Links & Site Design

My general approach to site design is to offer a comprehensive main page, with minimalistic (hence fast-loading) post-pages. This will hopefully encourage readers to jump around the site freely (e.g. by following 'previous post' or 'category' links). Features that appear on the main page only are linked to at the very top of my sidebar.

Any suggestions are, as always, most welcome.

I've re-installed Haloscan trackbacks, in case anyone wants to respond to a post of mine on their own blog. (Alternatively, just leave a link in the comments.)

[Update - you can send trackbacks from this page.]

The other major change is to my blogroll. Rather than having a separate 'category' page, I've decided to put my full blogroll on the main page sidebar. More convenient that way, I think.

I normally don't like huge blogrolls, since they tend to be a bit meaningless, but I've taken some steps to try to avoid this problem.

First, my mini-blogroll of 'Selected Links' still appears on individual post-pages. So if you only want to see my top recommendations, consult that instead. Those are the blogs that are so good I feel the need to have direct access to them from every page of this site.

Second, the blogroll is split into 10 loose groups/clusters:
- meta
- university group blogs
- topical group blogs
- academics
- general philosophy blogs (esp. students)
- misc. philosophy-related (esp. politics/culture/linguistics)
- more politics (esp. law/economics/libertarians)
- "traditional" = historical/conservative/religious philosophy
- "untraditional" = sci/tech/atheism
- New Zealand blogs

Third, the blogs are (roughly) ranked by relative position within a group, with my favourites towards the top of each group.

You may be wondering why I've bothered with such a large blogroll. One reason is that there are a lot of good sites out there that deserve a link, and that some of my visitors might enjoy reading. (The sideblog serves a similar purpose.) Others I've included precisely because I disagree with them - David Horowitz aside, there is something to be said for intellectual diversity. Lastly, there are some reciprocal links - if you've been generous enough to link to me, it's only fair that I return the favour. [But see the update below.]

If you think you've been categorized into the wrong group, let me know and I'll consider changing it.

Update: Reciprocal links are now taken care of automatically by the 'recent referrals' list at the bottom of the main page.