Most bloggers will tell you that it’s always nice to get comments.  Well, that’s true, unless the comments are spam, pointing to porn sites or credit card scams or other dubious stops along the Information Super-highway.

I logged on while at lunch today and saw that I had 4 comments waiting for moderator approval.  Wouldn’t you know it:  all four were spam.

They love me, they really love me.   The feeling is not mutual, so I’ve activated an additional spam filter that Wordpress offers.  We’ll see how it works.

In the meantime, if you don’t have a porn site and aren’t trying to lure people into some fraudulent scam, feel free to say hello.

I need a favor, gang. Please let me know what web browser you’re viewing this blog on, and whether or not the sidebar appears on the side or at the bottom below the last post.

All of a sudden, Firefox isn’t displaying the blog correctly, though Safari seems to have no problem. Even crappy Internet Explorer for Mac, which completely screws up the display fonts for the entire blog, puts the sidebar where it belongs.

How does it look from your monitor?

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.

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”

I noticed something odd the other day when adding new posts: “Word Verification” was required before I could publish anything.

Word Verification, for the benefit of the remaining few who haven’t yet encountered it, is the extra step designed to block spambots from leaving comments. It displays twisted, skewed, random letters and requires a human to look at the letters and type them into a form. This verifies that the entity attempting to leave a comment actually is a person rather than an automated program that just wants to use your blog to link to porn.

But apparently, Blogger has decided that this is a “Spam Blog,” which it defines here. To prove to the powers that be that this blog is written by a real person, I have to enter my email address (along with another set of nonsensical letters) so that a human can review my blog.

I can only assume that this is because of the aforementioned del.icio.us tags I’ve added to my blog. To get them to work, I have to leave “bookmarks” that point to this site at that site. And this word verification popped up shortly after I started tagging entries over there.

I’m actually not as miffed about this as I thought I’d be. In fact, I find it a little amusing.

At least they’re trying to monitor activity that could be suspicious. Unlike AOL, which accused me of sending out unsolicited bulk mail when I clicked on one of its own automated links to notify readers of a then-private journal, Blogger has not participated in my use of del.icio.us, so it would have no way of knowing that this is why the links began appearing. Hopefully, when a person stops by, they’ll see that this site isn’t trying to spam anyone.

Comments here at “Patrick’s Place” have been in moderation since shortly after I made the move from AOL. Originally, Blogger allowed its users to turn on a feature called “Word Recognition,” which required the commenter to type the letters appearing in a graphic image into a box before the comment would go through. This feature was added to defeat the “autobots” that otherwise could leave spam comments to advertise porn sites or low-cost prescription drugs.

Then Blogger began a new feature: comment moderation. Before a comment left on a blog will actually appear, the blog owner is notified via email, presented with the comment in its entirety, and given the choice to publish or reject it.

(This can be a problem when email notification doesn’t work, as happened recently for many AOL/AIM users who specified that address as their notification preference. Fortunately, there is a backup: a tab within the blog’s control panel that allows you to manually track any comments you weren’t notified about. The only catch here is that you have to make it a point to go there to look.)

But all of this leads to two important questions:

1. Should comments be moderated at all?
2. Is it fair to reject a comment that someone has taken the time to compose?

Some people say no, because to do so is either a form of censorship or that it detracts from the spirit of discussion that they feel is inherent in a weblog.

I don’t buy either argument.

Many of the people who scream about censorship don’t really know what it is. In this case, the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee you the right to comment on someone else’s webspace. But those who do wish to comment on or about a weblog are generally not prohibited from starting one of their own, where they can say pretty much whatever they like, depending on their service’s Terms of Service and their relative fear of retribution.

As for the spirit of discussion, that is a lofty concept. Blogs do offer the chance for real discussions. The problem is, there are plenty of folks out there who don’t want to discuss anything: they’re not looking for intelligent debate, but rather to spread their own bitterness and self-righteousness and belittle those who they convince themselves aren’t on their side.

As my friend Rick recently said so well:

“The problem as I’m seeing it at this point in time is that more people are more concerned with being right than in becoming more right. They’re more concerned with standing on the truth-as-already-figured-out than further discovering truth-as-it-really-is. We shut ourselves off from each other, everyone bringing their opinions and no one open to anyone else’s offering in the conversation. In wanting people to learn what we want to teach, we become unteachable.”

We’re all guilty of it at times, either online or offline, and one doesn’t have to go all the way back to a presidential election to view examples of discussion in which neither side listens to the other.

If deleting a comment was never the right thing to do, I doubt that blogging services would allow their users to delete them or even turn them off completely. But there is no rule, so these options are available for the taking.

In an effort to be fair, some bloggers publish an official policy with regard to their handling of comments. I’ve never had one; the closest I’ve come is the last line right below my title bar:

“Comments — if they’re respectful — are always welcome.”

I’ve run comments that I didn’t feel were particularly respectful, and even a few that I was pretty sure were written specifically to be disrespectful. Since this is my blog, I figure that’s my right. I tend to believe that those who leave disrespectful comments or veiled insults do at least as much damage to their own image as they do to that of the person they’re attacking.

