So this “Best Blogs about Biblical Studies” or “Top Ten Biblioblogs” thing seems to be all the rage. Go check out the lists if you want to.

I was intrigued by this comment from Jim West:

Airton has grown weary of the silly people who can’t seem to master the notion that a top 10 list should contain 10 items! Come on people, when did the number 10 become the number 39? So, in response to the many depraved souls who cannot understand the concept of a list of 10 items, Airton has put together a list of the TOP TEN biblioblogs. If you can’t count to 10- please, please do not torment Airton with your visit to his poll. He’s a good guy and I fear that he may be overcome with rage if people keep thinking 10 is 39 or 50 or something else.

An Amazon UnSpun list is not something you can limit to 10 entries, or 50, or any arbitrary number. My list of my 10 favorite “biblioblogs” will probably not be identical to anyone else’s list of their 10 favorite “biblioblogs,” and even if there is considerable overlap, it will certainly be the case that there will be considerable variety once you take into account everyone who has or could quickly compile a list of favorite “biblioblogs.” If anybody wants to limit a list to the “Top Ten,” then s/he shouldn’t be using Amazon UnSpun to manage that list. UnSpun doesn’t work that way. If you and I both go do UnSpun and rank our 10 favorite flavors of ice cream, and each of us shares 5 favorite flavors with the other lister and has 5 that don’t match, then UnSpun will combine our lists and give us a list of 15 flavors that others can come to vote up and down. If Airton or anybody starts a “Top Ten” list and puts out 10 entries, and the list remains limited to those 10 entries, this would completely undermine the whole point of UnSpun, which is to apply “Wikiality,” or the “wisdom of the masses,” to lists. The way UnSpun is built, you can’t limit the number of entries to n. Doing so defeats the whole purpose, and in fact appears not even to be a function built into the UnSpun engine. But now, apparently because of a desire to control or at least funnel the “collective wisdom” in a way contrary both to the design of the software application and to the philosophy of “collective wisdom” that underlies the software’s existence in the first place, we now have two “best biblioblogs” list.

Here’s a novel idea: let’s forget the horse race and post some content.