Comments on: Web pages are dead. Long live web pages. (If they’re made of people)

By: oso

oso — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:10:22 +0000

SanDiegoBlog.com was most definitely, for a short time, a labor of love for me as well. In fact, it was the first project that made me realize that blogging could be much more than personal public diaries. I remember at the time feeling that it was so difficult to find anyone interested in San Diego’s history or culture. The community of bloggers and commenters on SanDiegoBlog changed that. They made me realize how little I knew about the city myself and inspired me to research more.

Eventually I realized that I was curious about much more than just San Diego. But I have a feeling that one of these years I’ll get tired of all this roaming around and I’ll look for the right community with the right sense of community. And, of course, I’ll look for that community’s version of SanDiegoBlog.com. In the meantime, it’s pretty cool to see that Jenn and Sassy are still blogging. And Sassy is a dad. Crazy. Long live web pages.

By: Sassy

Sassy — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:56:31 +0000

Not only do I freely delete my own content whenever I feel like it, I often resist posting it in the first place. I just had my Yelp account removed including over 100 reviews because, well I was just over it and it was time to turn it off. I’m increasingly becoming more concerned about privacy, because there are just too many crackpots in the “heavy web user” demographic.

Not sure where this altruism about web content comes from. It’s your words and if anyone really cared, they’ll remember what you said. The ephemeral nature of the web is a big part of what makes it unique.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:46:06 +0000

Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong… but couldn’t you just have turned comments off? “Both comments and pings are currently closed.”

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:42:03 +0000

The biggest issue with deleting content from posts and not the posts themselves is that pages still exist, visitors find them via search, and then feel jilted when they click and now end up on a page that has nothing on it. Not a big deal for a few pages, but it is substantial when you’re talking nearly 100 pages.

I find it ironic that me not reaching out email by email to authors on San Diego Blog was disturbing to you, yet you did not find it worthwhile to reach out to me to express your concern with ads or the impending deletion of all the content you contributed. Do note that when I took over and redesigned the site I asked for feedback. My hope was to generate enough revenue to hire a part time blogger to maintain the site and be active in the community. Sadly $2-3/day doesn’t accomplish that. So, as you can see we’ve released a new design and ads in there, in there more rightful places, and I’m spending $250/mo to pay a few writers to add decent content.

Further, if you simply didn’t want comments… you could have just changed the author or deleted your email from your user account.

By: Joe Crawford

Joe Crawford — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:05:01 +0000

Jenn, I’ve thought more about what I said to you, and I do have some hipocrisy to own up to. I do think pages should live forever, but I did remove almost all the content related to my first wife. A wedding announcement and some odes to her that sometime during the period of our divorce finalizing I removed from the web. I’m not proud of it but it was psychologically important at the time.

For some reason I’m reminded of the film “A River Runs Through It”—the father, Tom Skerritt’s character, has one of his boys write a story or essay. the father reads it, then gives is back to him and says “Now throw it away.” Some creative output is not meant to live forever, no doubt. There’s no Sarbanes-Oxley for creativity or personal journaling.

By: Jenn, aka JeSais

Jenn, aka JeSais — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:57:54 +0000

When you emailed me the other day and said, “definitely hits
me like nails on chalkboard. Thinking of you deleting content you made feels so violent to me….” I felt just awful. I know sandiegoblog was your baby and I hadn’t thought out how my actions might make you feel, so I sincerely apologize. Please know it was not directed at you.

I do kinda regret what I did, not because I think web pages should live on forever, but because I believe in the community aspect of the internet. And while the sandiegoblog community is dead, in my opinion, I could have left the evidence of my participation in it.

On comments. I like comments because it mimics face to face interaction in a lot of ways. You know someone is out there and hears what you’re saying. And let’s be honest, we wouldn’t be blogging if we didn’t feel we had something to say.

thanks for making me think….

By: Joe Crawford

Joe Crawford — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:49:22 +0000

@Abigail We’d be happy to see you! And good luck with Southwest Airlines!

By: Abigail M. Schilling

Abigail M. Schilling — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:30:12 +0000

Joe, I really liked this, per the usual.

And on my list of things to do after Vegas: meet up with Leah and Joe in LA and bask in their awesomeness.

By: Joe Crawford

Joe Crawford — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:46:32 +0000

@Oh, The Joys, thanks so much for the clarification on my misremembrance of what you said. :-) The problem of sustaining the feeling of a community across blogs is definitely an interesting one. I wish you well in finding that balance.

By: Oh, The Joys

Oh, The Joys — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:51:25 +0000

It wasn’t so much that there was external drama. It was more that commenting became unsustainable. To reciprocate comments on every blog from which I was receiving comments as well as leave comments for other blogs that I also wanted to read started to mean reading and commenting on upwards of 200 blogs per day. I couldn’t figure out how to choose which ones to eliminate without worrying that I would hurt someone’s feelings. Loathe to do that, to single any one blog out, I went mostly quiet on the commenting front. My own comments have gone down dramatically as a consequence, but my site visits/ page views has not decreased. The blogosphere – particularly in the mommy blog genre – is a real community. It’s important to me that everyone feel welcome and included. I didn’t want to be a part of making anyone feel shut out. That said, my lack of commenting probably doesn’t make new people feel welcome. I need to figure out some sort of balance.