Back in December of 2005, after nearly two years of blogging, I made a decision that got me in a little hot water with some of my regular readers:  I decided to move my blog from AOL, where it had been since I first launched it in February, 2004, to Blogger.  (I’m now using Wordpress at my own site, for those of you who read via a feed reader.)

I made the decision because of what was a series of poor examples of customer service from AOL itself, culminating in the appearance of banner ads that we bloggers had absolutely no control over.  We weren’t even told that we were going to have them until they appeared.  It made some of us angry.  So we packed up and left.

And some of the people who had been fairly loyal readers in “J-Land,” AOL’s special name for its little blogging community, really let those of us who were leaving hold it.  We were traitors.  We were the scum of the earth.  We were fair-weather friends who were being childish and over-reacting.

More than one person tossed a few “good riddances” our way.  Some seemed to take great pleasure in stating that they’d never set their virtual foot in Blogger, where a lot of us ended up.

These angry people — who were going to let their feelings be known, a courtesy they refused us — decided they were going to make AOL J-Land better than it had ever been.  One day, they pledged, beating on their chests, J-Land would never even miss those of us who had been there from the start or nearly the start.  And they accused us of acting like we were the ones in “junior high.”

Fast forward to present day, as many AOL J-Landers are just learning some surprising news, despite claims that everyone should have, but apparently didn’t, receive email notification of a major change:  As of November 1, 2008, AOL J-Land will be no more.  AOL is shutting down (their word for it is “sunsetting,” if you can believe that!) its journals community and several other services because, apparently, they weren’t generating enough income.  And, those journal writers who opt-in will can their journals’ contents transferred to — wait for it — Blogger.

No, really.  I am not making this up.

Had we stayed put in J-Land, aggravation about AOL’s cavalier treatment of us aside, we might have seen more red flags go up a while back when novelist John Scalzi, who had been blogging professionally for AOL for some time, was suddenly out the door.  Granted, he made it clear that it was a mutual decision at the time; but the fact that AOL would even consider dropping their most popular blogger, a writer who motivated countless discussions on his blog and through posts on other blogs, and served as the host of a kind of community square, spoke volumes.

The sad thing is that the majority of folks who are in J-Land are genuinely nice people.  They’re incredibly supportive of each other.  One blogger does a post about a death in the family or a medical crisis, for example, and they’ll receive dozens of comments of condolence or prayer in no time.  And there are some long-time readers of this blog who never for a moment stooped to the level of the childish “our way or the highway” types who were more interested in controlling what other people did than worrying about the quality of the community.  They got it:  they understood that a blogger’s value has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with the software that runs the mechanics of the webpage itself.  It’s about the person, not where that person writes.

But like many problematic factions, the squeaky wheels were pretty loud.  Much louder, unfortunately, than the good people who tried to state what should have been obvious in a valiant effort to keep unity afloat.

Another sad thing is that there were several notable bloggers in J-Land who have since passed away.  Since they’re no longer around to “opt-in” to a transfer, blogs like those started by Frank or Pam will suddenly just cease to exist.  Sorry, says AOL; it’s not their problem.

I really feel bad for the good people who weighed their options and felt that staying with AOL was their best option.  I hope they’ll find a better place to blog and will continue to share their unique voices with the rest of us.  I’ve always believed that blogging gives us all a great way to see other people’s perspectives and help us all think about things in ways we might never have considered before.  They deserve much better than to find they no longer have a place in the blogosphere to call home.

As for those venomous territorial bloggers who were so quick to write us off as being unworthy of their attention, I wonder how they now feel about being treated as though they’re the “deadwood.”  Not exactly a happy place to be, is it?

And I’m willing to say something they refused to say when they had the chance:  even those folks deserve better treatment than that.