Friday, October 10, 2008

True colors shining through

I just ran across this post and frankly I don't understand the geekery here. Waxy has invented some new algorithum based on memeorandum links that rates the partisan nature of a blog's linkage. I don't want to download the program myself because my old computer is already really sluggish these days, but I'm really interested in figuring it out because my own blog The Impolitic and The Reaction are both on the list. I get the color code. That's pretty simple.
While most political blogs are extremely partisan, their biases aren't immediately obvious to outsiders like me. I wanted to see, at a glance, how conservative or liberal the blogs were without clicking through to every article. [...]

The colors don't necessarily represent each blogger's personal views or biases. It's a reflection of their linking activity. The algorithm looks at the stories that blogger's linked to before, relative to all other bloggers, and groups them accordingly. People that link to things that only conservatives find interesting will be classified as bright red, even if they are personally moderate or liberal, and vice-versa. The algorithm can't read minds, so don't be offended if you feel misrepresented. It's only looking at the data.
I don't understand the scoring at all. Maybe some tech savvy reader can tell me what our colors are and what my ranking means?

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

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2 Comments:

Blogger Joshua said...

Hello,

The numbers don't really "mean" anything, it's just that you're similar to other people with a similar score, and dissimilar to people with a different score.

We shouldn't have called it score so much as "position."

1:58:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Hey Joshua. If that's how it works, I think the algorithum might be off because I'm not grouped with the right people.

I think you have to adjust for whether the links are positive or mocking.

6:26:00 PM  

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