And Pop they were gone
In a comment on another post, Art asked a Question that has worried me from time to time in other areas of the Web.
"Should we also have something in place should a member suddenly stop blogging?" The flip Question is "If I walked under a bus tomorrow how would I make those I know online aware of my demise."
We all know what happens, we wake up one morning and surf across to one of our favourite pages to find that they're gone, alternatively someone just doesn't post again.
I'm not talking about the ones that put Farewell posts up, especially among Sex Bloggers there's a high rate of blog shutdown, I've figures of between 6 and 8 months is the average length for new blogs to last.
In blogging systems other than blogger, Private posts can be made which close friends can see regarding contact details, but on Blogger this doesn't seem possible.
What do you think.
"Should we also have something in place should a member suddenly stop blogging?" The flip Question is "If I walked under a bus tomorrow how would I make those I know online aware of my demise."
We all know what happens, we wake up one morning and surf across to one of our favourite pages to find that they're gone, alternatively someone just doesn't post again.
I'm not talking about the ones that put Farewell posts up, especially among Sex Bloggers there's a high rate of blog shutdown, I've figures of between 6 and 8 months is the average length for new blogs to last.
In blogging systems other than blogger, Private posts can be made which close friends can see regarding contact details, but on Blogger this doesn't seem possible.
What do you think.
posted by Anonymous at 6:54 pm
7 Comments:
Bloggers "disappear" for all sorts of reasons. Their online persona is but a tiny piece of them and there is so much we don't know about one another that the sudden withdrawl of a sex blogger has ceased to surprise me.
I agree it would be nice if they left a "So long and thanks for all the fish" type post, but each to their own. It's just a shame that we occasionally lose a real gem like Annissa (lifeashis.com). Not to say that all bloggers' work isn't valuable, but she was an institution, an inspiration and a damn fine human being.
Her work was written by someone who lived the D/s life and she opened up a world that to many, me included, would have otherwise remained largely unexplored and misunderstood. She wrote about her submission, her switch side and her everyday life with intellect and the true emotion that can only be expressed by someone genuinely in a D/s relationship.
I'm not really sure there is a good answer for this. I agree the above that people dissapear for all tyes of reasons..from trying thier hand and getting bored......getting outed....or fear of getting outed.
I do think it fair that as a community, we contributers come up with some kind of means to check up on eachother if they mysteriously vanish or have a pow wow, but is even that really neccesary?
I dunno, my take this endeavour is a free and honest resource, we are not promoting blogs, we are not selling traffic.
I've seen so many people come and go, in the online world, for thier various reasons....I really don't have an answer.
I think perhaps my question was a tad bit missunderstood, as it pertained mainly to questions of membership. I too have lost many dear friends in the past year and it does happen often that, for whatever personal reasons, fellow bloggers disappear. I'm on record defending their right to do so, so that isn't the question. Sometimes however it takes time before we know about it, and sometimes their blog might be down and they are still lurking, and even sometimes they decide to go on hiatus and then return at a later time. My question was more about those situations I guess, what do we do, just remove someone after a certain period of time, wait for them to contact the Admin, or just don't worry about it?
To Mr. G's point though, the idea of suddenly being gone or unable to post has often haunted me. I think that is one area of blogging that seems kinda weird, the idea that something happens in RL and you would be unable to ever let anyone know about it and what happened to you. Strange.
It's a hard one Mr G.
Probably a period of time can be allowed to pass, an adequate one (4 to 6 weeks?) in the case of a blogger stopping, without taking down their blog/site, and that blogger be emailed to see how they are, whether all's well.
For blogs that completely shut up shop though, that gesture can be straightforward enough I suppose.
If something has occured that's taken the blogger away from the PC/blog (personal, etc), they'd probably end up making contact.
there is no answer...
everyone should have one friend offline who knows they have a blog so someone can post at least a comment.
but that's easy on the not-sex blog... waht about on the sex blog?
for me i think there's one person who would tell my sex blog but i never formalised it.... i think i will.
Perhaps we should include this in our wills: "Here are my SINs and Passwords, please let my fans know what happened"
Something to think about. Many in the sex blog community are anonymous to real life. They may disappear simply because they are becoming too close to being found.
I know of one who disappeared that I heard of much later. The pressure she felt was too much in some ways in the online world.
We all blog for our own reasons, and disappear for those reasons as well. But if there was a RL physical reason that prevented blogging- there are enough people that care that it would be nice to know. It may not always be possible though.
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