Maybe do a featured 'blog of the week'?

Seeing as how it's YOUR blog, I think you have a right to be snobbish. Actually, you're right, it is work to keep up with a blogroll, and if you chose to not bother with it rather than have a potentially broken feature, or one not currently representative of you, then that's your right. Like you said, better to deny everyone equally than picking two or three. I agree with your current method.

I'd be interested in seeing what blogs you check out.

But I also just had a brainstorm. Wouldn't it be unique and possibly very useful, if you were able to collect a list of blogs your readers check? We could all send you an OPML file or something and with a lil' XSLT, a list could be compiled pretty easy....probably even complete with the percentage of readers that visit certain blogs (since I'm sure many of us read some of the same ones).

That would be interesting to me, at least. I think it would say something about a blog to see what a blog's readers actually like reading elsewhere.

and no, it ain't snobbish. This is your corner of the landscape of human thought. It shouldn't bother anyone else what you do with it.

Devon, that's a very interesting idea. I would certainly be interested to know what blogs my blog readers read (other than mine). I'm also interested in why people read this blog. Maybe I should start doing some readership surveys :-)

--Asa

Well, it would be a good thing if you have a Blogroll coz then it would tell us readers what blogs Asa reads (kind of like Google's pagerank; if Asa reads the blog, then there's prolly something of interest in it). But that said, its totally up to you -- if you don't feel like maintaining a Blogroll, its not snobbish, and nobody has the right to call you a snob. :-)

Devon's idea sounds interesting.

Well, it would be a good thing if you have a Blogroll coz then it would tell us readers what blogs Asa reads (kind of like Google's pagerank; if Asa reads the blog, then there's prolly something of interest in it). But that said, its totally up to you -- if you don't feel like maintaining a Blogroll, its not snobbish, and nobody has the right to call you a snob. :-)

Devon's idea sounds interesting.

Sweet! Add my blog!! ;)

I don't care for blog links much, I watch this blog primarly for... well... this blog. Surprise there. And as you say, you do post links to blog posts now and then, so what's the problem? It's not like a blogger has an obligation to spend time looking up related blog posts just for the heck of it. Not even when applying netiquette.

But I agree it could be interesting out of curiosity to see other blogs you like. You could have an "Interesting Blogs" thing with some links to the left or something like that.

I started a blog yesterday... Not much to see, but hey, it might become as popular as the great Notblog*, right? Right? Who am I kidding... :-p

Don't worry it's not snobbish at all.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting to look at what blogs you read though (because I am). If you find it too intrusive, you can have it on an externals page (sort of like how I intended to have, only it's sorta broken right now).

I don't read specific blogs other than a few. In general, I utilize Gemal's Blogupdates site. There are plenty of other Moz related aggegations (feedhouse/planet).moz*.org. If I find something of particular interest, I link to that entry.

One of the reasons I don't have a blogroll (at least in the traditional sense) is that I figure I'd have to deal with people complaining that I'd left them off, or demanding that I remove somebody else who said something offensive, or complaining that I did remove a link to something that the wrong people found offensive, and so on and so forth.

I can see where Asa's coming from, but disagree. I wouldn't pay too much attention to those who accuse you of being snobby - it's your perogative to include or not include one - but a few practical reasons for including a blogroll:

1. The curiosity factor is nice, but I also find it necessary some times to see how someone builds a perspective, and one way to do that is via blogroll. To me, a blogroll is a nice way to tell readers who you are and what you do, beyond the basic "I'm so and so, who works for company A" that accompanies every bio page; those to me are pretty useless. Someone can tell what I'm interested and what I cover in by checking out my blogroll - I wrote about that here http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000050.html. It may be of interest, for example, for folks to know that I read both your blog and Dave Massy's of the IE team. Doesn't guarantee objectivity, but it's a start.

2. It can be a great to enhance relationships with other people/organizations, allowing for a nice reciprocal relationship. That *can* cause friction when people press you for links, but you can state up front the conditions under which you'll link to someone.

3. Practicality. It couldn't be easier to maintain a blogroll than with Bloglines (and no, I have no connection with them). Basically, whatever you read there as your list can be included in your blog as a Blogroll with a snippet of Javascript. It can also be exported as OPML, etc, if you don't like it. That way, my blogroll's always up to date with zero maintenance from me - as I add or delete blogs, they dynamically reflect on my blogroll via Bloglines. Pretty sweet.

But as always, it's up to the owner. Whatever floats your boat, as they say.

I just opened a blog and decided to take a very pragmatic approach to blogrolling: since I use Bloglines to read feeds of most of my favourite blogs, I linked to a page where people may read the same things I read. You can check it out here

Ouch, didn't read Stephen's comment. Me neither affiliated to BL, anyway...