Watermark

Gosh, how many female bloggers are there, anyway...?

Graphic from Tild~, of course

"Well, its actually time to put together the list for Top 50 Female Bloggers. I started with 50 and will expand to 100 if there are a lot more female bloggers than I expected."

...says ENKAY  [Warning: Ads Ads Ads]

I'm actually on this list.

How did I get there?

I posted a comment directing him to one of my posts on the weary issue of where are the women bloggers?

But, apparently instead of going there and seeing that we number in the hundreds, thousands, and tens-of-thousands, he just added me to the list.

Now, this is a young man -- 19, he says -- but he also claims to have been on the internet since 1999 . Shouldn't he know?

He has, however, put a lot of energy into this effort, developing a complicated ranking formula:

"The female bloggers will be ranked based on their Google Page Rank, their Alexa Rank and their Technorati ranking. The list will be updated on a weekly basis as Alexa and Technorati will be updated but so will the actual rankings themselves."

This puts me at #68 today, but I expect to keep falling as more of us are added to the list, and he discovers that there's an ocean out there, in which I am a microscopic minnow.

A microscopic female minnow. (Do minnows have gender?)

Because this keeps coming up, I've made a page devoted to the issue:

  HERE ARE (a few of) THE WOMEN BLOGGERS

From now on, I can just point to it.

Will I put ENKAY's Female Bloggers List on that page?

Oh, what the hell. I probably will. I'm going to assume he means well. I'm sure he does mean well.

But I hope that he -- and others -- learn eventually: just because you don't see us, don't assume we're not here.   We're here, all of us: women, children, the disabled, the poor, the quiet, the invisible of all shapes, sizes, and colors -- all the people who are not you.

We're here.

UPDATE

ENKAY tells us in comments:

"Hey there! I definitely do mean well by having the list as I wish to shed light onto some of the talented female bloggers out there ... It's basically "Readers Choice Award" so being on the list is actually quite an honor because it means that someone nominated you, and in your case, there was someone else other than yourself who nominated you! ..."

I don't know why that didn't occur to me, but it didn't -- so thanks to whoever it was that nominated me. And -- I happen to know -- he is still accepting nominations.

International Rock-Flipping Day Update

Want to see what lives under rocks? Look here:

Flickr photo pool

Pbase gallery

Blogger-participants so far include: Windywillow (Ireland) Heraclitean Fire (London, England) Sheep Days (Illinois, USA) Earth, Wind & Water (somewhere in the Caribbean) Pocahontas County Fare (West Virginia, USA) chatoyance (Austin, Texas)

Fragments from Floyd (Virginia, USA) - GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Watermark (Montana, USA) pohanginapete (Aotearoa/New Zealand) Fate, Felicity, or Fluke (Oregon, USA) Thomasburg Walks (Ontario, Canada) Idle Thoughts of an Idle Woman (Queensland, Australia) The Transplantable Rose (Austin, Texas) Nature Woman (New York state, USA) Marja-Leena Rathje (British Columbia, Canada) A Blog Around the Clock (North Carolina, USA) Busy Dingbat's Sphere (West Virginia, USA) Hoarded Ordinaries (New Hampshire, USA) Congo Days (Kinshasa, Congo) this too (London, England) Roundrock Journal (Missouri, USA) Wanderin' Weeta (British Columbia, Canada) Blaugustine (London, England) A Honey of an Anklet (Virginia, USA) Looking Up (Ohio, USA) Ontario Wanderer (Ontario, Canada) Bug Safari (California, USA) Riverside Rambles (Missouri, USA) Pure Florida (Florida, USA) Burning Silo (Ontario, Canada) Musings from Myopia (Texas, USA) Cicero Sings (British Columbia, Canada)

Thanks to Dave for instigating this exploration, collecting the links, and sharing the code.