Pen-Elayne on the Web

Maintenance Note - Community Building

Well, Robin's talked me into it. For awhile he's been saying that I should just link to the folks I mention in my entries instead of parenthetically typing in "link at sidebar," and he's given me several good arguments besides readability as to why I should do this. The most compelling is that people's blogs get more hits (and most everyone seems to appreciate increasing their hit-count) if you link to them in your text rather than referring readers to a sidebar. I know that whenever a popular and well-respected blogger like Atrios or Kevin Drum or Tom Tomorrow mentions me my hit-count soars, so the least I can do is "carry it forward" to others. And after the NY Blogger gatherings and especially reading Elaine Frankonis' excellent musings on virtual community, I think it's worth changing the way I do things. So bear with me whilst I gradually work backwards, time and my aching arms permitting, eliminating the "link at sidebar" parentheticals from my past entries and replacing them with the actual links. Next up, breaking myself of the habit of eliminating the slashmark at the end of many URLs when I embed the links... Update: October 2003 is all done, including embedding URLs in my "cool things about the folks on my blogroll" entries. Do readers think I should keep going further back to change the "link at sidebar"s to embeds, or just worry about doing it henceforth? I'm inclined toward the latter, but don't let that influence you...