A lengthy update from me on the evolution of my blogging in the last few months, and a related question on which Id love your input: Jonathan Hickman is working this weekend (on top of his *actual* work since its tax season and hes working 70 hours a week right now) to migrate my new blog, Backyard Farmer 101 over to Wordpress. Im excited to get this accomplished so I can really hit go on this new hobby endeavor of mine. However, I do have a concern nagging at me; as those of you who have followed my blogging previously at Mamapundit and Big Good Thing are aware, starting in mid 2012, I suddenly began attracting a large number of comments from new or first time readers leaving comments who in my view (others may disagree) added nothing to the dialogue on my blog beyond actively trying to upset me and provoke me. And they *did* upset me; they upset me so much that after 10-plus years of blogging about topics ranging from what I ate for lunch to how I got thru that awful first year after Henry died to whether we should arm the Syrian opposition, I realized that the stress of wondering what sort of nasty and untrue and embarrassing comment I would discover on my blog the next time I checked in was making me sort of physically ill. This situation played a major part in the end of my regular blogging at Babble, where Id been a featured writer since 2007. I trudged onward on my personal blog a bit longer until this past winter, when my 16 year old showed me a comment on *another* site specifically discussing him, his big sister and their deceased older brother in a very unkind and personal way. I shut my blog down that night. It was gone within the hour. I will never publish a personal blog again, and thats a bummer because not only did I love writing on Mamapundit and Big Good Thing, I loved the friends I made there and the community we created. Did yall know that I met Jon thru Mamapundit? Our first direct contact was when he left a comment on one oft posts there, and I responded. How cool is that? We were also both active members at that time of the community at KnoxBlab, and thats how Jon ended up reading one of my blog posts and leaving the comment that started the conversation were still having every day ;-) So yep, I met my husband thru the community on my blog. Also, so many other bereaved parents have told me that my writing after Henrys death helped them, and I know that being able to write it all down helped me. But I can never do that again. I just cant take the very specific type of meanness that suddenly started (its incredibly weird how suddenly it started) dominating my blog comments just about exactly two years ago. No more personal blog for me. However, as my interest in urban gardening and chicken-keeping has grown and grown over the past 4 years, Jon and I had already been discussing launching a very topical blog for me to enjoy writing specifically about these interests. Whether anyone else would be interested, we had no idea. But we both agreed that Id find it fun to have a hobby blog. And thats how my new blogging project, Backyard Farmer 101 came to be. I started by launching the BYF101 Facebook & Instagram accounts sometime in February, before launching the actual blog. The FB page now has 732 fans, and the IG account already has over 500 followers. Thats not bad! We soft launched v1.0 of the actual BYF101 blog in early March on Googles Blogger platform, and it looks like as of today, the blog has had about 27k pageviews -most uniques - since it went live 3 weeks or so ago, so thats not half bad. The exciting thing for me about those early numbers is that apparently there are some folks out there who may like reading about my misadventures as a bumbling beginner city gardener and chicken-keeper. And even with Bloggers rotten commenting system (I cant comment myself no matter what Ive tried), some readers have started up some little conversations around my first few blog posts. But today (I hope) were moving BYF101 over to Wordpress. That will make it look and read and function much better. The blogs content will remain entirely specific to these topics: my attempts to grow things- both ornamental and edible, keeping backyard poultry, my attempts to preserve and prepare things that I grow to be consumed by my family, and the activities of other urban and suburban mini-farmers around the country. Thats it. If my personal life or family are mentioned or photographed on the blog, it will only be in passing, as well as in a context thats clearly relevant to one of the topics Ive just listed. My hope is that by creating a writing space for myself (I love to write. It makes me happy) thats simply about my little hobby, people who were leavjng comments simply trying to upset or pick at me on my previous blogs for no reason I can figure out will find my content at BYF101 too boring to bother with. On the other hand, Im really excited about working to grow a new audience of readers and commenters at BYF101 so that we can created a fun, civil, smart community around the blog. Im really hoping that some of my awesome longtime readers from Mamapundit and Big Good Thing will also find something of interest at BYF101, and join the conversation there. But honestly, yall. I just cant take dealing with a constant influx of what I saw as pointless meanness on Mamapundit and Big Good Thing following me over to the comments section at my new blog. I cant begin to describe to you how distressing that whole situation eventually became for me. It affected my health and my work and just, everything. Its not that I dont ever want anyone to disagree with me or offer criticism. After more than 10 years of blogging at my own blog and for large commercial sites, I believe I have an established history of engaging in civil, open and self-aware dialogue with dissenting commenters. I have always tried to be extremely polite in my replies to commenters even when the person addressing me was not polite herself. But something changed quite suddenly in spring of 2012 with the tenor and flow of comments I was receiving. They became meaner, and there were so many where the person based critical statements about me personally on facts about my life that they alleged to be true but werent. They became more and more personal every month. The number of substantive comments - positive or dissenting - about the actual subject matter of a particular blog post Id published dwindled and these other very unkind and nitpicky comments grew in volume. It really became an awful stressor for me, and I have no intention of inviting it back into my life or my writing space. So heres the thing; what should I do about a commenting system on Backyard Farmer 101? I am VERY tempted to go with a Facebook-only commenting system just as many commercial and news media sites have done. The downside of this is obvious: if a reader who has something interesting to say doesnt use Facebook, or doesnt want to tie her/his comments on any blog or site to a personal Facebook account, that person wont ever leave a comment on my blog, and thus, wont ever be part of the community I want to create there. On the flip side, Facebooks commenting system is pretty much the best way that exists to discourage trolls. I actually have had two or three instances occur in the last 2 years when someone went to the trouble to create a brand new, fake Facebook account that was clearly only for use in leaving mean comments on my previous blog-related Facebook fan page, which had over 5k fans when I abruptly shut it down at the same time as my blog. However, what others sites and bloggers who have switched to Facebooks commenting system is that it pretty much straight up eliminates the kinds of comments that I found so exhausting and hurtful prior to shutting my old blog down completely, basically just to make them stop. So its a tough call here for me. I know that some of my longtime readers and commenters, with whom I *love* having conversations on my blog, simply wont use a Facebook-based commenting system. Neither will lots of other people. But that group includes most commenters who are only reading my blog because they cant stand me as a blogger, and want to look for ways to slag me with every word I write. Disqus and Intense Debate do offer registration required options with their blog commenting systems, including requiring a valid, unmasked (to me only) email address. However, I wonder (please tell me if you have an opinion) whether readers would be any more likely to register to basically become a member of Backyard Farmer 101, thus allowing them to comment than they would be to use a straight up Facebook-based system. What do you think? Also, its so easy to set up a gmail or yahoo email account in under 90 seconds, meaning that it would be very easy for anyone who cares enough to do it to register to comment and then pick right up where she left off when I shut down Big Good Thing with picking at me for no discernible reason in the comments section of Backyard Farmer101. And again, I am simply not up for that at the moment. So....what do you guys think I should do with settjng up the comments system at Backyard Farmer 101? I await your wise input :-)
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 14:25:40 +0000
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