Monday, January 01, 2007
(2:55 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Winds of Change: A hypothesis
I am beginning to feel the need for a change in my blogging habits. The Weblog seems to me to have come pretty close to meeting its full potential. I don't think I'm writing as well as I once did. I think that's partly because of a variety of constraints: the weekly features, the pressure to maintain this as a "daily" blog rather than an occasional blog, worries about potentially alienating segments of what is a pretty heterogeneous readership. I recognize all of these constraints as self-imposed, but at the same time I can't envision myself breaking from without some type of break -- as I am learning more and more, self-knowledge in itself has only a limited effect on actual behavior.So in short, I'm seriously considering starting a new blog, with a significantly reduced crew. I can't do a solo blog, because at this point it is inconceivable to me that I could have a blog that didn't involve at least Anthony and Brad, and probably a couple others -- but I hope that the rest of the 34 members of The Weblog wouldn't take it personally if they weren't main-page authors at the new one.
Of course, this opens up the question of the status of this page, both as an archive and as an ongoing concern. I know that when Ogged wanted to shut down Unfogged, everyone banded together to maintain the site by adding new authors, etc., but the comment and general community aspects of this site are nowhere near the level of Unfogged. Also, while there has been a lot more participation by non-Kotsko blogging entities of late, I don't know if The Weblog has enough of an identity independent of me for people to want to preserve a substantially post-Kotsko Weblog.
Maybe I'm wrong about that. If someone wants to take up the effort of getting people to do the weekly features and generally trying to close the posting gap that would be left if I stopped posting here regularly, then I'm more than happy to hand out administrator privileges and would even be willing to continue subsidizing the (incredibly cheap) hosting for the near future, six months or so, let's say. Eventually, I would prefer to shift this site over to a Blogspot, which would also provide an opportunity to switch to a URL without my name, but for the initial transition period, it would be nice to stick with the same URL so as to take advantage of the fact that this site has a decent pagerank and is blogrolled fairly widely.
Anyway, these are just musings for now. I don't anticipate making a major change for a month or so at the earliest. In the meantime, please enjoy the Tuesday Hatred stylings of commenter Claire M., in her blogging debut -- and if anyone wants to volunteer to confess for January, let me know. (It would be easier if someone was willing to take the whole month.)
