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.

A long time ago, my adventures in blogging began in AOL’s “J-land.” While I was there, there were controversies on other people’s blogs — they called them “journals” — about content and Terms of Service. The TOS police of AOL are vigilant, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.

It’s good because it means someone is watching to make sure that inappropriate content doesn’t get lots of exposure. Some people get bent out of shape over that, screaming “censorship.” That’s not really a valid concern, since the people who have blogs on AOL — and most other blogging services for that matter — must first agree to the Terms of Service in advance.

But it’s bad because the Terms of Service are invariably vague when it comes to describing what is and is not appropriate. Continue reading “Rating the Blog”

You might not recognize this guy’s face, but you definitely know who he is. His name is Elwood Edwards, but he goes by the nickname El.

No, I didn’t expect that to joggle your memory; I just wanted to properly introduce you before explaining why you really do know him.

This broadcaster-turned-voiceover artist was approached way back in 1989 by a company looking to release a new version of its software for Mac users. Their idea was to work a human voice into the software that could be heard by users when they first launched the program. The voice would also alert them to other important situations, including the completion of file downloading and the receipt of mail.

I’m sure that from that description, you’ve figured out that El is the guy who says, “You’ve Got Mail” when you start AOL. Since that 1989 experiment, it has been El’s voice that has appeared in every version since.

(Of course, “You’ve Got Mail” is gramatically incorrect, because you’ve would translate into you have which would mean, “You have got mail.” What they should have had him say all those years ago was simply, “You have mail.”)

At El’s website, you can actually have the man himself add your name to each alert. I could hear, for example, “You’ve got mail, Patrick.” You could, too, if you wanted him to call you Patrick. You can also order custom alert sets in which he would say exactly what you want him to say — within reason, I should think.”

So would you consider having him record customized alerts?

“This is Jack Benny talking. There will now be a slight pause while everyone says, ‘Who cares?’”

–Jack Benny
In his radio debut, March 23, 1932

Today is the third anniversary of Patrick’s Place. There will be a slight pause….

This blog, for those who haven’t been reading for all that long, originally began rather quietly on AOL. They call their blogs “Journals” and it was in “J-land” where I first started finding other people who were giving this blogging thing a try. The red, “neon”-looking logo was the original logo for that version of the blog.

Over two years and some change, as J-land grew into a quite a community, I was made to feel a welcome part of it. There were controversies over that time. There was one particularly nasty instance in which someone pretended to be someone they weren’t, claiming that they were fighting a deadly illness and asking for emotional support, only to be found out at the last minute. The revelation that a lot of lies had occurred threatened lots of friendships. We journal writers celebrated weddings and births, and mourned divorces and deaths. We shared a lot with each other.

There were battles over AOL’s Journal awards, which eventually became known as the Vivi Awards. Critics called them little more than a popularity contest — as if there was some genuine surprise at the notion that more popular blogs would naturally have more name recognition when it came time to nominate potential winners. People got quite bent out of shape over them, which I never understood, since participation was never mandatory.

Then came the banner ads controversy, in which AOL decided to start placing banner ads at the top of member journals without any warning. For some, that alone was enough to make them cancel their membership in protest. For people like me, that was one of the final straws — in a long line of them — and despite the efforts of those who wanted everyone to stay put, it just became clear that it was time for a change. Some of us who did relocate found out that some of those friendships weren’t really friendships at all; you can’t call someone a friend based solely on their blogging platform.

Before the ad controversy happened, but shortly after another writer’s entire blog was mistakenly deleted by AOL’s Terms of Service team, I started a mirror version of Patrick’s Place here at Blogger. Originally, I used one of my favorite paintings, from Van Gogh, as a title image. Over time, the design changed, and by the time I made the decision to scrap the AOL version and move things here, the motif was more television-related.

Just more than two months after I made my very first post, I decided to start a weekly meme called the Saturday Six. That very first edition, posted on April 17, 2004, wasn’t anything elaborate: there were just six random questions posted every Saturday with no deadline for participants who wanted to join in. Originally, I was hoping that it might accomplish two things at once: first, that it would attract readers to my blog at least once per week, and second, if it actually succeeded, it would help me find more blogs to read by encouraging viewers to leave links to their blogs in the comments as they answered the questions. The Saturday Six definitely lived up to those expectations, to my surprise. Today, after almost 150 editions, it still has a regular following, although after moving to Blogger, I started a separate blog called Patrick’s Weekender that is now the home of both the Saturday Six and its companion meme, the Sunday Seven.

