On Top Dog, Leader of the Pack: Baha’i bloggers as sled dogs pulling for the Cause
By george wesley dannells on Oct 4, 2008 in All categories
I have another metaphor for Baha’i bloggers. They are like sled dogs, collectively pulling the sled that is the Baha’i Cause towards great victories. -gw
I have been searching. My investigation has been hardly systematic. The evidence of my search is spread out over several recent posts. But I am on the hunt for the highest ranked Baha’i blog currently.
How about Amzuri.wordpress.com’s Alexa ranking of 498,609? That’s impressive! Don’t these numbers make Our Evolution: News & Spirituality the leader of the pack? I do believe Alexander is setting the pace for Baha’i bloggers with his combination of reach, traffic rank, and page views. He is pressing into his harness. We all would do well to follow his fine example. -gw
Reach for Amzuri.wordpress.com: 
Percent of global Internet users who visit this site
| Yesterday | 1 wk. Avg. | 3 mos. Avg. | 3 mos. Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A* | 0.00015% | 0.0300017% |  105% |
Traffic Rank for Amzuri.wordpress.com:
Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)
| Yesterday | 1 wk. Avg. | 3 mos. Avg. | 3 mos. Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A* | 678,712 | 498,609 | 767,218 |
Page Views per user for Amzuri.wordpress.com:
The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site
| Yesterday | 1 wk. Avg. | 3 mos. Avg. | 3 mos. Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A* | 2 | 3.9 | 259% |
* Daily values are not available for sites ranked outside of the Top 100K.
Sites Linking in to Our Evolution: News & Spirituality
Photo: Uploaded on July 9, 2008 by drurydrama on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
On Oct 5, 2008, Alexander M Zoltai said:
Stunned…
Tears flow…
Get a good, hard grip on that ego, Alex…
More tears…
Finally got a grip and decided I needed to know a bit more about this person giving me praise.
GoogleGoogleGoogle…
Fell into the land of Marginality, downloaded Dr. Momen’s paper, swirled a bit more in the tepid muck of Marginal “reasoning”, visited a Ranter, checked a bunch of personal premises and dove into my heart of hearts to say a prayer for those who would act like adolescents in grown-ups’ clothing while they put down the restraints society has in place to save their sweating necks…
Then, dove into Ocean to find a quote to append here about humility vs pride (somehow relatable to blogging and the Faith).
Just before the quote, I want to praise You, George, for having faced interactions that my blog has yet to engender. Like ‘Abdul-Baha saying He wished He could see the day the ministers in their pulpits would be attacking the Faith, I hope I soon see some folks attacking my blog!
Here’s to you George! This quote is for you and me and all loyal Baha’i bloggers:
“With hearts overflowing with the love of God, with souls gladdened by the heavenly glad-tidings, and with extreme humility and lowliness, let them speak out with eloquent speech, and praise and glorify the Great Lord, for they are the manifestations of His bounty and adorned with the crown of splendour.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 396
~ Alex from Our Evolution
On Oct 5, 2008, george wesley dannells said:
Thanks, Alex, for the quote from Abdu’l-Baha.
As for the “interactions” you mention, much of the negativity I encountered on my blog so many months ago was of my own doing. I was unnecessarily adversarial in some of my responses which was ultimately counter to the spirit of the Faith. Some people thrive on “negative attention,” and I unnecessarily fed their negativity, as was pointed out to me by some of the Baha’i friends. I turned then, as Baha’is do, to the institutions for guidance, and learned I was indeed out-of-bounds with some of my postings. I subsequently deleted the offending ones from my blog and forged ahead, lesson learned. So not all opposition encountered is a good sign.
As for the Momen paper, which I found to be an incredibly helpful formulation,I have come to understand that it is in no way a polemical work in need of “support.” It is an academic work, the response to which requires a special kind of discourse and by academics, which I am not. Among the posts I deleted were some that implied that this person or that fit categories described by Momen in his work, again not an appropriate use of his paper and contrary to the spirit of the Faith.
One final note, this about the opening metaphor of this post. There are a lot of other dogs pulling the sled of the Cause besides blogger dogs. The vast majority of the work of the Cause is being done by Baha’is who don’t blog.
On Oct 6, 2008, Alexander M Zoltai said:
Just back from Unit Convention and realize that some of the other “dogs” are youth: the American Baha’i had a story about a group of youth that biked 600 miles and taught. Lucky to be at the Convention where they were.
Their presentation was awesome!
~ Alex from Our Evolution