"Afrigator" Responds to My Post on Its Ranking

Following my piece questioning afrigator, Stii has taken the trouble to respond. I post his reply for your general consumption. Enjoy!

Hi Emmanuel,

Sorry for only responding now! This slipped through the cracks! :( Yes, we're on Twitter. Even better would be adding our individual accounts:

@stii
@justinhartman
@adelezev

Okay, now, I'm not sure if you've read this indepth explanation about how the ranking works. Maybe it is too technical? Anyway, have a read and tell me.

http://stii.co.za/afrigator/whats-in-a-afrigator-ranking/

As I said, it changes frequently when the ranking scripts run. It resets every Sunday night so there may very well be big variations early in the week. That is quite normal.

As far as determining what blogs are Ghanaian, we leave that to the users. When a blogger submits his blog, he selects the country. Maybe we're not 100% clear on what determines what a blog's country classification is and that may well cause confusion. We find that more often than not, you'll find two kinds of bloggers.

1. Bloggers that resides in that said country. The blog itself might not be about the country, but the blogger should be!

2. Expats that blog about the country. This normally means that the blog qualifies on the basis that the blog is about the said country.

If you find that there is blogs that does not qualify, feel free to let us know! We'll definitely look into it. You can mail us at support[at]afrigator.com

Another issue is that we did have a problem recently with our ranking algorithm. This has been resolved. See:

2009/09/http://blog.afrigator.com/21/blog-ranking-changes/

I have to say, this is not the first time the issue of blogs that hadn't been updated in a while came up. I'll definitely look into this issue as it certainly is very, very valid. In fact, I'll look into this today still!

Guys, we're open for suggestions. We'll have a good and hard look at some of your suggestions mentioned here.

Keep well,

Stii

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 1:18:00 PM

Mid-Week Madness: Blogging Paradox ; Afrigator Re-Dux and Guinea on My Mind

Few people know that I have another blog, entitled "Reflecting the Eccentric World of E.K.Bensah II"--save Ghanablogging colleague Kobby Graham who has listed it in his aggregator. That's the space where I blog about relationships, life and other esoteric stuff, which I feel I cannot shed light on on the ghana blog.

Whilst you're reading, let me give you a small quote from a post I wrote in June 2007 about reconciling real life with blogging--what I call the blogging paradox:

In so many ways, blogging has transformed us into both contradictory and paradoxical people. Contradictory because some of us chose to blog about heretofore private issues under both the ambit of free speech, as well as something to blog about, when that very same issue, we probably wouldn’t discuss with someone face-to-face...

When you read this blog, you do it and make judgments—or not—on the entries I write. At the time you read my entry, your attention is drawn only to the post, but not to my whole personality. In that respect, even if you consistently visit the blog and have a fair idea of who I am, by way of my blog entries, it’s difficult to be certain whether it’s all an act.

We have contemporaneously become paradoxical because the self-reflection of our private lives that we are so keen to refrain from divulging fully is refracted through our blogging, such that we blog about our personal lives, but only in a way that doesn’t reveal too much of what we intimately think and feel...

I believe with that quote I was trying to experience a catharsis that only writing can bring. This post, for example, was going to be about "what to do when you cannot blog", but when I started writing, I remembered there were other issues I needed to pick up, such as the dreaded afrigator.


The genesis of this post started with the fact that I was going to write about Ghanaian banks; however it was scuppered by my boss challenging me to do an analysis of the Guinea/Niger crisis refracted through the role of ECOWAS in Guinea.

This has meant that I have had to naturally suspend my blog entry to do some serious research before doing a good piece on the Guinea crisis. I've done a write-up for the blog; all that remains for me to do is to transfer it into blogging stuff.
In between that, other private matters have crept up--including where on Earth Ato Kwamena Dadzie is on the afrigator blog list? Somehow, there seems to be a bit more sanity. I wouldn't know if it had anything to do with the post I wrote last two weeks. All I can tell for now is that the cutting-and-pasting blogs have been relegated down there somewhere in the 80s. I am still a bit concerned that some non-Ghanaian-content blogs, such as Nubian Cheetah, who blogs more about Africa than Ghana is in the top 5.

I am sincerely happy to see that David Ajao's blog is in the top 5; he's a veteran and deserves the spot. The delectable Esi Cleland and Abena of Procrastinator Fame; including yours truly are in the top 10. What is Koranteng's Toli still doing in the top 5?!

The Trouble With Afrigator.com!

For the cognescenti of Afrigator.com, my title might be a non-starter. I know for a fact that fellow ghanablogging.com bloggers like David Ajao have waxed lyrical about afrigator's peeps (akin to twitter) for example. One thing that must be said about David Ajao, also, i sthat consistently for the past couple of months, he has been ranked number one on afrigator rankings -- at least as far as blogs in Ghana is concerned. Off-late, he moved to number one, but has been up-staged by Joy Fm journalist Ato Kwamena Dadzie, who joined afrogator only last week.

My biggest beef, though, is with some of the entries in the top 20.

Simply click on the images to get a bigger picture. When you do, you will get a better sense of what I'm about to write.

Let's start with Koranteng's Toli, which was last updated in March 2009. How on earth can it still be ranked number 6?

Secondly, EVABZ -- at number 7 -- had NO posts about Ghana! The last eight posts were on random issues--not on anything to do with Ghana. How on earth was it able to rank so high?

Third, MZREPORT.com seems to be written by a sexy, smart young woman who writes occasionally about Africa. Nothing specific about Ghana. How does her blog manage to rank #9 on afrigator blogs in Ghana? Unclear whether she's even Ghanaian.

Fourth, GHANAPUNDIT is a blog doing the easy cut-and-paste job on a very regular basis. To constitute good blogging, frankly, is a fallacy. Any amateur can do cut-and-paste every day. Where's the analysis of the posts you put up. The regularity clearly means that it's higher on the rankings--and as it's blogging about Ghana, well, you can do your maths about how it managed to get to #11. Though I am happy to see it has fallen a great deal from last week when it was ranked #2/3 for a couple of days!

Fifth, NDC Corruption is eponymous in the sense that the name speaks for itself: it's all about posts touching on alledged corruption by the NDC from both private and public Ghanaian press. It's also mostly a cut-and-paste job. To be ranked #19 is perhaps a vindication of my anger, considering how last two weeks, it was hovering around 2 and 3 for a few days!

I don't know what monitoring and evaluating afrigator is doing about blogs under countries, but it strikes me that it might need to do some significant revision of what "constitutes" Ghanaian blogs. Is it merely a cut-and-paste job from papers about Ghana, or entries about Ghana or on Ghanaian life?

Ghana is talking. Is afrigator listening?