On August 22, 2004, I wrote the first post of a blog dedicated solely to my efforts to produce a salable novel. The blog would eventually become A Stop At Willoughby, named after my favorite episode of the television series The Twilight Zone. The Victorian mansion pictured on the header of that blog is Maymont, one of my favorite places is Richmond, Virginia, and one of the locations that served as inspiration for a portion of my novel.

So that’s how all of this began. Did I think that three years later I would still be writing this thing? No. I also never imagined that after three years, the counter here would have registered more than 78,000 page views.

So what, exactly, did I expect? I’m not all that sure, actually. I started the blog as a place to rant about things that were on my mind. Think Andy Rooney, fifty years younger. I expected to write a few pieces that I found to be funny, realize that no one else thought they were even remotely amusing, then scrap the thing and move on to some other hobby.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the delete button: people started commenting. There’s something interesting about receiving comments, particularly if they’re not spam and actually relate to what you’ve written about. It almost makes it feel as if you’ve somehow served a purpose by having taken the time to write. Even if someone disagrees with you — and plenty have — there’s suddenly the feeling that you’re actually communicating with people.

It’s not about changing their mind. Or preaching to the choir. (At least, not for me.) I don’t mind disagreement, because I’ve learned more hearing opposing views than I have from surrounding myself with people who think exactly the way I do. That’s not to say that my mind is always changed, but that it does challenge me to look at things from a different perspective.

Politics have been a favorite topic here, though not as much since the election. I’m a middle-of-the-road voter. Some people refuse to accept this, convinced that because I’m a white Southerner, I must be a “conservative nutjob.” Most of the people who feel this way, it seems, are, by comparison to what they seem to think I am, “liberal nutjobs.” There are room for nutjobs of all types in this world, in my opinion. There are things I’m conservative about, and there are things I’m quite liberal about. But we have this unwritten need to label everyone, so a “middle” label isn’t as appealing to some as the “either” or the “or.” I’ve been called many things, and I’ll be called many more before I’m through. There comes a point at which fighting such trivial matters becomes pointless.

Television and the media in general is also a popular topic, which shouldn’t be a surprise since I work in that industry. Within those topics, I’m also likely to discuss game shows, including my particular favorite, The Price is Right.

But I suppose my most common topic here, either directly or indirectly, is double standards. There are lots of them in the world, and some are so commonly held that no one even stops to realize how blatantly illogical they happen to be. Double standards don’t make a lot of sense to me, particularly when those who hold them are so adamant about their beliefs.

I’ve had a couple of readers say over the years that a post they have read has made them think about something differently. Sometimes an alternative point of view can help you explore your own beliefs in a way you’ve never explored before. It doesn’t mean that your view will change; it’s just as likely that your long-held opinion will end up being that much more stronger. But I can think of no nicer complement, other than a reader’s continuing presence, for a blogger to receive.

So whether you’ve been a regular visitor since the AOL days or whether you just found this little blog this week, thanks for joining me somewhere along the way. I hope you’ll stay a while.

One of the more popular journal writers in AOL’s J-land is Penny, also known as blondepennierae, of “A Pennies Worth.”

According to John, Penny suffered a brain aneurysm this morning and has been rushed to an area hospital. She is scheduled to undergo brain surgery tomorrow in an attempt to repair the damage.

Penny is a 2005 Vivi Award winner for “Most Inspirational Journal” and is much loved by her regular readers for her determination and the “can-do” philosophy by which she lives her life. She beat polio when she was just two years old and post-polio syndrome more than three decades later. I certainly hope she can beat this, too.

Please visit her journal and leave your well-wishes. Every prayer helps, folks.

UPDATE: Penny has come through the surgery and doctors are “guardedly optimistic.” The full update is here.

One of my co-workers has a favorite saying that he will drop my way right after giving me a story that is not remotely promotable: “Good luck to you.” His dry delivery always makes me smile.

That same phrase is the first thing that comes to mind as I learn that a group of AOL bloggers are going to continue the tradition of the “J-Land Awards,” which a group of us retitled the Vivi Awards last year in honor of Vivian, one of J-land’s longest-running bloggers, if not the longest-running blogger in J-Land.

Last year, I was the producer of the awards, which meant that I was the one with the bullseye painted on my back. A handful of folks took great pleasure in taking aim at that bullseye, and a few seemed to take delight in taking aim at every possible opportunity. That was to be expected: this is the blogosphere. Sometimes I took their attacks in stride. Occasionally, I didn’t. Once or twice, I took things far too personally.

