when i asked Mark McKibben if i could blog our recent email exchange on why the hell i stay with Blogger when it treats me like shit, he said something like: okay. So here it is.
Mark asks:
Just curious, given how much trouble you seem to be having with Blogger, why do you stick with it? Wouldn't it be easier to get a webhost and setup something like WordPress or MoveableType?
To try and be a bit more on topic, for my blog I use WordPress and a cominbation of the Bad Behavior (http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/) & Akismet
(http://akismet.com/) plugins to fight comment spam. While I doubt I get your kind of traffic, I only have about 10 comment spams hit my moderation queue a week.
Additionally, I originally read this post of yours in my RSS reader but came to your site to comment on the post. Using a feed reader doesn't preclude people from visiting your site to make comments and I don't agree it kills the sense of community. Instead, it lets people take part in more communities.
Additionally since they went to the effort of coming to your site to respond to your posts, the users you do leave comments are that much more engaged and passionate about the community they are taking part in.
I attempted to answer, to which Mark responds to my answers with some very good points....
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McKibben
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:24 AM
To: Jeneane Sessum
Subject: Re: Comments about your recent posts
On Friday 24 March 2006 16:44, you wrote:
> The answers aren't necessarily smart:
> 1) I still hope someone at google hears me.
Well, their motto is to do no evil; so maybe they will listen to you....someday but I wouldn't hold my breath.
> 2) I support Blogger's/Blogspot's position as the lowest-barrier-to-entry
> blogging platform. It has always been free, and always been easy enough to
> use to get anyone blogging. We are not some low-rent district. Lots of us
> are people who came here very early on.
I can't say that I ever thought of Blogger as a low-rent district. Though I've seen a few blogs on their service that won't be returning to any time soon. *shudder*
> 3) Of my class of 2001/2, Denise, Halley, and several others remain where
> we started out. There's something beautiful to me about hanging in, though
> I'm not sure what lately.
I see the convenience in your sticking with it, both for you and your readers. The beauty in it is a bit harder for my eyes to see. Then again after my first optometrist asked my mother "how this child finds his way to school?!?"
My eyesight has not improved over the years, so maybe my sight isn't something we should be relying on. :)
> 4) I've lived here for 5 years--I want people to be able to find me.
> None of those reasons are necessarily good ones. But look, Scoble can move
> and his readers will follow him. Jeneane moves, and she could lose some old
> friends in the transition.
You could transition to your own host/site slowly. Say start by getting the domain name you want to use and pointing it at your Blogger site. Then post the domain name and request your readers update their links. Then work on importing your archives into the new site
> Still, with the recent unreliability, my reasons sound stupider and
> stupider.
> Thanks--can I blog this by the way?
Don't be silly, of course you can blog this. It's hard to be part of the conversation if I don't take off my lurker's cloak every once in a while.
--
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
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