So far, since moving completely to Blogger, I’ve only rejected a handful of comments. One of them came from a reader who made an observation about a third party. While I’m sure that the remarks were completely honest and that the writer was trustworthy, it was still information that I could not independently verify, and the journalist in me led me to err on the side of caution. Another comment that was rejected questioned my apparent decision not to run an earlier comment from the same person. It turned out that I either missed the email when the initial comment came in, or it never arrived. In any case, I found the initial comment through the control panel and published it, so the follow-up comment seemed unnecessary. I’ve also killed a couple of “double clutch” comments. Other than those, I don’t recall having rejected any others.

When I do reject a comment, I don’t generally offer any explanation or make a big deal about it. There’s no blogging rule that requires me to do so. I suspect that most people who would leave a nasty comment would be able to figure out why it got no bandwidth here.

I’ve had people delete my comments before as well. I can think of one particular case in which it bothered me. I had left a comment that I considered to be completely respectful in an AOL journal. The post itself concerned businesses that fostered poor morale by not paying their employees enough money. My response suggested that the employees themselves had a hand in their own misery: by accepting jobs paying an amount of money they weren’t pleased with and staying with those jobs over a period of time, they’re sending a message to that employer that things must not be so bad after all. That’s not verbatim, but that was my general tack. Shortly thereafter, the comment disappeared and I found that I was blocked from leaving any others. The writer then posted a proclamation warning that no one would be allowed to disagree in that journal.

To me, that’s cowardice. If you’re so sure you’re right, you shouldn’t be so bent out of shape by other views that you wouldn’t even read them, and if you truly don’t want to hear what anyone else but you’re “yes men” have to say, then you should make that clear at the very top of your page and save everyone some time.

I do believe that blogs can be a good place to exchange ideas and consider other sides of an issue. That’s why I don’t automatically delete comments who disagree with my position. There are plenty of people who do. And believe it or not, I’ve learned things from those dissenting opinions. But that’s where “respectful” comes in. If I perceive that you’re not being respectful, I’ll likely tune out what you’re saying. Then you’ll probably tune out what I fire back in response, and suddenly no one’s listening to each other: Why bother?

The other day, I found a rather impressive, if overly-comprehensive comments policy. There are a few points with which I agree completely.

If I had to come up with a comments policy of my own, I’d start off with this:

1. Ad hominem attacks, those which include name-calling or that somehow attack the person, subtly or obviously, while ignoring the issue itself, have no place in intelligent discussion. This does not mean that you can only agree, but it does mean that if you can’t disagree intelligently, I’m not likely to listen to you.

2. Stay on topic. Don’t post about one subject when the post in which you’re commenting is talking about something completely different. That’s called common courtesy.

3. Don’t twist your opponent’s arguments into something else. There are lot of folks who like to do this. If I were to suggest that a new hybrid automobile I’d seen was not attractive, that would not mean that I was encouraging people to not care about the environment. If I wrote about my enjoyment of a nice steak dinner, it would be ridiculous to assume that I was condemning vegetarians. You get the idea, I’m sure, but some of you might be surprised how far arguments can get twisted if it serves someone else’s agenda.

Some people have issues with anonymous comments. I’ve gone back and forth on this. Over at AOL, you could not comment without leaving your screen name, but that was a function of the software, which required users to sign in to get to the comments window. Those screen names weren’t required to have profiles at all. Blogger allows users to have profiles without providing much information at all, and does not require people with Blogger profiles to have a blog in their service. For that reason, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask folks to have a profile. If Blogger were a paid service, I would feel very differently.

Others resent the use of IM-speak in comments. I do agree that when leaving a comment, one should take the time to write, rather than use the endless array of annoying abbreviations that are common in text messages and instant messages. But I have yet to reject a comment for this reason. If I got one that was just too annoying to try to decipher, I would reject it. And don’t get me started on posts thAt aRe wRiTteN liKe ThiS.

The funniest comment policy I’ve run across is this one, from the “Ex-Donkey Blog.”

For the rest of us, there should be that standard that if you wouldn’t put it in a Letter to the Editor to be run in a newspaper, you shouldn’t put it in a comment in someone else’s blog. But there are a lot of things people would say in an Op/Ed column that they probably shouldn’t. I tend to prefer this philosophy: if you were standing face to face with the blogger in real life, and they were within striking distance, would you say it the way you’ve written? If not, that might be a good test to encourage commenters to be more civil.

A while back, before AOL went bananas and ran off a lot of its journal users, I suggested that online journals were like people’s homes, where front doors were left open so visitors could come in and look around.

Sometimes I wonder what some people would really allow others to do in their living rooms.

So I’ve done it. Officially.

Anyone who goes to the original version of “Patrick’s Place” over at AOL gets the “blue page of death:”

This time, I’m the one who deleted it. It wasn’t AOL’s Terms of Service police, acting against their own stated policy, deciding on a whim to delete all of it for a “violation” that didn’t really exist or a portion of it for an inexplicable violation that may not have existed.

Nope. It was me. It was time.

There was a bit of sadness in hitting the “Delete Your Journal” link. But it didn’t last as long as I thought it would. Maybe I’ve made it through the stages of grief that Carly has recently explained so well and I’m to that point at which I’m just “over it.”

