There is a new anthropological group-weblog. The ↑savage minds behind the accordingly named endeavor are ↑Alex Golub, ↑Antti Leppänen, ↑Chris Kelty, ↑Kerim Friedman, ↑Nancy Leclerc, and ↑Dustin M. Wax. ↑anthropologi.info kindly ↑commented: “Great! A new anthropology group blog! Something like an American version of the German ↑Ethno::log.” This comment is kind in respect to the ethno::log, as with the latter we never had the impact savage minds already has after just some days—and I dare say we never had this kind of quality. Not that the entries at ethno::log lack quality, but they possess a different kind of it. Savage minds is a group weblog for anthropology, like ↑many2many is for social software, or like ↑media@LSE. My experience is that entries at group weblogs normally are of considerable length and more in depth. The ethno::log never was a group weblog, but something of a wiki-weblog, meaning that everybody who registers can post entries. In consequence the group of authors is not defined, but as open as it can be. With a policy like that there is the danger of drowning in spam—but that never happened. What happened was that the ethno::log quickly found a wide readership, but from the start on carried the illness of far too less people who actually fill it with content. What the founding fathers (↑KerLeone and me) originally had in mind was a global platform for anthropology: news, conferences, call-for-papers, job-opportunities, publications, discussions, and whatyouhave. But that never happened—maybe my view is a bit too bearish and resigned. The two of us, backed-up by activists like ↑fab and ↑2R, made several attempts to refurbish the ethno::log—but till today it refuses to bloom as we had envisioned. What struck us most was the fact that the vast majority of our institute’s anthropology-students (and we have 1200+ !) never made good use of the ethno::log—despite of random reading. I assumed that the cause was the bondage of having to write in English (as you easily can deduce from my own faulty writing, I am all but a native-speaker, too). So we dropped the language-barrier and allowed every language. Which inconsistently may have cost us quite a bit of our international readership. Anyways, I am terribly proud that both the ethno::log and my xirdalium reside on savage minds’ blogroll.