Mason started Hyperlinks and digital socialising? by lamenting how non-interactive blogging can be. He quickly got to work:

I managed to get inspiration to attempt to solve this problem after reading Imperfects one daily hyperlink. Most people reading this probably already know imperfect - most of their blog posts are 'inspired by' someone elses, as in they expand on the idea and link back to the original.

This also reminds me of Ava's human room, where she collates hyperlinks of her own accord to others blogs that she finds cool. I think Ava reads some of my posts? If you are here then hi Ava.

I haven't seen much like Ava's human room before. But maybe its a normal thing outside of the small circle I interact with online.

Looking around Ava's human room reveals that it's a blogroll. For those unfamiliar with that term, Robb's Slash Pages guide explains a /blogroll page as:

a list of other sites that you read, are a follower of, or recommend

However, he wasn't the first to playfully rename blogrolls. Check out Steve's Feeds initiative. Unfortunately, his name choice conflicts with not only feeds themselves, but /feeds pages:

a page listing your RSS/Atom/JSON feeds and other way to subscribe to your posts

Steve's "Links" header in his feeds page makes me wonder if him resurfacing /links pages would have been a better play. His list better fits Robb's description after all:

a list of links to sites you want link to, share, or bookmark for future reference

Blogrolls are neat but they don't always work, as seen in this Hacker News discussion I shared in many external hyperlinks:

simonw: If you blog I think it's really important to develop a habit of linking to other people's blogs. That's how blog discovery used to work back in the 200xs and it can still work effectively today.

HeinzStuckelt: If you mean creating a blogroll to show other blogs you recommend, that is no longer so effective now that mobile phones are most of the world’s default interface to the internet. Themes for common blogging platforms like Wordpress generally hide the sidebar, blogrolls included, on mobile.

simonw: No not a blog roll - more a link blog or a habit of linking back to pieces you found relevant or interesting.

cosmicgadget: Agreed on this. Blogrolls are okay for people wandering the blogosphere but you only get so much from "check out this peer of mine". Topical links (here is another informative post about x) are much nicer for a reader who is already reading about x. And link blogs are great because they endorse specific content from someone.

While dedicated blogroll pages solve sidebars hidden on mobile, trying to find them can make you think. Once you find them, their blog descriptions can be so abstract that you only get a small glimpse of their thoughts. Blogrolls open for submissions like Manu's Ye Olde Blogroll ask for "A short description" for good reason.

On the other hand, posts can reach levels of context and specificity that blogrolls can only dream of. Think about the depth that hyperlinks to others' content have added to my post so far. How would the average blogroll with abstracted or missing context fare?

Look, sharing links to fellow Internet creatives' online spaces in one place can enrich both you and your audience's surfing experience. Compound that by liberally linking to them, their pieces, and your follow-ups in your content as a whole. Reprising Ava's name choice, her other posts and pages can resemble "human rooms" just as much as her blogroll can. So can your own.

Following Ava's footsteps, Mason ended up creating his own human room. Here's my entry:

Imperfect: Remixes a lot of posts and I like the way they expand on other ideas. Also they linked to one of my posts once which made me very happy to see an actual person had read something I've written.

Don't underestimate the comfort that acknowledgment and connection can bring. Mason cherishing how I engaged with his work reminds me of Andy co-signing my blog way back in what is a blog. Andy's singular act of kindness inspired my directive to fuel our fire. That now joins Mason's appreciation in inspiring this very post that you're reading.

How can links of your own inspire people to share, remix, and create more than they otherwise would?

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