Category: Weblogging

I’m working on converting the last of the old Dynamic Earth articles I plan on salvaging: the four-part Tale of Two Monsters, covering the Loch Ness Monster, and the giant squid. A lot of work to port these– they are large articles.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

I’ve always been rather proud of ToTM and pleased with the connections I’ve made to such a wide variety of people because of them: from official Nessie watchers in Scotland; to the world’s premier cryptozoologist in Maine; to marine biologists and giant squid fans all over the world. Regular as a dental appointment, once a year there’s a Swedish nutcase who sends me an email calling me a bitch because of my criticism of one of his so-called expeditions. When next he checks in, and sees the ability to leave online comments, he’ll probably expire from the excitement.

That will earn me chocolates in some circles, I can tell you. Good chocolates, too.

See? Even in the days before ‘weblogging’ people would connect with each other online, based on mutual interests and the same hooks that pull people into weblogging commenting now. Weblogging didn’t invent community–all it did was pave already existing roads so that more people could participate, more easily. And the hooks I talk about have less to do with the skill of writing, or the beauty of the page or the sexiness of the technology, as much as they do with putting something into the writing that makes others want to respond. If I could determine exactly what it is, I’d make a plug-in of it, and win that Six Apart Plug-In contest.

Well, maybe I wouldn’t win the Six Apart Plug-In contest…

Still, writing does matter. Sometimes too much.

I was thinking last night, before I went to sleep and after watching my cat experience that very mild earthquake to the north, that there are times when you want people to reach out to you based on something other than the merit of your argument, the strength of your words, the rightousness of your cause. You want them to be a friend, and just say, “Howdy, you’re cool” even if you sound like an idiot online.

I mean, a complete and total idiot. The kind you see in the store every once in a while and think to yourself, “God, I’m glad I’m not married to him/her!”

People in the flesh can see when the time is good for intellectual discussion over coffee or beer, or when someone just needs a hug. Tears, screaming, swearing, and throwing pillows helps. Online it’s not so easy – you have to earn those hugs. You have to have the better argument; you have to be slammed the hardest and the most unfairly; your opponent should be more popular, or at least nastier; and on top of all this, you have to spell correctly. I mean, spell correctly for land’s sake.

In other words, you have to bleed online–but do so with great style.

But even assholes need a hug sometimes. And I bet even Glenn Reynolds needs an instapeck on the cheek from time to time.

And can you imagine a tearful scene like the following:

Man: You don’t love me, you never did. I’m just dirt, aren’t I? Efluveum on the bottom of your feet.

Woman: You spelled it wrong.

Man: What?

Woman: You spelled efluvium wrong. It’s E-F-L-U-V-I-U-M. You used an ‘e’.

Man: I’m crying my heart out here, and you’re checking my spelling?

Woman: People who want to be taken seriously take the time to check their spelling.

Man: You’re a bitch, you know that?

Woman: Troll!

Isn’t this just the most bizarre shit at times? If you could see the expression on my face right now, you’d know exactly what I mean. Think Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail.”

And no, it is not a chick flick.

Though my own participation has been based on pleas expressed both in anger and sadness, and the circumstances tended to distort the message, I did want to send a quiet thank you to some folk who wrote in response to the issues raised about gender and perceived bias in weblogging. Then I will drop the subject, because I’m not doing it justice.

Riba Rambles wrote on on the original gender-based comments, and Seth Finkelstein wrote about the “lamentations of the women”.

AKMA should appreciate the Biblical notation after he was handed a difficult task, which he fulfilled with great delicacy – finding balance in the recent fooflah. More than that, though, he gave me a great deal of reassurance that the world hadn’t suddenly changed overnight by acknowledging that the introduction of gender was an issue that did deserve some discussion. The silence this last week, justified or not, was perhaps the most difficult event I’ve experienced in weblogging. It has permanently altered my view of this environment. Whether this leads to growth or not, I’m trying to figure out.

However, not all were silent.

Ken Camp also spoke out, and he has a wonderous way with a rant – and I mean that in the most complimentary way:

I will be posting a new sort of stance soon. My take on the blogosphere. And you all can read it or not. You can link or not. You can care or not. You can exercise your digital common sense. You can compliment all the various emporers on their finery. You can stick your head in the sand. But you can’t stop the changes underway.

Oh yeah, things are changing.

And don’t say troll like it’s a bad thing. Yeah you.

I wrote in comments recently that there’s a difference between a flame, and writing from outrage and anger. I think we’ll be seeing more outraged writing from Ken.

It’s hard, though, to maintain outrage here–always some new toy or game, some new political folly or technical wonder or… oh look! Keep the drunk man from falling over!

Mischief to Data had a great title on a related post: Lock Your Doors! Shrieking Banshee Women Invade Weblog Communities! . That’s me: Shrieking Banshee Woman. Too bad I don’t have space for a tagline now, because that would be my new one.

Mischief quoted the comment that started much of this discussion, and I was surprised to read in the post’s comments a person saying:

Actually ghani, upon reading his statement again, I’m unwilling to make a judgement on whether it was justified or not, without seeing some representative samples from the male and female haters.

