dialogue and trying to present ‘us’ self-nominators side on the issue. I love Desipundit and always wish you well.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:41 pm reply
Chetan, whoa! I never thought I would get one of your loooong comments :) anyway, I glad you did and I hope I can answer to the points you raise satisfactorily. I meant this post as a personal rant and hence posted it on my blog rather than as an administrative post on DesiPundit.
I would like to make clear if it wasn’t so in my post that - I am NOT against self-nominated posts. Actually, they do form the bulk of the tips and most of them happen to be decent. But as you said, restriction of self-nomination to 1-2 per week is more of a logical or common sense issue but I wish I could give you a peek into DesiPundit’s inbox to see how many times that rule is flouted and it takes a great deal of restraint in not responding to that person to cool off for some time. Incidentally, I have also seen traces of “I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine” behavior too. It is pretty obvious but I refrained from mentioning that here. SwB may have got a lil carried away in denouncing self-nominators but if you notice, I did make it clear that I don’t think that way. I am not generalizing people who self-nominate. Those that are guilty know who there are but I’ll not name them.
I am not looking down on criticism or trying to tell people to back off. They are entitled to criticism as much as I am entitled to responding to that in my own way. I will still go ahead with my DesiPundit like before but just wanted to put these thoughts out there. I am but a mere human and tend to get irritated with criticism especially if it is misplaced but as time passes I’ll probably learn to look beyond them and also learn to accept them as veiled compliments as you and Abi suggest.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:42 pm reply
Hi
I never knew you guys run DesiPundit probably I dont go there much, basically because I have never been featured there…unfairingly I tell ye…just kidding man…
March 6th, 2006 at 9:42 pm reply
DP is certainly easy-going on self-nominations. I have done quite a few of them…and they did cover those posts. Ofcourse, I didnt send every post of mine to DP.
And P,
What fraction of the posts featured on DP come thro ‘tip-offs’?? I know u pple spend a huge amount of time with 500 sites on ur blogrolls..but i still guess tip-offs contribute to a large extent.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:48 pm reply
To continue from above(got posted by mistake)
I think all Pundits at the end of the day are a matter of choice. I might not like what you read or recommend and vice versa. It does not mean any of our choices are superior. Its just that featuring in DP is a sureshot of getting higher hits on your blog and it does matter to everyone(including me). Afterall, all said and done everyone wants readers.
My suggestion would be stop the self tips…its your site, you guys decide what you want to feature. Anyways, I find the idea of self tips a little bit arrogant. If I like it I will read it otherwise I wont. In time I am sure more such sites will come up and then there will less jostling for getting on DP.
later
March 6th, 2006 at 10:20 pm reply
Patrix: Thanks for your reply and I am glad that you clarified your stance regarding self-nominations within reasonable limits. Thanks also for taking this in the right spirit, as I expected you would. Carry on with the good work!
March 6th, 2006 at 10:29 pm reply
Confused, scrapping self-nominations would be unfair because it is humanly impossible for us to keep tabs on new blogs and they need a kick start to get them going…I know I would especially if I wrote well enough. There are so many blogs out there (29.9 million at last count) that it is difficult to get readers even if you wrote excellent posts.
Aswin, probably the reason that all your posts got accepted is an indication of the quality of your writing (there were couple of Scian Melts in those if I am not mistaken). I haven’t yet analyzed what %age of our posts come from tip-offs but it would be a worthwhile exercise.
Chetan, glad that I could explain myself better this time around.
March 7th, 2006 at 5:47 am reply
Yes, a couple were melt-related. My comment was to reinforce your point that not all self-nominators create problems. I guess chetan is clear about that,now.
March 8th, 2006 at 2:17 pm reply
Chetan: What “moral highround” are you talking about? If you take the trouble to read carefully what I said you will see that I used the word “push” to refer to those people who don’t know when to call it quits; which is the very same thing Patrix is talking about in this post. And Desipundit’s tip-off policy notwithstanding, I still think asking someone to link to your own post is downright pathetic!