Or, maybe it was the fact that before I called AOL customer service one last time to officially cancel my account, knowing that they’d find a way to offer me the service I had been paying $9.90 a month for at an even lower monthly rate, I wanted to make sure that my content was gone. Even if I’m gone, I don’t want my words in an active journal advertising businesses I can’t control.

So I called and got a nice, English-speaking person who was ultra polite and easy to understand. No language barriers for people whom AOL thinks are just mad enough to actually leave. I suppose, if you have a limited amount of phone support staff that had English as a first language, that’s where I’d put them, too. He asked why I was leaving. When I asked him how much time he had, he said, “Plenty.” So I told him. I was honest, but not rude. It wasn’t his fault, after all, and I even acknowledged more than once that he was at the disadvantage here: part of his job, no doubt, is to try to “rescue” a lost customer and keep them from leaving. I told him upfront that this was not an option.

For now, the deal is done. Here I am. Here. Not there. And already, I’ve gotten this reply to an email from a close friend who I just gave my updated, non-AOL email address to: “dropping AOL is a brilliant move!” I wonder what her horror story is all about!

I have added, to my ever-growing sidebar, a few new things. First, near the bottom, there is a world map graphic that puts red “pinpoints” indicating where recent visitors are located. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why this blog would be of interest to people across the street from me, much less to people in places like Australia, France and Mongolia. But there they are, probably by total accident.

Second, midway down, are two new sets of links. I included the list of AOL Journal Relocations that Ayn and Vince provided. I’ll be adding to it occasionally as I get updates. (It’s the entry right before this one, but that link takes you directly to it.) Just below that, are the entries from this year’s Vivi Awards. Even though some of those journals may no longer be there, I wanted to recognize the nominees and winners, as they originally appeared, for the nods they received from their peers. I hope you’ll visit them just as you always have.

You see, whether you won a Vivi Award or not, whether you were nominated or not, whether you even voted or not, it doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever played an edition of the “Saturday Six” or one of the others. A couple of people have had their less-than-nice things to say about those weekly memes of mine recently…one even called them “boring.” (I didn’t think his blog was boring, but even if I had, I’d have the manners not to say so.)

But anyone who makes such a statement, I’m afraid, is really missing the point of these little features: it’s not about the questions…it’s about the responders!

The point of all of these things is to visit other journals: to explore the blogosphere. These days, those who are playing might represent a chunk of the blogosphere that’s more outside of AOL’s product than it used to be, but that’s all right. You don’t have to play to benefit from clicking links and finding a “hidden gem” of a blog you never knew existed before. Sure, the questions are silly sometimes. But sometimes, a silly question’s answer might reveal more about you. And if a reader who doesn’t want to give answers himself clicks your link and discovers your journal, likes what he sees and becomes a regular reader, that, in my opinion, is a win for everyone concerned.

What, exactly, is wrong with that, silly, boring questions or not?

The quietus — a word that happened to be a recent Merriam-Webster “Word of the Day” that hit my email box at just the right moment to be incredibly useful — has happened. (And in case you’re interested, definition #2 seems particularly appropriate with regard to the original version of this blog.)

Now we move on. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you stay a while.

I’m including this here to preserve my final post over at AOL:

Many have been asking for something “official” from AOL on the banners. Tonight, we got it.

The official statement comes from Bill Schreiner, VP for AOL Community Programming and it appears in Joe’s journal, “Magic Smoke,” here.

If you haven’t read it, yet, you likely won’t be happy. In a nutshell, the ads are staying, they’re not ashamed of the fact that advertising is an important part of their revenue, and they wish they could have a “do-over” when it comes to “the way this was communicated.”

I’d like a do-over as well…I’d like a do-over on the years of subscriber fees I paid to AOL despite my growing dissatisfaction with them, just so I could keep this journal here. Not that my neighbors in J-land weren’t worth it, but if I knew then what I know tonight, I might have tried to get a bunch of us to a different landlord.

In any case, we’ve gotten the word from on high. That’s it. In the back of our minds, we might have believed that’s where AOL stood. Now, we know for sure.

It’s time to evaulate things. Some journal writers are staying, some are going. And I hope those who have temporarily gone private or on hiatus will consider the statement and make a judgement based on what they think about it: either stay here or move elsewhere…but one way or the other, start writing again. Soon. The blogosphere needs you.

AOL has made our bed, and now we must lie in it, or find another bed. At this late date, it really is that simple. I wouldn’t presume to tell you which you should do: that should — and must — be up to you. Don’t make any decision because of what someone else is doing: do what you feel is right for you and I’ll respect your choice. I expect the same courtesy; if you can’t grant it, I don’t think we have much else to discuss, anyway, do we?

To those who are moving, I hope you’ll let me know where you’re moving. And those of you with journals I’ve regularly visitedwho are staying, I’ll keep visiting. I’ll even try to leave comments a little more often, just so you know I’ve been there. I hope you’ll adjust your browser subtlely enough to visit me at the “other” place.

There’s no tearful farewell intended here…I’m not going to tell you how much I’ll “miss” you: I have every intention of continuing to visit as I’ve done in the past. The fact that a lot of us became online friends within the AOL Journals product does not mean that we cannot maintain those relationships across other brands…if both sides really believe the relationship is worth it.

