Sounds like Seth Godin got that one seriously wrong! In any event, that is not in the slightest what I had in mind.

As I said – I wouldn’t envisage any pressure to be accredited. The benefits of being accredited would have to be sufficient to attract people and I definitely would not see a situation of people voting sites up or down rating scales.

You’d either be accredited or not and it would be against clearly understood criteria.

If someone wanted to participate they could, if not they wouldn’t.

As with the Trust Earned Travel accreditation on my travel site, I like being able to demonstrate that I follow certain professional standards, because it’s one more way of building trust.

Martin.

On its own a good idea, until Seth tried to get everyone promoting the Z-list through a new feature on his Squidoo lenses – which resulted in a terrible “row” between followers, demoting blogs they didn’t know or to improve the ratings of their own blog or favourite blogger.
http://www.squidoo.com/zlist

Havoc ruled! In the end a “regulator” had to be appointed and the whole thing died a silent death, fortunately.

Went and found my original post on the subject:
http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk/2006/12/zlist_great_ano.html

What I mean is: the blogoshpere is full with little jewels, great diamonds all next to each other – just waiting to be found, discovered and enjoyed. Let everyone write the way he/she wants to write – bad spelling or in a poor way. Who are we to judge?
And who are we to have the need to belong an accredited A-list favourites. Not me, I’m happy as I am, writing double Dutch English as I go – but with a passion.

Karin H
Karin H´s last blog ..Pipeline marketing – going beyond AWeber part 4 – inside insight

I hear what you say, but no one would be forced to become accredited.

If someone decided they didn’t want to be reviewed or to adhere to whatever standards were set, then they would just continue as they are.

Plus, if the accreditors started dictating what should and should not be written about or discussed, the system would very quickly fail – people would remove the accreditation badges and go their own sweet way.

Certainly it could never become any form of censorship function – it would die as soon as anyone tried that.

Becoming accredited would be purely voluntary and, therefore, it would have to be beneficial. If it wasn’t beneficial no one would do it and the entire system would fail.

Martin.

My readers will accredit me, that’s more than enough for me. Creativity, no matter how lousy spelled or grammatical in order or out of order, should not be policed.

Karin H
Karin H´s last blog ..Pipeline marketing – going beyond AWeber part 4 – inside insight

Well I guess there would need to be some commitment by a group of professional bloggers to get together, agree on the standards and set up the accreditation process.

They would then need to let people know about it, and find ways to promote the value of being accredited so that people became keen to get the badge.

It would, at least initially, need to be a group of A-list bloggers that people knew and respected, and it would need to be set up and run professionally so that people quickly became confident in the process.

Those are some initial thoughts, at any rate.

Cheers,

Martin.

One simple question for you: who will accredit the accrediters?

Karin H (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)