A domain difference: Really nothing new here. Seth’s comment is relevant, but not specifically within the sphere of this discussion.

In my experience, overt predation has a limited lifespan. It works — but only for a time.

As for the blockbuster/long-tail: yes, I know. My comment there is that blockbusting is only one measure of success, and a marvelously narrow-minded one at that. There is such a thing as “enough” attention — enough to get your opinion known and respected, enough to call attention to otherwise-buried fact, enough to get your name heard in some useful quarters. Call it magic pixie-dust thinking if you will, but this variety of “success” is available to many. I have it, and I’m not an A-lister by any definition you name, not even among library weblogs.

And, in fact, real-world influence within the library field isn’t neatly exponential, partly because the library field is actually several somewhat overlapping fields, partly because most of us who have moderate degrees of influence are more prominent in some media and spheres than in others. There may be an A-list for libloggers; that is not identical to the A-list for keynoters (if there is one) or the A-list for candidates within the organization or the A-list for book writers or… In all cases, there’s overlap, but some pretty wild differences. And in most cases, there really is room to move.

I don’t think anyone here’s attempting to generalize to either the web as a whole or to society as a whole. The worst trainwrecks among librarians are actually pretty civilized compared to flamewars and character assassination elsewhere–and I’d like to help keep it that way.

I think there may be confusion between various strategies of success, and moral platitudes. Sometimes, 10% of a big pie is indeed better than 100% of a small pie. But, strictly as an observations, sometimes predators *succeed*. The problem with being a predator is the need to find a constant stream of prey, while a herbivore can just graze along.

By the way, regarding Dorothea’s “If attention and honor are perceived to be finite, they must be both courted and hoarded, and woe betide anyone else who attracts them. I firmly believe this phenomenon lies beneath the entire RSS/Atom saga, …”, I know people say things like that, but there are real design and money issues in the RSS/Atom saga, where tradeoffs have to be made, and one person or a few people were going to get the lion’s share of the reward. It’s too dismissive to think it’s all about ego, that’s certainly a factor, but there’s architecture and economics deeply involved.

“my lived experience and my observations of others indicate that living as though success were infinite, behaving with generosity and consideration, leads to more security and long-term prominence than the reverse.”

Maybe. But it surely is a matter of probability rather than absolutes. Moreover, there’s kind of a question-begging logical problem in such a declaration, since there’s also plenty of people who might write “my lived experience and my observations of others indicate that everyone is out for himself or herself and if you don’t realize that you’re a sucker”. So who is correct is not obvious.