I suspect that’s probably to be expected when one finds himself in the crosshairs of someone else’s attack. Still, I should have known better: not all of the “attacks” I perceived as such really were. And not all of the responses I felt were just really were, either. That was my fault, and I don’t deny that.

One must consider, however, the nature of some of the criticism directed at such things. There are those who will automatically label any award a “popularity contest.” They refuse to ponder the possibility that blogs that happen to be popular are popular because they are well-written and entertaining, which also might make them deserving of certain awards.

Is it true that some deserving blogs won’t even get a nomination because they’re not well-known? Sure. But that’s also part of the intention of the Vivi Awards: encouraging people to actually explore J-Land to find journals they’ve never visited so that the “same old journals” don’t get all of the nominations. The critics seem a little too quick to lose sight of this as well.

They are also quick to suggest that the winners of the blog awards must be members of various “cliques.” At least one or two of these same people decided when the J-Land Exodus occurred that they would refuse to read any blog that wasn’t in J-Land. Talk about being exclusionary!

While we’re on the subject of the J-Land Exodus, which occurred right after the unannounced appearance of banner ads on paid members’ blogs, I will point out that many of the same people who are criticizing the Vivi Awards say that those who left AOL were behaving childishly and should have just let the situation go. They don’t seem to be able to let things go when it comes to the subject of Vivi Awards, even when a clear majority of those polled at Vivian’s blog — roughly 82% last time I checked — said they wanted the Vivis to continue this year. If not being able to let things they disagree with is a sign of childish preoccupation, what are we to believe from their continued contempt, and more specifically, their zeal to express their continued contempt, of the Vivis?

A couple of those critics have taken multiple swipes at those who left J-Land whether they were regular readers and/or commenters of the shuttered blogs or not. I’ve seen plenty of comments like, “Good Riddance,” which demonstrates a lack of respect and courtesy for their fellow bloggers. A few have even had snide things to say about Vivian who returned to regular posting after taking a bit of time away! (She never closed her blogs, but simply moved them over to the International side of AOL.)

Vivian has explained, though it was no one else’s damn business, that she had some personal issues that took up more of her time and kept her away from her blog. Life happens. I wonder how her critics might feel if real life pulled them away from their blogs for a period of time, and when they returned they found that they were being blasted for both their departure and return. This is just a guess, but I don’t think they’d stand for it…and they’d be right not to!

They complain if someone goes away, then they complain if the same person comes back! That in itself should be clear evidence that there is no pleasing some people, no matter how much harmony they want you to think exists in their neighborhood.

If those who left AOL should have just ignored the ads and gone on as usual, why can’t the people who strongly oppose the Vivi Awards simply ignore them? Why should we believe that they think that J-land is such a loving, supportive place when they’re the ones bending over backwards to leave so many sarcastic comments against people who are trying to unite everyone in something that is intended to be fun for all?

Their actions are so full of illogical motivation and double standards that it boggles the mind that they can’t see how little sense they make!

Jackie of “Hope Floats” will be this year’s producer, and she’s already got her committee named. I wish them much luck and success, and I’ll certainly be interested to see which J-Land bloggers get the nods this year.

My best advice for this year’s Vivi Awards Committee is to expect the criticism and take it in stride, keeping in mind that it represents a very small, albeit noisy, minority. There’ll be some bitching but there’ll be a lot more “thank yous” from people who actually understand that the purpose of the Vivi Awards is to recognize some of the talented folks who blog with AOL, not to promote secret circles of writers who likely need the least promotion of anyone in J-Land.

And if the bitching gets to be too much, there’s always that wonderful “block comments from this screen name” option! As I’ve said before, the sense of community in J-Land exists despite critics like these, not because of them.

I heard last year from countless people that the Vivi Awards pointed them in the direction of some great blogs they’d never heard of before. That’s what the Vivis are all about. And that’s what I look forward to from this year’s event.

AOL’s “J-land” is preparing to celebrate the third anniversary of AOL Journals. (AOL uses the term “Journal” instead of “Blog.”)

A couple of people have asked me if I would be opposed to participating in any kind of celebration. I said I didn’t mind: regardless of my dissatisfaction with AOL itself at the time of my departure, I am not now, nor have I ever been, anti-J-land.

For the better part of two years, the original version of this blog existed there. The only reason the Blogger version began was after a controversial move made by AOL’s Terms of Service department which resulted in the deletion of someone’s entire blog because of “questionable content” that turned out not to be questionable at all. I concluded that just in case AOL decided to go after my blog, I’d at least have a back-up here.

