Issues Raised Concerning The S&F Top 50

A couple issues have been raised on two blogs concerning the S&F Top 50, and so we thought we'd note them here and give our answers to keep them in one place.

Lisa Hirsch of Iron Tongue Of Midnight thinks that the number of incoming links is not the proper criterion to use to rank the importance of a blog, and suggests that the number of blog hits is the way to go. Ms. Hirsch has a point of sorts. Problem is, there's no practical way to accomplish a ranking of blogs by number of blog hits. The decisive difficulty in such a procedure is that the one compiling the rankings would need access to a recognized and reliable objective statistics provider's tally of blog hits for each blog examined, and that statistics provider would have to be the same for the entire universe of examined blogs (different providers calculate counts differently and they rarely match), a requirement clearly not met in the universe of classical music blogs some of which, we suspect, have no statistics provider at all. There are other difficulties with this method of ranking as well, but they're moot as the decisive difficulty is, well, decisive.

Scott Spiegelberg of Musical Perceptions wants to know why we exclude institutional and group blogs from the S&F Top 50 rankings. The answer is institutional blogs are excluded because such blogs are subject to institutional oversight and subtle institutional pressures and are therefore instantly suspect as regards content and the completely free personal expression and philosophic viewpoint of the individual writing the blog no matter that the individual swears on the life of his children that no institutional restraints or pressures exist for him. Group blogs are excluded because they do not represent the personal expression and philosophic viewpoint of a single individual which in our view is what blogs are — and ought to be — all about. In the case of blogs written by the same duo of writers, we view that case as if the duo were a perfectly matched married couple. Their opinions may at times differ, but it's been our experience of such duo-written blogs that the underlying philosophy of life and art of both writers is essentially a unity and their blog is therefore treated by us for this purpose (but for this purpose only) as one written by a single individual.

That's it so far. As other issues concerning the S&F Top 50 are raised (if such in fact are) we'll add them and our answers as updates to this post.