I gen­er­al­ly don’t like blog net­works. Too often they’re super­fi­cial, cheap­ly con­struct­ed com­mu­ni­ties used by the cre­ators to give them­selves a sense of belong­ing and pur­pose in the blo­gos­phere. Some of the most promi­nent exam­ples of this are on Livejournal, where any­one will cre­ate a clique if they’re an emo kid, a self-pro­claimed “hot mom”, or even hap­pen to hate Rachael Ray.

There was only one com­mu­ni­ty that caught my eye in the four years I’ve been blog­ging. Several pro­lif­ic sites I fre­quent, such as graphicPush, Snook, 456 Berea Street, and even Lorelle fea­ture a small leaf on their site. I had to learn more about this lit­tle uni­ver­sal logo that was on many of the sites that inspired me, and the net­work called 9rules.

I dis­cov­ered that they’re the only com­mu­ni­ty with a phi­los­o­phy and qual­i­ty with which I agreed. As on their web­site, “9rules is a com­mu­ni­ty of the best weblogs in the world on a vari­ety of top­ics. We start­ed 9rules to give pas­sion­ate writ­ers more expo­sure and to help read­ers find great blogs on their favorite sub­jects. It’s dif­fi­cult to find sites worth return­ing to, so 9rules brings togeth­er the very best of the inde­pen­dent web all under one roof.”

Their phi­los­o­phy is based on a set of nine rules to live by:

1. Love what you do.
2. Never stop learn­ing.
3. Form works with func­tion.
4. Simple is beau­ti­ful.
5. Work hard, play hard.
6. You get what you pay for.
7. When you talk, we lis­ten.
8. Must con­stant­ly improve.
9. Respect your inspi­ra­tion.

Although I can say that I agree and fol­low every sin­gle one of them, num­ber eight par­tic­u­lar­ly res­onat­ed with me. It’s one of my rea­sons for liv­ing, and par­tial­ly why I start­ed blog­ging in the first place.

Becoming a mem­ber, how­ev­er, isn’t a sim­ple task. Every few months, they open a 24 hour win­dow for peo­ple to sub­mit their blogs. 9rules does­n’t have a spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria for what to accept. Sites are judged on con­sis­ten­cy and qual­i­ty of mate­r­i­al, as well the pas­sion for the sub­jects being blogged.

The com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers go through every site togeth­er, often sev­er­al times, before decid­ing whether to let some­one join. They also main­tain an exclu­siv­i­ty clause; mem­bers aren’t allowed to be part of any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty. There was even a purge once, to clean the net­work of any sites whose qual­i­ty had dropped.

In the past, the accep­tance rates have been between 8–16%. The most recent round (the fifth) was last October, with 1190 blogs being sub­mit­ted. At the end of this round, the num­ber of accept­ed mem­bers stands at a ten­ta­tive 134.

Two weeks ago, I found out that I’m one of them.