And for those who still maintain that you won’t visit any of us who would move outside of AOL, whether out of some odd, unreturned loyalty to AOL or because you think you have been “betrayed” by those of us who have done our best to make a decision that we feel is best for us (and that you happen to disagree with), I will offer this response from a familiar source:

“We’re sorry this change has affected the way you feel about us. We thank you for the contribution you made while you were here. We will miss your words. We will miss your passion.”

There. That about covers that, I think.

In the meantime, and if you don’t mind, as soon as possible, I strongly suggest that those of you who’d like to keep visiting “Patrick’s Place” update your bookmarks to this location.

As I said at the beginning of this post, in a reference to the finale of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” this isn’t intended to be a sad farewell. It’s not the “end of an era.” It’s not some “painfull loss” to AOL J-land. It’s not any of those other clichés one might select.

It’s just a relocation. That’s all it is.

I’m still me…talents and foibles, interesting points and minutiae…and now, with a different URL.

AOL J-land will go on with little notice of our departure, because those who choose to stay have a new reason to make it better than it ever was before. And believe it or not, I hope they succeed: since I’ll still be visiting some of my friends here from time to time, I have a vested interest in their continued success and growth.

Whether you’re here for the first time or whether this is a return visit… Welcome.

NOTE: I have reworked this to clarify the positions of those who commented on the previous entry. I apologize if the earlier version left any confusion about the commenters’ positions on this situation.

Three of my favorite former AOL journalers, Armand, Jennifer, and Karen, have sounded off about my last entry for various reasons. They do not necessarily blame John and Joe, in whole or in part, but each expressed their thoughts about the entry, in which I said:

“This is an AOL problem. If you want a person to blame, you’re already off on the wrong foot. There’s no one person. Blame the mentality that said, “Hey, we’ve got this good thing going with journals…let’s try to make another buck on it.” Blame the journal writers themselves who have made AOL J-land such a successful entity that advertisers would consider buying ads there.”

Armand says that statement is like blaming the “scantily clad woman for being raped simply because she turned the guy on.” No doubt my point was an exaggeration, but I don’t compare AOL adding advertisements to its own site to someone sexually assaulting someone else. The latter is a crime; the former is more properly defined as an annoyance.

And I’m not speaking about those who are only fed up with the way Joe and John are responding to the negative response; I’m dealing with those who wish to behave as if either of them is directly responsible for the decision for the ads.

Could John and Joe have handled the situation better? Yes, and I believe both have said so. Could AOL have handled the situation better? Most definitely. Has it said so?

If you’re mad about this and you want to take it out on John and Joe, then you’ll do what you want to do, and as Jennifer pointed out, they are, indeed, big boys and will deal with it.

Since they’re the face of AOL, are they the ones who are likely to receieve the brunt of the complaints? Absolutely. Jennifer says:

“Neither of them is high enough on the food chain to have made or unmade this decision. But as long as their employer continues to shove both of them out there, into the line of fire, without a shred of backup, they’re gonna get pelted.”

But when the attacks get personal, as some have, I think that’s crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. After all that has been said, do you not think that if John and Joe alonewere responsible for this, they wouldn’t have removed the ads and moved on with their lives by now? Whether you respect them professionally or not, getting nasty isn’t going to make the situation better.

In fact, that’s false logic much like the Cindy Sheehan story: Sheehan believes that Bush is a liar. Yet she wants to speak to him to get the “truth” about why her son died. If he’s someone she doesn’t trust, there’s no way she could ever reasonably expect to get a trustworthy answer from him, so her claims that she only wants to meet with him to get the truth don’t make sense. If you think John and Joe are intentionally lying about how much they knew and whether they’re really doing anything to help us, resorting to personal attacks is futile: you’ve already decided they’re not helping…attacking them isn’t likely to suddenly make them your advocate with the powers that be.

Karen, who has stated that she blames neither John nor Joe, had this to say about my use of the word blame:

“I think that “blame” word, as applied to journalers, was a little ill-chosen, n’est-ce pas? I take it what you mean is, we built outselves a nice neighborhood, so naturally, our landlord decided to make some money off it, because that’s the nature of the business.”

Yes. Exactly.

“Blame” was certainly an odd choice of words with respect to the writers themselves. I acknowledge that. I don’t think it was completely inappropriate, because the reality of life is that the more attractive individuals make their community, in real life or online, the more likely those same folks are likely to be targets of exploitation, real or imagined. This isn’t fair, either, but it’s often true.

Shall we really pretend that those talented writers who took those blank templates AOL offered and filled them with thought-provoking, entertaining entries didn’t play a major role in creating the very forum in which AOL is finding success in selling advertisements?

I’m not saying that it’s our fault. We made it what we wanted to make it. We made it what we felt comfortable making it. But had it not been made, there wouldn’t have been nearly the audience for us to then raise hell about the ads! Many of us never thought it would happen, or just assumed that we’d know in advance if it was going to happen. But the point is, had AOL’s journal package not taken off, it wouldn’t be worth it for the advertisers to pay for ads there.

