My blogroll got drastically pared down when I moved to this URL, for reasons that are stupid and trivial having to do with the design of this site. I want my "categories" near the top and can't figure out how to reconfigure this Word Press template to move the blogroll below the categories where they could grow willy nilly.*
On the old blog I tried to avoid a ghetto of "art only" blogs. I've noticed these springing up when newbie art bloggers launch. This is the Internet, it's a new medium, why limit yourself to a field that was defined (and I would argue failed) around the convention of people talking a specialized language about objects and events in certain types of physical spaces?
Presumably artists read and have interests other than the gallery world. A blogroll is a way to define those interests, and yourself.
But mainly it's so you have the sites you visit at your fingertips (it's kind of quaint already with the prevalence of RSS), which incidently serves as a declaration of what (or who) matters to you.
(edited--the original rant may be floating around on some RSS readers)
*Thanks to CA for emailing about this. I have tried to change the sidebar in the theme editor--the html tag "get links list" pulls up both "my pages" and "other pages"--it treats them as a unit when I move "other pages" to the bottom of the sidebar. I want "my pages" up at the top where it is now. My Digital Media Tree blog was much more configurable. I found early on the limitations of Word Press for the casual coder. A lot of changes I'd like to make, such as putting an image in my header, can't be made without screwing up some CSS designer's perfect little scheme. Any changes to the basic layout cause a ripple effect in the delicate pick up sticks pile of commands to put a tasteful underline here or a font such and such size there. So I decided to just use his template in the most generic, off the shelf way. The idea of picking another design from a menu of prepackaged themes to "express my personality" doesn't appeal. There are limits to my interest in presets.
Update, 2013: The above post was written during the long period where I was using the "Word Press Classic" theme. My current design is a bit more configurable but still not as fluid as my 2001-2007 blog's.