It's hard to know when a link's too old to post, and the longer you think about it, the older it gets. So, I've devised a quick formula for calculating lit links' freshness:
(P ÷ 10) ÷ (DL + C),
where P is the number of pages you've read of the author (or genre) profiled, quoted, or excerpted in the linked-to page; D is the number of days since the link first appeared on a weblog that you read; L is the cumulative number of lines in posts about the link; and C is the number of comments left on those posts. If the resulting number is equal to or greater than 1, the link is fresh enough to post. If the resulting number is < 1, posting the link will broadcast that your blog is the web equivalent of a) a 20-something who recaps episodes of Friends to his family over his cellphone, b) a LES-er who just took up smoking, or c) a mother in a high school carpool who sings along to hip-hop and wears chunky-soled sandals with capris.
An example: I noticed earlier this week that TMFTML had linked to an essay by James Hynes, the author of Publish or Perish. I've read (and liked) P or P, so P is 335. D is 3, L is 7, and C is 4. Plugging the numbers into the formula, I get 1.34. And I'm good to go!
Posted by nchicha at April 25, 2004 02:23 PM