Scholarati

So, a while back, I put up a a wiki page listing Scholars Who Blog, drawing from a bunch of similar lists on the web. Since then, a handful of new sites have been added or taken from the list, and there are about 550 blogs listed. At the time, Seb Paquet agreed that a more complete solution was desirable, and set up a very nice set of notes on another wiki.

There, I suggested one way of maintaining quality was only allowing blogs that had been linked to by other, already established blogs. To that end, I took a look at the hyperlinks among the blogs listed, and looked for inlinks from others on the list. This is a bit like what Technorati does on a much larger scale. The top twenty were not too surprising:

URL inlinks
http://hnn.us/ 723
http://www.crookedtimber.org/ 307
http://www.poliblogger.com/ 224
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/ 202
http://volokh.com/ 141
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ 110
http://rhetorica.net 103
ttp://www.instapundit.com/ 103
http://atrios.blogspot.com/ 98
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com 96
http://chutry.wordherders.net/ 74
http://www.dailykos.com/ 69
http://www.erinoconnor.org/ 56
http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/ 56
http://fistfulofeuros.net/ 55
http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/ 51
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/ 50
http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/ 50
http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ 49
http://www.crescatsententia.org/ 47

Part of the reason it isn’t particularly surprising is that I gathered some of these links from the Crooked Timber site, the Rhetorica site, Jill Walker’s site, and Seb Paquet’s site, so it isn’t really surprising that these end up being linked a lot in turn. Several of these are also “A-listers” and very widely linked. It would be interesting, and maybe worthwhile, to compare these with each weblogs total inlinks according to Technorati.

The upshot is that a number of blogs that I would classify as being quite “scholarly” in content received 0 links from the 550 in this list. There are two explanations here. The first is that these 550 are only a tiny sliver of the number of academic bloggers in existence. Frankly, while I know that it is missing a number of blogs, I suspect that it contains a fairly good number of them. The second is that counting inlinks is not a good way of assuring quality. Back to the drawing board…

Click the “More” link to see if you made the top 120. I’m in there somewhere :).

Update: In answer to an emailed question, the reason HNN figures so prominantly is because of a small issue with the approach. Since I’m looking for the existence of the any part of the site in the link, in fact, that is catching all the links to any of the hnn site. That, in combination with a lot of linking, accounts for the very large number of links seeming to be inbound to hnn.us.

The next 100 most linked scholarly bloggers (from scholarly blogs):

URL inlinks
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/ 47
http://www.markarkleiman.com/ 47
http://www.wonkette.com/ 46
http://www.marginalrevolution.com 45
http://pharyngula.org/ 41
http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/ 41
http://www.juancole.com/ 38
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/ 38
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/ 37
http://www.thepoorman.net/ 36
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/ 36
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/ 36
http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com 35
http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/ 35
http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com 34
http://lsolum.blogspot.com/ 34
http://blog.mathemagenic.com/ 34
http://www.pandagon.net/ 34
http://www.lessig.org/blog/ 33
http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/ 32
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/ 31
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/index.htm 31
http://balkin.blogspot.com/ 31
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ 30
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/ 30
http://www.michaelberube.com 28
https://alex.halavais.net/news/ 28
http://www.tacitus.org 27
http://www.pandasthumb.org/ 27
http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/ 26
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html 26
http://mamamusings.net/ 25
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/ 25
http://scsu-scholars.blogspot.com/ 24
http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/ 23
http://www.baraita.net/blog/ 23
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/ 23
http://fafblog.blogspot.com/ 23
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/ 22
http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/ 22
http://pedantry.fistfulofeuros.net/ 22
http://blog.lordsutch.com/ 21
http://www.discourse.net/ 20
http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/ 20
http://www.2blowhards.com/ 20
http://www.culturecat.net/ 20
http://charlesmurtaugh.blogspot.com/ 20
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ 19
http://chun.typepad.com 19
http://akma.disseminary.org/ 18
http://www.sideshow.idps.co.uk/ 18
http://marston.blogspot.com/ 18
http://askpang.typepad.com/ 18
http://academicgame.blogspot.com/ 18
http://nataliesolent.blogspot.com/ 18
http://palimpsest.typepad.com/frogsandravens/ 18
http://philosophenweg.blogspot.com/ 18
http://rogerailes.blogspot.com/ 18
http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/ 17
http://torillsin.blogspot.com 17
http://www.amitai-notes.com/blog/ 17
http://thelookingglass.blogspot.com/ 17
http://householdopera.typepad.com/household_opera/ 17
http://www.thetalkingdog.com/ 17
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/ 16
http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html 16
http://www.maxspeak.org/mt/ 16
http://coldspringshops.blogspot.com/ 16
http://makingcontact.typepad.com/ 16
http://www.politicaltheory.info/ 15
http://crankyprofessor.com/ 15
http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/ 15
http://williamtozier.com/slurry 15
http://www.atlanticblog.com/ 15
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/alan/ 14
http://signalplusnoise.com/ 14
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/ 14
http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/ 14
http://littleprofessor.typepad.com 14
http://www.cronaca.com/ 13
http://wolfangel.typepad.com/ 12
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/ 12
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/ 12
http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/ 12
http://kaye.trammell.com/blog/ 12
http://keywords.oxus.net/ 12
http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/ 12
http://dwar.blogspot.com 12
ttp://j3.blogspot.com/ 11
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html 11
http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/blog/ 11
http://overstated.net 11
http://ludology.org/ 11
http://www.unbsj.ca/arts/english/jones/mt/ 11
http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ 11
http://www.mirrorofjustice.com/ 11
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/ 11
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/ 11
http://j3.blogspot.com/ 11
http://www.institutional-economics.com/ 10
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.