I had no intention, at that time, of leaving J-land. The primary reason for this was that sense of community that J-land seemed to have: the AOL Journals community seemed like a real neighborhood, even at times like a real family.

In many ways, that hasn’t changed despite a rather rough year, and that’s the good part about AOL’s J-land.

If you’re still a part of J-land and you’re still a regular visitor to this blog, then I thank you for stopping by and extend to you my congratulations for J-land’s third birthday. (And it might be best that you stop reading this post right now.)

So you’ve been warned.

If you’re not a regular visitor because this blog is no longer part of AOL J-land, and/or if you think that my departure from J-land was intended as some kind of personal “attack” or “betrayal,” then I have a good bit more to say. Read on.

For J-land’s first anniversary, I was asked to write one of the “keynote addresses.” In that post, I suggested that creating a blog is like building a house, furnishing it, decorating it to our own unique tastes, then leaving for a little while and not locking the door behind you:

“Those in the neighborhood who walk by, seeing that door, can step inside if they wish and have a look around.”Who wouldn’t? You’re in a nice neighborhood, you see an open door — almost an invitation in itself — you know no one is around and that no one is watching. You can step inside, have a look around and no one will ever be the wiser. Unlike real life, you can’t really take any furniture or belongings from the house…all you can do is look around. If you want to, you can leave a note or two to let someone know that you’ve been there, but you don’t even have to identify yourself when you do so. In the real world, I can’t imagine anyone resisting that temptation for very long.

“It’s very intimidating, though, when you get back home and you realize that someone has been there. I mean, you left the door open, so you know that it was possible…but when you find proof, well, that’s different. When you see that “sticky-note” left on the refrigerator, surrounded by those magnets that have been rearranged into a smiley-face, or when you find that note card on the coffee table, you realize that someone else has browsed through your private little world.

“It can be very pleasant when someone leaves a comment that says they like the way you’ve chosen to decorate your place. It can be unpleasant when someone calls you an idiot for placing the leopard-skin sofa on the green shag carpet, no matter how cool you think it looks.

“Some recoil at the idea of having others leave comments, because it makes them realize that someone has looked around. It throws them into a panic! ‘Did I leave the place tidy?’ ‘Had I made my bed?’ ‘Did I flush the toilet before I left?’ Some abruptly tear up the comments and throw them away, whether they were well-meaning or not. Some lock the door, making sure no one can ever leave a comment again. Others, so bothered by the notion that anyone might take advantage of the chance to see how they live inside their own home decide to take the extreme action of tearing down the house by deleting their journal altogether.”

You get the idea.

I went on to say how nice a neighborhood J-land was. And I do believe that it still is a nice neighborhood. But already, as J-land prepares to celebrate the third anniversary, a few people are voicing their opinions that those who left AOL shouldn’t be allowed to participate in any part of the celebration.

What’s going on here?

I now realize that when I wrote that essay about J-land, I didn’t consider one important point, because it didn’t really apply to me or to most of the people who were reading that post at the time. What I failed to consider is the inevitable evolution of one’s space on the web. For some in J-land, they’ll never blog anywhere else, especially now that AOL has decided to offer its full service for free (though some restrictions apply).

But for others, they’ll move on. They’ll experiment with other blogging platforms and they just might find one that they like better. Or, they’ll find a valid reason to buy their own domain and they’ll use a service like Typepad to set up a blog at their new home at TheirName.com! Is that really so bad? Are you so sensitive that such a simple act must constitute a personal insult to you?

Let’s think about this for a minute.

Suppose you’re back in high school, which is somewhat appropriate, considering how “high schoolish” this battle sounds!

Your best friend, the person who knows you better than anyone else, the one you consider to be more like family than your own family, ends up moving across town to a different school. Is that the end of your friendship? Will you stop taking his or her phone calls? Will you tear up any letters the friend sends you? Would you refuse to ever speak to this person again? Would you really be that shallow?

Do you determine who your friends are solely by whether or not they work in the same building you do, or shop in the same stores that you do, or go to the same church that you do? Maybe you do, but I’d suggest that if this is the only way you allow someone to be your friend, you are potentially missing out on the chance to get close to people who might bring unique and special moments to your life. It’s your decision, of course. But I still suggest that you’re missing out.

Let’s even go back to the example from my little “speech” about J-land: let’s say that you live in a community with a strict neighborhood association. Someone you consider a friend who happens to live two doors down decides that the home he lives in no longer meets his needs — for whatever reason — and looks for ways to add on or remodel. The neighborhood association steps in and says, “Sorry, you can’t do that here.” So the neighbor checks the real estate ads and finds a house in a nearby neighborhood that will better suit him. He moves there.

