Blogroll Amnesty Day

While reading through some of the blogs I've subscribed to through Bloglines, I came across this interesting post by Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata of Scienceblogs.

Now I'm subscribed to more than 200 different blogs and often scan through what others are saying, with more than half of them MS-related. I've also created a huge blogroll as an attempt to organize sources for myself and for readers who stumble across Brass and Ivory.

Until today, I was unaware of the now famous Blogroll Amnesty Day story as retold here by Jon Swift.

"The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to his. I never heard back from him.

When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked."

In addition to encouraging the 'small' bloggers to liberally blogroll their comrades in the blogosphere, I'd like to request any readers of Brass and Ivory to consider adding me to their blogroll.

I have only ever requested two 'big blog' patient bloggers to add me to their patient-focused blogrolls. One accommodated me (thank you Trisha) and one never responded.

So I will ask here: if you are someone with MS or if you discuss patient-related issues, I ask that you might add me to your blogroll. And I suggest that you might want to subscribe to my feed through Bloglines to keep up with the growing community here.

Thank you.