So, it’s a few years later, and BS has been under new ownership for most of them.

The current situation is that we still take a similar stance – if you ping weblogs.com, you can be indexed. Your blog is public to the world and all the other search engines, why can’t we list it too.

BUT – if you do not want to be listed, all you have to do is drop us an email (and in some cases show some kind of minimal proof of ownership), and we’ll delist it, no hassle. What does get our goat is when people also threaten legal action. There is no need for such things, and it’s sad that people think they have to.

On a side note, we haven’t been collecting pings for a few months now, due to the sheer amount of spam prevalent in the changes.xml lists or ping clouds, had to put time into upgrading the spam system.

You’re right, Trish. This thread got comment spammed hard last night. Looks like they’ve modified their script to get around the comment throttling that’s in MT now and as these were all new URLs they got past MT-Blacklist. They’re in there now, though, so they should be blocked from here on out.

For some reason this particular entry get’s spammed a LOT. It’s not even the thread that gets the most hits. I can only imagine they must be keying in on the word “blogshares” or something. I’ve deleted all the comment spam so folks are probably wondering what we’re talking about now.

Um, Les…Do you ever get the feeling someone’s taking the piss?

Boris rules !

That’s certainly one way to interpret it, though I don’t think I’d go as far as using those words myself. At least not at this moment in time. Saying he’s being arrogant and full of himself is unnecessarily antagonistic at this point and doesn’t help to foster a discussion that I do feel is worth having.

What are you trying to say, Les?  You think he’s just a “little” arrogant and full of himself?

(I would like to remind you that I only post comments to be nice.  Not because I have to.)  :0)

Wow, where have I been???  lol I totally had not heard about any of this until I read your post.  What a pity that a few people who have no lives have to make such a huge deal out of a fantasy game!!  I agree that that, in and of itself, would not make me want to de-list my blog but, like you, the rest of it definitely does.  Seyed should not have said what he did; even more so, he is completely wrong in actually believing what he said is correct.

I’m very glad I read this!  Thanks, Les!

Good job!
I myself make fun of my blog I will claim to be in top 100 everywhere and doing great on blogshares but my links will prove otherwise.Sure my blog is listed but not available for trading. So what?!
Like anything I think it is your right to be able to opt out. I will say I am guilty to using all sorts of resources to add blogs to my project. But it was for good intentions, and allow for opt out.
Games and lists will come and go just like fads. People are not their blogs. People are worth more than their blogs come on, anyone who gets upset over not being listed or a game needs to take some time away from the computer and live a little.

Thank you for putting into words what I could not articulate yesterday.  Seriously. 

There is also nothing on weblogs.com that says that other people can’t take the XML file and parse it to do whatever they want with it.  There is no mention there that blogrolling.com uses it to display recently updated sites too, or that the World Blog site I linked to earlier uses it.  I know of several people that use the weblogs.com code for a variety of reasons.

No, you don’t give them permission, but they are taking it an using it.  Scary if you don’t want them to be doing it, and it seems the only way to prevent that is to not ping.

This is true and I do think that folks who ping weblogs.com should at least expect that there will be other folks making use of the data provided by weblogs.com for other purposes. That’s not a bad thing necessarily in my mind. As you point out, though, the only way to avoid that without being diligent with keeping up on who uses weblog.com’s XML feeds is not to ping weblogs.com.

My point was simply that folks who do make use of said data shouldn’t work under the assumption that anyone participating in weblogs.com is automatically opting-in to any other project that comes along or that they have a right to include blogs in their projects simply because those blogs ping weblogs.com. Go ahead and use the data, but if someone wants out they should be able to opt-out without undue hassle and without being hassled.

Hopefully this doesn’t sound like I’m arguing with you, Christine. I’m not, just wanted to try and clarify my point of view. I finished this entry late last-night when I was tired and re-reading it this morning after a cup of coffee I realized I could have been a little more clear. I think this whole thing raises an important issue that hasn’t really been discussed much among people participating in the blog community. There are a lot of different assumptions floating around without any real discussions on whether those assumptions are valid or not with regards to the sharing and use of data.