In television, news consultants I’ve dealt with in the past like to compare a newscast to a restaurant. I’ll now adapt that comparison for the journals community and “Black Tuesday:”

Let’s say that we decide to open a restaurant. We choose a nice location and sign the deal with the landlord. In a short time, we create quite a following, and each of us has a different specialty within the kitchen. After two years of building a nice customer base that comes back week after week (although their individual favorites on the menu might change from time to time), the landlord suddenly decides to build this mammoth animated Times Square-esque billboard on the roof of our restaurant. We feel that it destroys the look of our bistrow, or we feel that it’s unfair that we’re not getting a cut of the profits, since we’re the ones who brought people to this building with the food we served. Or we feel that if it’s going on the building where we have our restaurant, we should have a say in which businesses get paraded over our heads. Regardless of our specific complaints, we’re not happy.

Who’s to blame for the billboard going there? The landlord who stuck it there, of course. But the point I was making is that if the restaurant hadn’t served food good to draw enough customers to that location to make it appealing to advertisers, the billboard would never have gone up because it wouldn’t have been worth the effort to place it where no one ever looked.

(I’d like to think that along the way, my AOL blog served up at least a few dishes that were palatable. Lest anyone think I’m suffering from swell-headedness here, I am the first to acknowledge there were far better journals there than mine, and many, many of them.)

Who did the majority of the work in J-land? AOL? Or the Writers? I’m sure the answer depends on who you ask. AOL set up the software, then took more than a year to give us the Journal Editor’s official journal to keep us informed of those things AOL wanted us to be informed about. (Apparently, advance notice about banner ads was not one of them.) We writers were the ones who were adding to the journals, giving visitors, ourselves and outsiders, new things to read day after day.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have made it what we did…I’m just saying that in my opinion, in terms of entertaining content, we built it moreso than AOL did. (And I think even AOL itself wouldn’t have a great deal of trouble acknowledging that, even if they think we’re crazy to want to leave.)

There’s nothing wrong with taking that blank page and starting to write. Instead, I question how much the practice of making personal attacks against people who didn’t have the ultimate decision about sticking the ads there, no matter how much they did or didn’t let us know in advance that it was being considered, will accomplishing.

If you’re going to place blame for those ads, place it with those who put them there. If you really think that John and Joe are the ones who hit the magic button to cause “Black Tuesday,” then you’re going to blame them no matter what I say.

Armand adds:

“I don’t know how many people blame these guys that it happened in the first place - but are angry about their response to the paying customer.If they CHOOSE to continue working for a company they claim ambushed them, then they are CHOOSING to accept the wrath of the angry customer who the Execs are too spineless to face.

If they’re going to feed their families on AOL’s dime, then they’re going to receive the brunt of our anger.”

This is one of those rare instances in which I must respectfully disagree with Armand.

I don’t read into their words the “flippancy” that several of their commenters seem to find. Maybe they are being flippant and I’m too quick to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I think that they’re caught in the middle of this mess and are doing the best they can to relay information — and apparently very little information — from their employer to the customers. I don’t get the sense that they’re happy about the ads. I don’t get the sense that they’re enjoying all the angst that it’s caused. I don’t get the sense that they’re laughing maniacally out of earshot. I think they wish the ads weren’t there. I think they are already pretty sure of what many of us suspect: that the ads aren’t going anywhere. And I think, given that suspicion, minus any “official” statement from AOL, they’re saying about all that they can say.

And just because Joe and John continue their employment with AOL doesn’t give me any additional right to treat them as though they have done what their bosses are. I don’t agree with every decision my bosses make, but I can’t quit my job every time a superior makes what I consider to be a bad call.

I have no doubt that people will continue to “abuse” Joe and John because they are the “easy” targets. But I do not believe that this is a necessarily justified way to proceed and I certainly don’t think it’s the most effective.

In any case, for those who continue to believe that Joe and John are personally responsible, here’s something to consider: If you believe that AOL placed John and Joe in their positions so that they would deflect blame away from the higher-ups who really did make the infamous decision about the ads (and who apparently never bothered to let John and Joe know when the ads would officially begin, thereby preventing them from warning us that it was a done deal); and then, after accepting all of that as true, you spend your time blaming John and Joe, you’ve fallen into the very “trap” you accuse AOL of setting up to begin with, right?

In other words, either John and Joe are scapegoats who have to take the punishment for a bad decision simply by virtue of the fact that they work for the people who made the decision, or they’re the guilty parties who are directly responsible for placing the ads. By definition, they can’t be both at the same time.

Again, I apologize if the original version of this entry left doubts about the position of Armand, Jennifer or Karen. I hope I have clarified all positions in this revision.

For nearly two years, I have maintained my primary journal, also called “Patrick’s Place,” at AOL. For the most part, the journal itself, and the interaction with the readers, has been most pleasant.

This week, completely unannounced, AOL decided to add banner advertisements to all of their journals. (AOL refers to them as journals instead of blogs.) Previously, only journals written and maintained by AIM members (which pay nothing) had these ads. When the creation of AIM journals came earlier this year, it was explained that this would be the primary difference between AIM journals and paid AOL journals. Now, both have the same ads.

