Yes, it is incredible I would have thought it’s quite obvious we are volunteers. Apparently not.

And no, I am not going to name names or post links. I am going to assume they were speaking from ignorance. Hopefully they are reading this and now they know better.

The only reason I even decided to respond (after much thought) was – I worried that even if you were in jest, your comment (and others’) was perpetuating that myth. Anyway given the amount of bile that DP contributors seem to get, I could also not be sure which comments were half-serious

Let’s move on. I really like the fact that you take the time to comment on DP links and start a discussion. Can I also request you to send us more hat tips? Maybe we should start an “each one send one” campaign

But I find it incredible that there are people out there who think that DP contributers are not volunteers. Any links to these exalted souls?

It’s not aimed specifically at you, I have found this attitude elsewhere in the blogosphere, as I trawl through blogs. You may have meant it in jest, but there are many others who mean it seriously.

I am not “reminding” people, I am setting the record straight, since I think most people do not realize that we are volunteers. At least, that is the most charitable way to interpret their remarks.

I scrolled up to see if someone had taken the bit about ranking contributers too seriously. At a glance, it looks like I was the only one with the troubling suggestion (before your comment about it).

Since I am not one to take a joke back, especially after Patrix had replied with a good comeback to it, my comment stays – in bad taste or otherwise.

I would add that if you “don’t really expect praise or kind words in return” then may be you shouldn’t be reminding readers that you are a volunteer spending your free time and effort for their reading pleasure.

Thanks for understanding and appreciating my viewpoint.

I never talked about “competition”, I’m not sure how you got that impression. I certainly don’t feel there is any competition among contributors. I am not even sure what we would be competing for anyway – fan mail?

As far as I am concerned, the benefit (to me) of getting details on popular links is to get a sense of – (i) Are there any categories (like food/ travel) that are especially popular?

(ii) Which blog posts were especially popular? What made those posts stand apart?

Another way we could achieve this is if you guys left more comments on the links – let us know what you thought of each link. We’d love the discussion.

And of course, please send more hat tips! We love to read new blogs, but we can’t discover all of them by ourselves

And I don’t think such a list has any effect on the contributors or at least I hope so. The reasons people click on a particular link can be varied and quality is just one of them.

Remember desipundit used to have a list of popular posts at the footer of the main page which never change for a week or two? That is also like a “ranking system”, according to me. Was that section removed because of the same reason that Lekhni mentioned above?

Although I still feel it is a great idea [just saw the first of your "Popular weekly Links" post], if the quality of contributions is going to be affected because of “competition” as Lekhni mentioned, then may be it might not be such a good idea after all

Let me be very clear – DesiPundit contributors are not paid employees. We are volunteers who are spending our free time and effort to trawl the net to find blogs for your reading pleasure.

So comments, in jest or not, about performance evaluation or ranking are not in good taste. We don’t really expect praise or kind words in return, but as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

From a contributor’s perspective, I must admit I am curious to see which categories of blog posts are popular with readers

I go with ‘Best of Desipundit’ hyperlink on the top right hand corner of the page (better visibility) than a seperate post.

Regulars will find it redundant.

For contributors it would be good to know where they stood.