I'm with you on this. There are lots of ways to get tons of hits, but most of them are icky or sucking up. My site is for me, I'm happy I've got a few readers and would love to have more, but I can't change who I am to get them.

The way I understand NZ Bear's article, part of the question is: is a higher ranking in the ecosystem due to massive linking via membership in a certain group AS VALID AS a higher ranking attained by massive linking stemming from writing a well-received, well-written post that everyone links to because it's a good read?
Of course, the second reason has much more validity.

LeeAnn,

I agree with you. After thinking more about this, I remembered my days as a technical support person at Sprint.
We had certain requirements as to how many calls we answered, how many first call resolutions we had, etc.
There was always someone who could cheat the system by opening 4 or 5 tickets for one caller - therefore making their resolution rate look out of this world. I guess it's the same kind of thing with the TTLB Ecosystem.

Except that NZ Bear's accusations aren't correct at all, and liberals (well the League of Liberals) in this situation are only pissed off by 'Bear spreading misinformation about them, not about anything else.

We like the ecosystem, and in fact, the only requirement of LoL membership is to vote in the TTLB new blog showcase. In other words, to participate in and promote NZ's game itself. I fail to see how that is cheating?

(The LoL is not chartered with the goal of increasing ecosystem rankings.)

--Kynn

I would only care to see my blog's ranking as a result of natural forces. It doesn't really matter anyway - just because you are at the top of the ecosystem doesn't mean you get more than 5 hits a day.