Has this neighbor “abandoned” you? Has he “betrayed” you? Or, has he simply made a move that he feels is right for him? Assume that the neighbor still has an open invitation for you whenever you want to stop by. If you decide that you will no longer set foot in his house just because he’s in a different neighborhood, who is the real villain here? Who’s treating who unfairly?

Yeah, you know the answer.

So let’s make this a little more clear. The neighborhood is J-land. The neighborhood association is AOL. And that other community is Blogger. There are a handful of people who watched those of us who left AOL J-land for alternative blogging platforms and accused us of abandoning and betraying J-land.

It didn’t matter to them why we left, or even that we felt that we had a good reason at the time to leave. (Not that it was really any of their business to begin with!) All that mattered to them was that we moved our blog. And to some of them, we were suddenly dead. That’s not the kind of behavior I would expect from a community who prides itself on being so “loving and supportive.” Indeed, J-land is a loving and supportive community despite these people, not because of them.

The “Mass Exodus” happened because AOL decided to stick banner ads on paid members’ journals without notice. If AOL had waited until after they made their services free for everyone, I suspect that there wouldn’t have been near the turmoil. But that’s not what happened. Some of us were already beginning to feel that AOL wasn’t worth what we were being billed. But we stayed anyway. The ads, for some of us, became the final straw.

Who is anyone else to condemn someone for moving a blog just because they feel they can get better treatment elsewhere? And more importantly, how can such a person be part of a loving, supportive community when they are willing to turn on their former neighbors as fast as flipping a light switch?

What’s important to some people isn’t important to others. I love animals and volunteer with a local animal shelter. Some people have actually suggested that I must not care about people if I work to help animals. Who says I can’t care about people and animals at the same time? Well, these people, apparently. But because animals aren’t important to them, they think there must be something wrong with me.

I was one of those folks who really felt that canceling my AOL membership was the right thing to do for me. I didn’t tell anyone else that they should leave with me or because of me. I didn’t have any lofty intention of “destroying” J-land because I knew I’d still be visiting the friends I’d made there.

If anything, I suggested that people should make up their own mind, and I doubt that most people would have needed that piece of advice, anyway. I never “turned” on J-land. I never said they were bad people. I merely decided that the company that provided that online real estate wasn’t treating me the way I felt I deserved to be treated after having been a paying customer for ten years. It was as simple as that.

If you thought I was being unreasonable, that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. But I had to make the decision I felt was right for me, not for you. And that’s what I did. Period.

I know that there are people in J-land who absolutely refuse to visit this blog, and the only reason they won’t is because it’s not in J-land. Forget the fact that some of them were visitors — and even repeat visitors — when “Patrick’s Place” did have “AOL” in the web address: they don’t seem to value our past experience as much as what’s contained in the URL.

I have online friends that I value very much. Some of them are still in J-land. Others have moved elsewhere. Just scroll down my sidebar links and look at the web addresses that appear at the bottom of the window. You’ll quickly see that I’m not the kind of person to discriminate against someone because of where their blog happens to be. To do so, in my opinion, would be narrow-minded, childish, and just plain stupid. If I consider you a friend, I’ll follow you wherever you go. That’s because the friendship is more important to me than the blog host.

Isn’t that the way it should be?

I’m sure that I’ll see some of my longtime AOL friends at some of the celebrations. I may show up in the form of a comment, or in a chat room, or by contributing something to an anniversary post. If you see me there, I hope you’ll say hello. But if you don’t want to speak because you still, after all of this, consider me to be a “traitor,” then that’s your problem, not mine.

I have more important things to do than fight over which sandbox to play in. And I would think everyone would. It has been nearly nine months since the Exodus happened! Aren’t there enough problems in the world??

I’m truly sorry if I have offended anyone with this. It wasn’t my intention to offend, but just to talk out some honest feelings and argue for a little common sense. There are people in AOL J-land who were genuinely hurt by the fact that several bloggers they liked chose to leave. I can honestly speak for me when I say that I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.

On the other hand, what some who are still in J-land fail to consider is that there were some bloggers who needed to leave, for their own reasons, who were genuinely hurt by the charges of betrayal leveled against them. And they’re even more hurt to see that there are those they considered friends who would apparently like nothing more than to slam the door in their former friend’s faces!

It should go without saying that anyone who could do this to a “friend” isn’t a friend at all. But I think there were people who did care about each other, but who allowed anger to cloud their judgment, and that was true on both sides of the equation.

