Most of us rely on what amounts to a gut feeling to judge whether one blogger is better than another. We’ll often discount bloggers based on not having their own domain, or consider a blogger to be better if he guest blogs on a big name site. But there aren’t a lot of metrics for ranking one blogger over another. Scribnia aims to change that.

Scribnia describes itself as a ‘rating and discovery engine for bloggers and columnists.’ By visiting the site, you’re supposed to be able to find better writers. It’s not particularly clear who needs to find better writers in this context — are readers looking for interesting and relevant bloggers who write something they want to read? Readers’ searches and comments seem to be the overall focus of the site. Readers can comment about individual bloggers and hopefully boost them up the ranking board. They can also provide ‘context ratings’ that show where a blogger’s focus is.

I think these sorts of comparisons can be useful: when a blogger or online writer is looking to pick up new work, having an objective score that ranks us against other writers is useful (especially if we rank well). But there is little incentive for readers to submit rankings. There’s even less if they have to leave your site to do so. I just don’t see this sort of ranking system catching on unless it reaches a level of critical mass quickly. Technorati is just about the only ranking tool out there that has really reached that level at this point.

Until something comparable catches on for bloggers looking for gigs, other metrics — like page views, social networking connections and blogging experience — is just going to have to do. While this information won’t point to one blogger being better than another, it does provide a somewhat objective view of a blogger’s abilities.