This has a lot of people, including me, up in arms. We keep saying, “We pay for the service that others get for free. Why put ads on our journals? You’re already making a profit off of us.”

Many of the long-time journal writers are either deciding how they will proceed, or they are in the process of moving to other services, at which time they will shut down their AOL journals (and in some cases, cancel their AOL accounts) once and for all. There are also some journal writers out there who aren’t at all bothered by the change, and in fact, a few of them have been critical of those who do have a problem with the new policy.

I’ve seen a few comments that basically amount to this:

With all of the real problems in the world, like natural disasters, war, poverty, cancer, AIDS, crime, drugs, etc., why would anyone care what AOL does?

On the surface, that’s a good point. But if you think about it, that’s really a stupid question. Stupid for three reasons.

The first, and most obvious, response to that comment is that no one is trying to equate AOL’s banner ads with any of those terrible plagues upon mankind. Anyone with common sense — and that includes most of those of us who are angry by how AOL has handled this situation — would rate the sudden and unwelcome appearance of banner ads on our blogs as a low priority in the grand scheme of things. Yes…it’s just an ad. Life will go on.

But the second answer to such sentiments is that if I could wipe away war, natural disasters, AIDS, and all of the other problems by making one phone call, I would have made that call a long time ago. When the people making such statements accuse us of comparing apples to oranges, their argument is likewise comparing apples to oranges. This minor problem that AOL has given us can be easily remedied. Those far more important ones can’t. Maybe if all of us who do have such strong issues with AOL’s action deal with that and remove ourselves from that equation, we might be able to let go of our frustration long enough to start thinking about how to fix life’s bigger problems. You have to pick your battles, and this one is a relatively short one.

The third answer is one that obviously alludes those who think we’re making a mountain out of a molehill. These people assume that we’ve never had an unhappy moment with AOL before these ads came along. I speak only for me on this, but I can say that they couldn’t be more wrong!

I have been a paying customer for almost exactly ten years, and most of that time, I have paid an average of $23.90 per month for their dial-up service. Only this year did I venture into high-speed service, which dropped my AOL subscription to $9.90 per month. In any case, if you do the math, I’ve paid a good amount of money to America Online.

In all of that time, my computer platform of choice has been Macintosh. AOL barely supports Mac users. It has been an ongoing thorn in our side — or perhaps we Mac users have been thorns in AOL’s side — and the problems never really get addressed. But I can’t sign on to AOL from my Mac and do the same basic things those with PCs do. I don’t get video feeds. When it comes time to edit my blog, I don’t have full edit controls on AOL’s native browser! To change the font style or size, for example, I have to use a third-party browser. I can’t even do it in HTML, because there’s no tab to switch from Text to HTML in AOL’s native Mac browser. I am unable to take advantage of AOL’s live help because of the same Mac-related browser problems.

And that brings me to another problem: when there is a technical issue, I have had to resort to calling their toll-free number. Since AOL decided to outsource its technical support division, those who call are connected to people who do not speak clear english and are often very difficult to understand. That’s not customer service.

There have been other issues over the past few years that directly relate to AOL journals. One journal writer, Dan, a comic artist, discovered that AOL had deleted all of the graphics in his journal because of a question about one single graphic. I detailed that problem here. When you see the style of his comics, you can begin to understand how ridiculous this is.

Another journal writer, Armand, found that his entire journal had been deleted by AOL’s Terms of Service Community Action Team because they felt he linked to a site with inappropriate content. It turns out, after much investigating, that the link Armand used was a medical reference site for which AOL itself was a primary sponsor!

Even more disturbing is the fact that the deletion of all of Dan’s graphics files and the deletion of Armand’s entire journal are contrary to AOL’s own policy, which dictates that when a complaint is received, their TOS Police are supposed to notify the journal’s owner and make them aware of the problem first.

Then there is another incident I have not mentioned. It occurred just recently. When I produced the Vivi Awards, a special event designed to allow journal readers to recognize journals they felt were deserving of special merit, I created a “private journal” that only Vivi Award nominees could access. It was designed to give them a chance to get information slightly ahead of the general populace. When you create a private journal on AOL, you must manually enter the screen names of those users whom you wish to have access. No other screen names, besides the ones you specify, can access private journals. I entered the screen names of the nominees, then clicked a link on that page that allows me to send an email to those people to let them know they have access to the journal. The hyperlink is on AOL’s journal software: it’s part of AOL’s journals framework.

I sent the email to the nominees, roughly 130 of them, and immediately I was disconnected from AOL and my account was put under lockdown. I had to call customer service, and after being connected to another operator who didn’t speak clear English, it was explained to me that my account had just sent 560 emails, and had been flagged for having sent spam. I explained that I had only sent the emails through AOL’s own system that automatically composes the message and sends it to the users you’ve indicated. This operator assured me that the problem had been that I had picked up a virus, and that the virus explained the extra 400 emails that had suddenly been sent out, and that the same virus also was clever enough to prevent the extra emails my account had allegedly sent from appearing in my “Sent Mail” folder.