Some of you who have so far failed to return to bloggers you were previously close to may still miss those people that you had once considered friends. There’s a damn good chance that those same people miss you. Why not take a moment to set aside the anger, consider the possibility that the decision wasn’t about you, and make contact again?

As J-land prepares to celebrate another anniversary, I hope that the spirit of the occasion and the efforts to accentuate the positive lead to opportunities to bridge gaps that should have never appeared in the first place.

I can say it no more plainly than that.

I had been meaning to watch for this a little more closely, but I see that the 70,000 mark has been hit on my primary counter.

This figure isn’t 100% precise: I had many hits at the old AOL version of this journal that no longer exists. When I moved here, I took that counter’s value and continued it. Since AOL’s counter isn’t — or at least wasn’t — the most-reliable, there’s no way to know for sure exactly how many the original really did get.

Still, 70,000 looks like an accomplishment. From what I can tell, visitor #70,000 is somewhere in Wichita, Kansas. He or she arrived here from a search, although I didn’t get the keywords that led them specifically to this blog.

In any case, whether you’re #70,000 or not, I’m glad you stopped by. Welcome.

I was under the impression that I had successfully instructed AOL to forward my emails to my Gmail account. I was assisted in this misunderstanding by AOL itself, since I only get AOL Journal alerts at the Gmail address now.

In any case, I signed on briefly to AOL’s Webmail page, something I hadn’t done (and had no reason to think I needed to do) since May. I had 556 emails waiting for my attention.

Are you kidding me??

The majority of them were news alerts from MSNBC and CBS News. There were a few from some bill payment services I use, but that I visit on my own without their email prodding. There were a number of spam messages; apparently, when one stops paying AOL, their highly-touted spam controls fall down a few pegs.

One of them came from Paypal. At least, that’s what the address said. But as I read it, I was confident that this didn’t come from Paypal.

I found five obvious “red pen” problems very quickly:

1. “Please read this message and follow it’s instructions.”
It’s is a contraction and is short for “it is.” They didn’t need the apostrophe. On the other hand, I suppose I should give them half a point for not trying to force an apostrophe in to make instructions plural.

2. “Due to these technical updates, your account has been flagged…”
This is one of my all-time biggest grammar pet peeves. “Due to” is not the same as “because of.” The real explanation centers on adverb phrases versus adjective phrases and just complicated to make most people’s eyes glaze over. But I’ll simplify the whole thing for you with this: if you’re writing a sentence with “due to” and you can’t substitute the phrase “caused by,” and have the sentence still make sense, then use “because of” instead.

3. “To Confirm Your Identity click the link below, Please make sure you do this in a timely fashion…”
Without spending much time on the unnecessary capitalization of the words confirm, your and identity, it should have been obvious to the writer of this email that the needed a period after the word below, not a comma. But hey, they got the Paypal logo just right!

4. “…we look forward of bringing you updates regularly”
Most people look forward to things. Maybe this is an overseas operations where English is a third or fourth language?

5. “Please make sure you do this in a timely fashion as we look forward of bringing you updates regularly_“
They went from using a comma when they needed a period to just forgetting about the end-of-the-sentence punctuation completely here. Their poor English teachers are probably just coming out of it by now. Nurse!!

Maybe it was written by some teenage hacker who slept through his grammar lessons. I can’t imagine many people believing that writing like this would seem legit. After all, would you trust your sensitive personal information with someone who composes a letter like this?

One of my newest readers, Julia of “Aesthetic Vibrations,” recently left this comment:

If you don’t mind me asking, how do you get so many readers to visit your blog?

I don’t mind admitting that it’s a question that I’ve often asked myself! I try to be informative, or entertaining, or amusing, or interesting, or a combination of any of these. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes I fall on my face.

As much as I’d like to pretend that I don’t, I know better. Believe me.

One of the things I find amusing about the blogosphere is that despite the fact that I have a fairly respectable audience, I am more than aware that in “real life,” if many of those readers were to meet me in person, they’d undoubtedly find me one of the most boring people they’d ever encounter. I’m not a party animal, I’m not a model, and I’m not a social butterfly. I have opinions, many of which are admittedly old-fashioned, and I am what is known as an “old soul.”

These are not the typical qualities that popular people tend to have. So I’m really not sure why people come back after that first visit. I’m just glad they do.

Of course, none of that really helps explain how I attracted an audience. So let me try to answer it a little better.

