Breaking unwritten rules

I don't read other people's blogs on a daily basis, mostly due to a lack of time. I tend to surf the internet for MMORPG related news, and of course that often ends up in me finding something on some blog, but I don't have a fixed list of blogs to check regularly. Consequently I don't have a link list on this site. Apparently that is a "rather serious character failing". I'm breaking an unwritten rule of reciprocity in the blogosphere.

The argument for adding a link list would be that it is a matter of courtesy towards people who link to me, thus sending readers my way. Even without advertising revenue, readers are something every blogger aspires to. Having your blog widely read and linked to is a matter of pride. Bloggers linking to each other is like sportsmen slapping each others shoulders, confirming each others value. Opting out of this is considered impolite, even if it is just an unwritten rule to a game which doesn't really have written ones.

The main argument against running a link list on my blog is about desktop real estate. You might have noticed that I'm a friend of minimal design. I have a sidebar for necessary access to the archives, and a list of the posts on the main page, but that sidebar usually only takes up part of the space of the first article on the main page. Scroll down and you'll see the other articles taking up all of the screen space, from left to right, with no sidebar. Adding a link list would make the sidebar take more space, leaving less space for the texts. But maybe it is only me who prefers the content to take up all of the space, and other people find a smaller column size for the text more readable?

There are some minor other arguments against a link list. I would have to check the list regularly to see if all the blogs I linked to are still active, which in the transient world of the blogosphere is far from given. And then once I start a link list, I would probably not link every single blog that links to me on it, but only those that I could honestly recommend for reading. So I would still have people complaining that I don't link to them, and it might actually be more insulting to leave somebody out on a link list than not have a link list at all.

So I don't know if I should add a link list to this blog or not, and would welcome your comments on the subject.