But I’m on a Mac. Roughly 90% of the viruses don’t effect Macs because so many people have PCs, most virus writers don’t waste their time with the Mac platform. When I mentioned that, the operator said it might have been spyware. He suggested that I go to AOL’s virus section and have it perform a scan on my machine.

Guess what! Virus scans are only available to PC users! What a shock!

Spyware is even less likely for Mac users than viruses. Both do exist on Macs, but the odds are just very small. Still, I gave AOL the benefit of the doubt. I went to the local Apple Store, bought an Anti-Spyware program, despite the salesperson’s advice that it had to be an AOL problem, and loaded it. At the end of the scan — which took hours — there wasn’t a hint of a virus or spyware on my machine. Not that I was surprised…

If the banner ads were the only problem I’ve had with AOL, I would complain, but I wouldn’t take the drastic step of moving. The banner ads are merely the latest in a long string of customer service failures. That’s why I’m now posting here.

Meanwhile, many of AOL’s journal writers have placed their blogs on hiatus. They say that they will resume regular posting if and when AOL removes the ads. If the ads stay, they say they’re outta there. Some of their readers say things along the lines of this:

I’m tired of people threatening to leave AOL. If they do, I’m not going to read their journals at the alternate sites.

So it’s not okay for AOL’s paying customers to “threaten” to leave, but it is okay for readers to “threaten” to stop reading? Those who know me also know that I don’t do double standards.

The question for these people is this: if you had a friend with whom you enjoyed visiting by cell phone, and that friend had the same cellular provider you did until some unpleasant incident made him switch carriers, would you stop communicating with him just because he wasn’t in the same service plan? If so, you’re not much of a friend.

If I choose to leave AOL completely, that’s my business. It will happen because I will have judged the cost of the service against the level of customer care I receive and satisfaction I have. If the latter do not equal or exceed the former, then the logical thing to do is stop paying for that service. Period.

I hope those who are leaving AOL will not lose great amounts of readers just because they’re somewhere else. That would be unfortunate. But where they blog, much like what they blog about, is their choice, not their readers’. I wish everyone would keep that in mind.

There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to think long and hard about leaving. But once you’ve made that case, if they leave, you should be as willing to assume that their decision was made after careful consideration. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

I have recently received two messages from readers, one in the form of an email and the other in the form of public comment left at “Patrick’s Place 2” that I think should be addressed.

The email reads as follows:

Hi Patrick

I was going to leave you a comment but it couldn’t all fit. Here it is. Feel free to address any of it if you like as if it were a comment all could see.

Hi Patrick

You bet there is a dark cloud hanging over the land. It didn’t start last week with what happened to Armand, it has been present since last autumn…when long established journalers began to disappear. People will come and go, but in about a four month spread I counted at least 10 people gone. No doubt a number of reasons played into their decisions, and I don’t hold any ill will toward those who have left, but I did notice a general drop in morale. The election time was rough, and not everyone behaved themselves as well they could, again I am not the behavior police, but if you are jogging through the neighborhood and there is back stabbing and mean spirited comments here and there…it promotes a morale problem. This thing that has happened to Armand has me concerned, recent issues on my own journal have me concerned, I feel like I have been in some sort of transition for a very long time. The situation with Mara being taken down as a Journal Editor’s Top 5 pick because she used a bad word, the situation with Dan Wheeler, and on and on and on. Speaking for myself here…I don’t know what will fix the MANY questions and problems that started months ago, and as much as I feel bad about what happened to Armand, and I am sincere about that, I don’t know that the constant dwelling on the subject with no new info helps us feel any better. The constant pondering’s of our friends about whether they may or may not jump ship doesn’t help…it makes me want to never jog the neighborhoods I love here in the land because maybe I will find my neighbors all moved in the middle of the night. If I don’t go and visit those I admire…will they still come and visit me? Will I wake up and be completely alone like when I first began Ellipsis and hope someone finds me? Or maybe I am better off it they don’t. Is it ok to say, I can’t do neighborhood jogs anymore because it hurts to see my friends leave but by all means take the time to come and see me. How selfish would THAT be? Maybe there is something to be said for the coldness and non-community feeling of the other blog services. I just want to be a writer, but it’s nice to have friends to share your writing with. people you can count on…but at what personal cost?

Carly

The reason I am dwelling on this situation is not to “rub AOL’s nose” in the mess, nor do I expect any kind of public apology for what has been done. I am simply trying to find out what the rules “officially” are. And that’s a lot easier said than done.

If this were some kind of straw poll, it would show that there are far many supporters in this little drama than those who wish it would go away. But even I wish it would go away…to the extent that I wish it would never have happened in the first place.

Let’s be clear about something: I am not trying to be the “voice” of the AOL Journals’ community. I am not trying to speak for anyone other than me. I am sharing with you what I have been told so far for two reasons:

First, I think it is important information those who journal within the AOL space should be aware of. Second, those of you contemplating contacting AOL on your own should have some warning — in my opinion — of what you will likely be up against. There is no easy way to get answers.

There is definitely a nice sense of community within the AOL journals group, and it is one I would like to remain in. I do not think it unreasonable to make sure that I understand what the rules are so that I can stay; nor do I think it’s unreasonable to question rules for clarity when I am not clear, (or if it seems AOL’s own employees aren’t clear) about the specifics of the rules currently in place.