If the men said “Man, it sucks that you shut it down, do you know an alternative I can use?” and the women said… just use your imagination for that one.

Then he might have a point.

Contrary to popular myth, the condemnation was more evenly divided over the sexes then recent discussions imply. Just some of us made a more tempting target.

It’s like when you play Dodgeball, or Red Rover – you target those you deem the weaker to make your blow seem more significant. What you’ll often find, though, is what you perceive to be weakness is nothing more than quiet strength.

Tracy Kennedy, otherwise known as Netwoman, also responded with a call to be active on her own:

Women should continue to voice their opinions, but why should we do it on our own? Shelley’s right, where are the responses from men in regards to this? Bystanders to sexism. It’s unacceptable. Step up the plate folks! Take responsibility and accountability and SAY something!

Jonas Galvez apologized for not saying something sooner because English is a second language for him. I thought he did okay, myself. He and those who commented in his post.

Jeneane specifically mentioned the fact that no one did answer my questions about the breakdown, and the redirect problems. I also would have been glad to help, and I do know something about DNS.

Finally, my South African brother, Mike Golby, also came out with a response that is wonderfully Golby – graphic and all. But I loved his unrelatedpost on the Jazz Singer even more than his defense. If you haven’t read it, you need to.

If I missed anyone, it was unintentional–I use Technorati to find who is linking to me and sometimes I don’t check it as often as I should. Please let me know and I’ll add a link.

I didn’t thank folks this last week, and perhaps I didn’t need to because this issue is beyond me, the person. So let me thank you, instead, as a woman among many.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Another site design I’m working on is called Black & White, and I’d like to be able to hard-code this one for use when reading anything to do with either politics, or discussions of RSS and other weblogging hoorah that seems to have such ‘cut at the dotted line’ mentality.

However, I’ve only had 3 hours of sleep in the last 48, and I’m too tired to muck up what is now a lovely system of interchangeable stylesheets, so I’ll get a good night’s sleep before returning to the designs. And Black & White is becoming too fun to reserve it just for hoorah writing.

Speaking of hoorah and becoming mental,Dave Winer seems to have dipped his oar into too deep a waters too many times because he’s recently initiated actions that seem about guaranteed to lose him friends and, well, lose him friends.

He just pulled weblogs that were hosted at weblogs.com, without any warning I gather. I wondered what was going on when I visited a couple of weblogs.com sites and then saw this note at Halley’s. In addition, if you access one of the old sites, you get the following:

This site is for people with sites that used to be hosted at weblogs.com.

1. I can’t afford to host these sites. I don’t want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements.

2. There are several commercial Manila hosting companies, including weblogger.com. Thomas Creedon maintains a list of commercial and free hosting services. If you want to have your site hosted more cheaply, consider the possibility of forming a co-op of some kind.

3. If you want a copy of your weblogs.com-hosted website, post a comment here, include the URL of the site. Sometime after July 1, 2004, I will export all the requested sites, without their membership groups. You can then download them and do with them as you wish. I won’t export them before July 1, and this is a one-time offer.

Does anyone have a copy of the original weblogs.com statement? It would seem that the weblogs.com hosted folks weren’t aware that this was going to happen, and to have these weblogs pulled without some warning, and then this abrasive note placed in its place – that’s about the most graceless thing I have seen since I’ve dipped toes into these waters. And I’ve been out to some pretty nasty political weblogs.

If the folks at weblogs.com did have notice this was happening, and there has been clearly defined time limits to the hosting, no harm for Winer deciding to longer host. I recently disbanded the co-op I’d started because I also wasn’t sure of my future directions and didn’t want to leave people hanging if I had to make sudden changes. However, if you may have noticed, none of the co-op members have vanished without a trace-t-hey’ve been taken over by their cats, but haven’t vanished.

From what I’m reading in the comments associated with the weblogs.com sites, though people are appreciative of the free hosting (and this was a generous act, and they should be appreciative of past kindness), abruptly kicking everyone off without a word, and holding access to the sites until after July 1, well, it sucks.

And to salt them paper thin cuts to the skin, the first comment in the weblogs.com post is from Winer and reads:

Groundrules: Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining. Just post the url of your site.

Hmm.

There you go boys and girls: the number one reason why you don’t want to go with a hosted solution, and if you do, backup. Frequently. No matter how nice or cuddly or professional the host – back your material up at least weekly. Never give anyone control over what happens to your writing. Never.

(In fact, if I remember correctly, I once mentioned the evils of centralization, and actually used weblogs.com as an example of ‘what if…’ something like this were to happen. Maybe I need a Psychic Bird stylesheet, too.)

In the meantime, if you have a weblogs.com weblog and have a new location, if you send me an email or drop a comment with your new location, we’ll see if we can’t start circulating the changes– to get folks up and running more quickly. But this time, may I recommend hosting your weblog in your own space?

If you have questions about how to port from your Manila site to other weblogging tools, holler.