When I started this blog, it was on AOL. AOL calls its blogs “journals.” And the group of people who have journals there have been known as “J-land.” It was a very supportive community for a long time; in some ways, it still very much is. But a change in policy there about six months ago caused many of its more prolific bloggers to leave that service, so many of us have scattered to services like Blogger, Movable Type or LiveJournal.

Having a blog there, during the first two years of J-land certainly helped. That’s where I built most of my audience, in fact. I’m grateful that many of those same people who read “Patrick’s Place” when it was an AOL blog still are regular visitors here.

During my blog’s first year, I introduced a meme called the “Saturday Six.” As the name implies, it’s a set of six random questions posted every Saturday. I had two main reasons for starting it was to add an interactive feel to the blog and to encourage folks to leave links to their blogs. As it grew, more and more people participated and I was able to find some very interesting journals to read. The “Saturday Six” and its sister meme, the “Sunday Seven” are now over at “Patrick’s Weekender,” which is also hosted here at Blogger.

Leaving those links brings me to another way to add readers: when you visit other people’s blogs, if you read something that inspires you to comment, be sure to end the comment with a link to your blog. It’s a quick and easy way to encourage the writer (and his readers) to visit your blog. If they like what they see, they’ll be back.

As more people visit and leave comments in your blog, return the favor. That reciprocation can work wonders: we all want to have comments. The challenge is to try to leave at least as many comments elsewhere as you receive in your own blog. I’m the first to admit that I don’t always succeed there. I’m working on that. Really.

There are lots of posts online about how to build an audience. Here are 10 steps I’d suggest. If you have ideas you’d like to add to the list (or if you’ve done posts on the subject yourself), please leave links in the comments! Continue reading “Building an Audience for Your Blog”

Over at his blog, “Insignificant Thoughts,” Vincent, the man who recorded the cancellation request that turned into an internet controversy has received more than 200 comments since the initial story first appeared.

Though the majority of them seem to be along the lines of “congratulations” and “good for you,” a few have claimed that he somehow staged the call — which would only make sense if AOL hadn’t issued a statement acknowledging the error on the part of its employee and added that said employee was no longer with the company. Their statement alone negates any “faking” on Vincent’s part. And I do think that AOL should be congratulated for dealing with the problem swiftly and addressing it publicly.

A few others have remarked about Vincent’s attitude during the call, and added that they might have reacted the same way as the customer service rep if they had encountered such a customer. To them, I say that it’s a good thing they’re not a customer service rep, because they’d deserve at the very least a severe reprimand themselves. Vincent only became short with this operator when the operator continually ignored the simple request to end the account. Once Vincent said he wanted to cancel, that was the issue that needed to be addressed, not who was using the account and for how many hours over the past however-many months!

The bottom line is this: no matter how rude they may think a customer is, reasonable customer service professionals don’t lose their cool. Ever. If the customer won’t listen to reason — and Vincent seemed by far the reasonable one of the two — the most a CSR should do is simply disconnect the call. That strategy has the added bonus of putting him in a position to claim “technical difficulties.” As soon as he stoops to the level he feels his customer has stooped to, he’s in the wrong. Period.

A few have accused Vincent of breaking the law by having recorded the call, on the grounds that the CSR wouldn’t have known that he was being recorded. The problem with this theory, though admittedly I am not a lawyer, is that before callers are connected to such representatives, they hear a recorded message warning them that their call may be recorded for “training purposes.” When the company itself provides the notification of the possible recording of a call, its employees can’t then claim that they had no idea they were being recorded!

Then the conspiracy theorists began giving their take on the situation. Continue reading “What Caused the Customer Service Call From Hell?”

If you’ve ever spent more than a minute on the phone with an unhelpful or rude customer service employee and wished that someone in charge would actually hear those call recordings most businesses warn you may be taking place, you will absolutely love this story! If you own a business that has customer service representatives, you might want to share it with them as a textbook example of how not to treat a paying customer.

Recently, 30-year-old Vincent Ferrari decided that he no longer needed his AOL service. So he called to cancel it, which seems like it would be simple enough to do. It turned out to be anything but!

Ferrari, for reasons that aren’t clear, decided to record the call. You can read about Ferrari’s encounter at his blog and you can hear what happened for yourself on this page.

Netscape, which is owned by AOL, obtained this statement from AOL Spokesman Nicholas Graham:

“At AOL, we have zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this - which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable. The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care - chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests. This matter was dealt with immediately and appropriately, and the employee cited here is no longer with the Company.”

I have to admit that I’m amused.

