On the subjects of reciprocation, blogrolls, link love, and English lavatorial slang

Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Flush toilet.
Image via Wikipedia

Yes, you have to love or hate the title of this blog entry, really. Reciprocation, though, is one of those words I’m almost in love with. It just sounds great when you say it out loud. It means, of course, to respond to a gesture or action by making a corresponding one. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours (although that makes us all sound like monkeys in a flea-pit vying with each other for who can get the most relief from being bitten by making promises to other monkeys that monkeys just can’t keep).

Reciprocation is, of course, what the horribly-named ‘blogroll’ is all about. How the entire blogosphere came to use a term that clearly rhymes with and stems from ‘bogroll’–UK slang denoting a roll of toilet paper–is a mystery.

The bog, by the way, is not only a swamp but in Britain it is a term for lavatory as well.

I sought to be enlightened by Wikipedia, only to find a definition thereon,

A list of blogs, usually placed in the sidebar of a blog, that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs.

but nothing more. Alas, I already knew what a blogroll was. Not only that, but there are, in my less than humble view arguably too many references to ‘blog’, ‘blogger’ and ‘blogs’ in the above definition. But then, one can also argue that many of these blogrolls do indeed contain too many blogs. Some of them read like telephone directories, for goodness’ sake, numbering more websites in drop-down lists than the number of ‘friends’ that the most ardent friend-collector on Facebook can ever lay claim to.

What, you mean you don’t have 3,578 friends thereon? What are you doing wrong?

I just wanted, and still want, to know how the term ‘blogroll’ came into popular usage across the globe. Whatever the reason, I’ve never liked it. The mental association with poo and U-bends, cisterns and pee, has never left me. It is something I simply cannot break away from, despite never myself having ever referred to a toilet as a ‘bog’ nor even once calling a toilet roll a bogroll. I have no issue with others wishing to do so. The English language is big enough and grand enough and superb enough to allow for many different roads all leading to Rome, or rather more likely, London. Why have one word to describe a thing when you can have twenty-five? And no, before anyone thinks of mentioning it, the old adage about the eskimos having god knows how many words for snow simply isn’t true. It’s a myth based on a cultural misunderstanding.

Toilet paper
Image via Wikipedia

Where, you might reasonably ask, is all this talk of blogs and toilets and loo roll getting us today? Ah. I’m glad you asked. Alongside other changes I’ve detailed in a separate post today, I’ve renamed the links section (now to be found residing in the right sidebar) as ‘link love’–so much nicer, in my view, than calling it a blogroll. However, it occurred to me that I don’t know every instance where people link to my site from their own, and so I haven’t reciprocated. That word again, see? Or maybe I’ve deleted links to other sites because they stopped being updated, only for the bloggers in self-imposed exile to have a change of heart and start posting again. Or maybe you’re just not listed and you’d like to be, or think you should be. I could have accidentally deleted a link to your site. It happens. You might even have changed your web address—moved to a new domain, perhaps, a room with a view and that URL you always wanted?

The bottom line is, I’d like to update my list of links (a job long overdue) and spread a little link love. Join me in that aim. Let’s get reciprocal. Or if you prefer, you scratch my blog and I’ll scratch yours. Just leave me your blog details in the comments section below, having first checked whether you’re already listed here or not, and please—if I’m going to be linking to you, make sure you’re linking to me.

If I already link to you but you know of another site you think I’d like and would want to link to, please let me know the address. And thank you everyone!

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categories: everything else, technology