When I first got into reading blogs, and the number of blogs to which I subscribed started to become unmanageable, I organized them by topic. This seems to be a pretty common method, as I see it whenever someone publishes their OPML file.
The problem with topic-based organization is that no one ever stays on topic, as proved by this very same posting to a blog entitled "Reflections on Programming."
Even if every blog did stay on topic, you are faced with a ever growing list of blogs where only some of them are truly important. By nature, you will be more interested in some topics than others. You wind up with 50 subscriptions under "Programming" and just one subscription under "Snow Boarding". You never miss a posting about "Snow Boarding", but you frequently skip Raymond Chen's latest posting, because it gets lost in the noise.
The solution is to organize your blogs, based on their relevance to you. I have three categories: "Must Read", "Should Read", and "Whenever". I meticulously read the stuff in the first category, while I only skim the stuff in the last category. As the blogs evolve, I move them up and down in the list. Sometimes, they fall off the bottom when I am no longer interested them.
Here are my subscriptions on bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/public/JohnDunne
Note to bloggers: These are organized based on their relevance to me, and should not be construed as a judgment about the overall quality of your blog.
Note to RSS Reader authors: My ideal feed reader would allow me to view my blogs by both category and relevance.
