Please remember that you are choosing to read my opinions.

I love the top blogs page. Not because I sometimes manage to spark some  interest and end up there myself, but rather because it is a way that I can find blogs. It is probably one of the most interesting and important of the non-essential features of mindsay simply because, without things like "top blogs" it would be nearly impossible for some of us to find the blogs that others have found interesting. It is like word of mouth but more effective.

But enough with the showers of praise. Just like every good thing, there are ways to make them more useful. Here are some of the suggestions I've come up with:

The ability to re-rank the top blogs--

I recommend by votes and number of comments, perhaps even by title would be somewhat useful.  Sometimes the number of replies is a better judgment of "popularity" than the number of votes it receives.

II also think a feature similar to digg would be useful, but with (in my opinion) an improvement. You can not only vote up a blog, but you can also vote vote down. BUT the catch is this: whether or not you decide to vote it up or vote it down, it still counts as a vote if you order the Top Blogs by votes rather than it's position based on the total of votes up - votes down. (in other words, it could also be ranked as votes up + votes down).

 We all know that a system like Digg can be abused by groups of people who decide that a story isn't worth seeing. We also know that such groups exist here on mindsay, for better or worse (social environments breed these, of course). In this system, you have to consider than even if you give a blog a negative vote, it will still raise it's rank depending on how you order the top blogs. This system is much more realistic that Digg's system, because we all know that in real life, someone or something can be popular for bad reasons as well as good.

That is all I have. I know that no one asked, but I figured I'd write it while I thought about it. I like anything that makes it easier for me to find blogs, and for others to find mine.