Here’s a fun little mental exercise, which ends up with a curious result that I just noticed. First, let’s classify participants in a group blog as entering the group through either a top-down or bottom-up route. The top-down route begins with offline connections: Person A operates a blog; she offers a co-blogging position to Person B, who she knows through some in-person avenue (such as an old classmate). The bottom-up route is based on connections made through the blog itself: Person A operates a blog; she offers a co-blogging position to Person B who she knows solely through contact on the blog itself (a well-regarded commenter). We can divide T & S permabloggers into these two categories, and when we do, a strange pattern emerges.<\/p>\n
Listing the permabloggers, along with the origin of their participation, and their classification, we get:<\/p>\n
Nate, Matt, Adam, Kaimi.<\/strong> Four regular participants in the LDS-law list decided to start a group blog. These are original members, and so are neither top-down nor bottom-up<\/strong>. There’s a very interesting pattern here: Every one of the female permabloggers came to the group through the bottom-up process, and every one of the male permabloggers came to the group through the top-down process.<\/p>\n A few cautionary thoughts:<\/p>\n 1. This is a very small sample size. And yet, if it’s not random, what are some implications?<\/p>\n -Bottom-up connection is less dependent on “old-boy’s networks” and is more purely meritocratic. How interesting, then, that each of our female permabloggers came to the group through this route. The men in the group all started out with friends on the inside; the women (with the exception of Melissa, who as I noted had already impressed the group by the time we realized she had a friend on the inside) came to the blog as total strangers, and proceeded to make an impression.<\/p>\n -Our female permabloggers have impeccable credentials (the same as the male permabloggers), and they’re all clearly very good at blogging. Yet, none of them were sufficiently plugged in to whatever-networks-we-have to receive a top-down invitation. What does that say about our networks, and their accessibility to women?<\/p>\n -This drives home for me the value of the comment function. Without comments, we’re not only a bunch of blowhards, yakking amonst ourselves about whatever tickles our fancy — we’re also, perhaps, an environment less likely to invite permanent blogger participation from women. Every one of our female permabloggers came to us through the comments, and every one of them is a great addition to the blog. Chalk one up to the value of blog comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s a fun little mental exercise, which ends up with a curious result that I just noticed. First, let’s classify participants in a group blog as entering the group through either a top-down or bottom-up route. The top-down route begins with offline connections: Person A operates a blog; she offers a co-blogging position to Person B, who she knows through some in-person avenue (such as an old classmate). The bottom-up route is based on connections made through the blog itself: Person A operates a blog; she offers a co-blogging position to Person B who she knows solely through contact on the blog itself (a well-regarded commenter). We can divide T & S permabloggers into these two categories, and when we do, a strange pattern emerges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGordon<\/strong>. Nate tells the group that he’s got a friend who would be interested in joining. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nGreg<\/strong>. Kaimi tells the group that he’s got a friend who would be interested in joining. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nRussell<\/strong>. Nate tells the group that he’s got a friend who would be interested in joining. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nJim.<\/strong> Nate and Russell suggest that we recruit their former professor. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nKristine<\/strong>. Kristine (who isn’t acquainted with any of the permabloggers) shows up on the blog and promptly wows everyone with her comments. Bottom up.<\/strong>
\nJulie.<\/strong> Julie (who isn’t acquainted with any of the permabloggers) shows up on the blog and promptly wows everyone with her comments. Bottom up.<\/strong>
\nMelissa<\/strong>. Melissa may not seem cleanly within the bottom-up category, because she knows Kristine. But her origin is bottom-up, because she’s not originally introduced to the group as “Kristine’s friend” (that would be Kristine saying “guys, we ought to try to recruit Melissa Proctor,” which would lead to a top-down designation). Rather, Melissa shows up on the blog and promptly wows everyone with her comments; permabloggers then ask Kristine “who’s this Melissa person?” Bottom up.<\/strong>
\nWilfried<\/strong>. Jim tells the group that he’s got a friend who would be interested in joining. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nFrank.<\/strong> Nate tells the group that he’s got a friend who would be interested in joining. Top Down.<\/strong>
\nRosalynde.<\/strong> Rosalynde (who isn’t acquainted with any of the permabloggers) shows up on the blog and promptly wows everyone with her comments. Bottom up.<\/strong>
\nBen. <\/strong> Ben is acquainted with Jim, Nate, Adam and Kristine. He sends Kristine some e-mails on T & S topics, which puts him on our radar; he’s invited. Top Down,<\/strong> I think.<\/p>\n
\n2. Perhaps I’m cherry-picking the data. Ben and Melissa are both in a gray area of sorts, and a case could be made for Melissa being “top down” or for Ben being “bottom up.”
\n3. The original four are excluded, but much of our interaction on LDS-law also looks kind of like a bottom-up sort of connection.
\n4. This pattern isn’t consistent through guest bloggers. Some female guest bloggers, like Claudia Bushman, Linda Hoffman Kimball, and Brandie Seigfried, came to the group through top-down connections. Some male guest bloggers, like Ben Spackman and William Morris, came through bottom-up connections. I can’t think off the top of my head why the pattern should exist among permabloggers and not guests. So perhaps it’s just random.<\/p>\n