“Blogger,” from what I can tell so far, doesn’t have much of a sense of community at all. “LiveJournal” seems to have one, but I’m not wild about most of the layout options I’ve seen there.

The point is, I’m not looking for a hosting service with a better community, or even one as good as AOL. I’m merely looking — and have found — service where I can back-up my content. If AOL should decide that “Patrick’s Place” is in some way offensive and violate its own policy by deleting the entire journal without giving me the chance to remove the specific violation, then I will not have lost my journal completely. If I “simulcast” on two different hosting services, that doesn’t mean that I’ve left either community.

I understand the concern about losing people in the “neighborhood.” But even if some of us were to move across town, I have to believe that the friendships formed within the AOL Journals community would transcend AOL itself. That is, people would continue to read each other’s journals no matter where they ended up. We live in a society that is no longer brand loyal. It has been suggested that I am something of an oddity because I have maintained an AOL account for ten years. It is inevitable that some of us will relocate. I would never consider ending a friendship with someone online simply because they moved their journal. Those who have kindly suggested that they would follow me hopefully know the feeling is mutual.

The comment at “Patrick’s Place 2” reads:

I usually enjoy visiting your journal. I recently started participating in your “Saturday Six.” But I will not do so here. I know my opionion may not matter to you~ and I don’t care. I know that AOL did something that may be “unforgivable” to some, especially you, but truly, to up and leave AOL journals and all of the faithful readers you have their IMO is quite childish. Get over it. Things happen. Not everything has an explanation. I agree AOL has SOME customer service issues… several in fact… but you are dragging this out and making a big deal out of something that did not even happen TO YOU. I understand your concern. So does everyone else. But be an adult. Keep asking questions to get the same answers (none) if that makes you feel better. But at some point you will have to make a choice~ and you will have to move forward with it. Hope I didn’t step on any toes.
Princess Niaylah
http://journals.aol.com/princessniaylah/Justtosay/

The first thing I would say is this: when you call me “quite childish,” tell me that I need to be an adult, suggest that your opinion may not matter to me but that you don’t care whether it does or not, then basically threaten to leave my journal if I make a move from one service to another — a move, incidentally that has not even happened — then it is clear that you do wish to step on toes…mine.

Let’s not play games with pleasantries.

The “Saturday Six” will, hereafter, stay at the AOL version of “Patrick’s Place.” I thought I was clear in the explanation that this was an experiment, not the definite look of things to come. I wanted to see how it would work. That’s all. If you can’t forgive me for making one experiment, then I’ve clearly already lost you as a reader. Too bad.

My question is, why would you enjoy — and play — the “Saturday Six” at the AOL journal, but not be remotely interested in playing if the same content was on a different blog? My identity for my readers shouldn’t be “AOL” or “Blogger,” but rather “Patrick.” I wouldn’t change anything about my writing style depending on who was hosting my blog. Does this mean that if I moved my journal — at some point in the future — to my own website, you’d stop visiting there, too? Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction on your part? (I’ll do you the courtesy of not calling your logic “childish.”)

If your favorite musician had always published their music with American Gramaphone Records, then signed a new deal to publish future albums with Capitol Records, would you stop listening to them? How is their identity defined by the company that distributes their song?

My point here is that you either like what I have to say or you don’t.

It’s as simple as that.

If you disagree with me and wish to take the time to say so in a comment, that’s fine: I’d be happy to read it. If you take offense to something I’ve written and decide never to come back, I might eventually notice that you were no longer leaving comments (if you ever had) and might wonder why. But there are plenty of lurkers who read for months and never leave a comment; I might just as well think that you were one of them. But if you really do enjoy this journal and my take on things, it shouldn’t matter where I host those views.

Why would you call me “childish” if I were to leave AOL, then turn around and tell me that if I did so, you would be leaving my journal? Isn’t it the same thing? If I’m wrong to leave AOL over this, isn’t it as wrong for you to leave me as a reader because my address changed? I don’t understand the difference.

I do not consider it “abandoning” my readers when I make clear what the alternate journal’s address is. I would consider “abandonment” a case of me cancelling my account, deleting everything overnight, and telling no one where I’d gone. That won’t happen…unless AOL kills my account without giving me the chance to mention a forwarding address.

The only “abandonment” implied in the comment is the reader’s abandonment of me. And I must wonder why that would happen.

And one final note: as I have tried to explain before, though I am not Armand, and that my journal wasn’t deleted, if AOL employees do not have a clear understanding of what does and doesn’t constitute a TOS violation — not to mention the normal procedure for investigating an alleged violation — and if we can’t get clear definitions of what a violation and the proper procedure is, then how can we assume that we couldn’t be next? Are we supposed to just go on as if nothing happened and pretend that we couldn’t sign on some day and find that the same thing had happened to us?

Sorry, I value the work I put into this journal, and those of you who share the AOL community with me, to simply walk around in rose colored glasses and pretend that everything is as it always was. If that in itself makes you want to stop reading, then I’m very sorry to have lost you as a member of my audience. I can only ask that you give it some time and visit again one day. I promise that I do not intend to talk about this forever.