Not because AOL treated a paying customer with such a high level of disrespect, but rather because they were caught doing so and the evidence ended up online for the whole world to see and hear. It’s one thing to throw banner ads on paying members blogs and emails without warning; you can always chalk that up to an impersonal “business decision” that carries no implication about the company’s respect for its customers. But when you have employees treating people this way, it tarnishes the image for the whole company, no matter how outrageous this employee’s managers think his behavior was. It’s a PR nightmare!

But in all honesty, I’m a little surprised as well.

It has been my experience that the people at the “end of the line,” those “retainers” who are supposed to bend over backwards to keep you as a customer just when you’ve decided you’ve had enough, are not only the nicest, but the most personable, most competent, and most respectful people I’ve ever dealt with.

And in all fairness, that even applied to AOL. My primary complaint with their various tech support operators was that so few of them seemed to speak English just well enough to be clear when they spoke. There are plenty of regional dialects within our own country that can give listeners a linguistic workout. But when you hire people to speak with an English-speaking public, you should hire people who can speak English clearly. But even those who were the most difficult to understand were at least polite and respectful. I never got someone who was as rude as this guy sounds, and I’d have left a lot sooner if I ever had.

When I did feel that I’d had enough in November and called to cancel, I reached someone who was so nice, I almost felt I owed herd her a “Thank You” card. She asked why I was leaving, and I told her it was a long story. She said she wanted to hear it, and I proceeded to give it to her, in painful amounts of detail. (I doubt that would come as a surprise!)

She seemed interested, asked questions, even feigned the same outrage I felt, part of which seemed to be genuine enough that it couldn’t have all been a carefully-planned psychological tactic aimed at persuading me to stay on. In fact, towards the end of the conversation, after she confirmed that the cancellation had been submitted, I remarked that if every encounter had gone this smoothly, I probably wouldn’t have cancelled.

A little respect can go a long way.

The same thing happened recently with my cable company. They quoted me one rate for a product before I switched to it, then promptly billed me a completely different rate after the fact. They then lied more than five times about crediting me a month of free service because of what had to be my misunderstanding. (How convenient for them!) Each person I talked to assured me that the credit had just been entered and was showing up, yet each time, the next day when I called to verify that the credit had posted, no sign of it was in evidence.

When I finally reached the breaking point and called to cancel that particular portion of my service, I met someone who not only put the credit through while I was on the phone, but offered me the very rate I had originally been offered but subsequently told did not exist! It was a little insulting, to say the least, because I’d battled for a month to get the rate they told me I’d be eligible for. But as I had already arranged and scheduled the installation of new service from another company, I declined her offer. (I did, in case there was any doubt, point out how ironic it was that she’d offer me such a rate after multiple operators had played the “I don’t know what that first operator would have quoted you that rate” card.)

Ferrari told Netscape that he was sorry that the operator he encountered had lost his job, but hoped he’d learn something from it. We all have bad days, and we all can bring our troubles to work with us. But I suspect that if this operator was having a bad day and just decided to take it out on Vincent, losing his job over his behavior made his day a lot worse than he imagined it would be. And though I don’t think AOL really feels this much contempt for its customers, if you’re the one who’s having the bad day and the operator treats you this way, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine this one person souring your perception of the entire company with this single encounter.

Personally, I hope it’s the big businesses that learn from it! It’s so much easier to treat a customer as if they matter than it is to scramble for damage control after your company has received such a public black eye!

Remember a few months back, when AOL added obnoxious banner ads to all of its US journals without any notice to those who payed for the service? Remember the furor as several people, myself included, shut down their AOL journals in favor of alternative services like Blogger, while others relocated across the pond to AOL’s International Journals community, where banner ads hadn’t yet invaded?

With the release of the newest incarnation of its journal software, says AOL technical project manager Yoel at “The Daily Grind,” AOL International Journals will now have banner ads forced upon them as well.

• Continue Reading….What’s different this time, at least, is that people are aware that it’s coming. It will be interesting to see if any AOL users who had migrated to an International address will leave for good. And if they did, it’s not like AOL’s European offices couldn’t have seen it coming after what happened stateside back in November!

Yoel adds the obvious question, Why would AOL do this again? Then he answers it, saying that the American and European businesses are different, so despite the problems the ads caused here, apparently European AOL leaders don’t seem to be worried that it could happen there.

The businesses may be different…but are people all that different? I doubt that it’s only the Americans who’d be bothered by blinking ads that sometimes expand to take over part of the journal writer’s content would be a problem no matter where you live. But maybe the resentment of such an intrusion is only an American issue.

We shall see.