Housekeeping stuff

The various links to the right of this space probably matter more to me than to you, but I've made some changes this week and thought I'd explain them.

* I dropped some dormant Free Press blogs -- including, I'm sorry to say, the pet blog I was involved in. Pets on Parade never drew the participation I imagined when I came up with the idea and pitched it to a couple of my co-workers.

* I shuffled the AL Central blogs considerably. My notion last winter was to get at least one, preferably two, non-newspaper blogs devoted to the Twins divisional rivals. Two of the blogs I started with, Mack Avenue Tigers and Sox Machine, have now been co-opted by SB Nation. (Sox Machine is fading itself out, and I expect I will eventually drop it from the roll.) I gave up trying to read The DiaTribe last summer; I'm sure there was good content in there, but it was smothered in the verbiage.

So ... I've added all the SB Nation blogs for the AL Central (including Twinkie Town, listed with the Twins blogs). We'll see how well that fits my core purpose, which is to have an easy way to keep tabs on the other division teams. I'm keeping Rany on the Royals, and added Smells Like Mascot (a cartoon blog on Chicago sports, heavy on the White Sox) and Roar of the Tigers. That's two blogs for each team except the Indians.

* The Twins blogs ... I've wrestled with this some, and will continue to. The basic rule: If I list it, it's a site I check regularly and am comfortable recommending. If anything, I ought to purge a couple from the roll. On the other hand, I know from Google Analytics that I get a lot of my traffic from other blogs -- thank you, Aaron Gleeman, and Curve for a Strike, and K-bro -- and on that basis, I should be more generous with the links.

The upshot: The only change in the Twins section is adding the SB Nation site. I haven't spent much time there myself; it's there to be consistent with the AL Central section, and that may not be a good enough reason. If it goes away, it will be because it wasn't adding much to my experience. If the Pioneer Press and Kelly's Corner links go away, it will be because they don't get updated regularly.

For me, this blog is not only my platform but the center of my Web ... I start here and move out through the links. It probably doesn't serve that function for you, and it probably shouldn't, but I'm still interested in how it fits in your experience.