Monday, December 20, 2010

I'm Not EatingRichmond's Type

It's not them, it's me. I just don't fit in.

You'd think if I was going to be unceremoniously removed from EatingRichmond.com, it would be because I'm not a food blogger. But no, it was my prolificacy that made me a problem.

I kid you not.

I haven't found a solution for keeping your blog on the EatingRichmond aggregator. My web guy is copied on this message. I really think your restaurant visits are addictive reads for Richmond's dining obsessed (including me). So I want to keep it on the site somewhere. If only there was a way for EatingRichmond to subscribe to a weekly digest of I Could Go On and On. Maybe a frequent poster spot is the answer (you don't really have any peers in that category at this point). In the meantime, I've taken your blog off of EatingRichmond until we can figure something out.

Luckily I only get about a hundred readers a day from eatingRichmond, so it's far from the primary way people come to me. But I'd be the first to admit that quite a few of my most regular readers and most frequent commenters discovered me there amongst the true food bloggers.

As Jason told me last March when he was trying to persuade me to put my blog on the site, "All u have to risk is more readers."

Well, that and the heartbreak of being dumped.

Not fitting in seems to be my forte'.

23 comments:

  1. This disturbs me. I think your blog should be on the list. You make sure the posts turnover more quickly than the rest of us and you are always insightful and entertaining. I sincerely hope Jason figures out the bug (or whatever) in the set up. I want you back.

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  2. ye of little faith..press on!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  3. Thank you for that.

    I guess I had been hoping frequency was part of the appeal of my blog.

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  4. well. this is just stupid.
    I've read those other food bloggers, and frankly they vary from being boring to being pompous.
    I love that their solution is to remove you while thinking... bet they can't chew gum and walk at the same time too.

    small town politics suck.

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  5. Agree with PJ. I found you from that site and continue reading you, yet don't go on the eatingrichmond site too much, it's confusing and i'm not sure why they stopped listing all the blogs on the right so that readers had the freedom to choose who they want to read. Write on, girl, we are still reading.

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  6. I think 1-2 posts a day is common in the blogger community, or is in most of the decor/personal/lifestyle blogs I read. I think having you on there served as a challenge to others to post more.

    Frequency is part of the appeal, because we get so much of your life: the food you eat, the shows you attend. I've told you in person, but you are very inspiring and this blog is a huge part of it. I leave the house more now and I can go out alone!

    So please don't let this get you down; you are a wonderful writer and people will continue to find their way to your blog.

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  7. With that said, I'm all for their efforts towards consolidation, regardless of a few organizational glitches, don't be offended, they are trying, at least. cheers,

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  8. I wish I was more prolific (and a better writer) hopefully it works out with the aggregator.

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  9. What exactly was the issue? "too frequent posting' meaning your posts show up on the front page too often? Well, for what it's worth, The Daily Dish didn't need The Atlantic to get traffic--rather it was the other way 'round.

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  10. Initially found your blog from Eating Richmond.com and quickly became a fan. Before they changed the format, I found it easy to pick and choose what I wanted to read. Because to be quite honest, there's slim pickins.

    I agree with Laughing at VCU. Some of those other blogs are just plain boring. Who cares that someone eats oatmeal for breakfast everyday....snore!!!

    The new (but definitely not improved) format is actually more difficult to maneuver. Consequently, I have been bypassing ER.com and going directly to your blog (which I now have bookmarked).

    Karen, people who enjoy your blog will go out of their way to find you. For those of us who look forward to your daily forays, there's just no turning back!

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  11. Laughing:
    As my former boss used to say, it is what it is.

    DrB:
    I really appreciate the vote of confidence. Read on!

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  12. Haha, he took our blog off Eating Richmond altogether, without even letting us know! So don't feel bad. The new site is not good. It's only a way to feature people he wants to feature, and stick the dieters at the bottom.

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  13. Way to call them out. I think it's
    funny how he kept wanting to put you in there, then kick you out because you are more popular than he is.

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  14. As a blogger occasionally included on EatingRichmond and a communications pro, I think Jason is justified to some extent. If a blog is pulling more traffic and bumping other blogs off the site, it isn't necessarily an incentive for the rest of us to write more; to the contrary, it feels like a competition and something that many of us can't surmount. Basically, if one person dominates a community forum on purpose or not, it is no longer a community forum.

    Regardless, it doesn't seem like a personal slight, but more of an effort to balance everyone.

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  15. Paul:
    Agreed. That was the point of my post. I'm the problem.

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  16. YOU'RE THE PROBLEM???? No, my dear, that's not true.
    There are SIX categories & your frequent posting only impact ONE of them. Your fatal flaw was being in the same category as Jason's own blog, thereby pushing down HIS infrequent rants.

    If you had been in any other category, he would not have cared how prolific you were.

    Paul the Pro is mistaken...it very much is personal, its all about Jason.

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  17. I understand your frustration, and I appreciate your blog for its frequent postings. However, I have to say a passive aggressive post about how 'you're the problem' isn't so much constructive as it is pot-stirring.
    Clearly the folks at Eating Richmond are interested in having you on the site but are concerned about making sure that the other bloggers receive exposure as well. I wouldn't wish the headaches of a blog aggregator on anyone - so much ego and grandstanding would make anyone crazy.
    Perhaps you would be better served to work with Eating Richmond to come up with a solution that serves you both. His idea about accessing a weekly feed seems pretty reasonable, don't you think?

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  18. this is totally not about Jason and his ego. I am not saying that he made the best decision to remove this blog from ER, but I know that he didn't do it for his own numbers. He has Twitter and his followers to help promote his stuff. With ER, he saw that something looked unbalanced and he tried to fix it. It was a flaw in the design and/or the technology.

    JB- it is a bold move to question one's motive from a paragraph of text. Is there something more going on here?

    Karen- I totally get why you feel this way. I hope Jason can make it a priority to get a resolution up there quickly.

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  19. onioncloute:

    It seems unfair of you to call me passive-aggressive. My frequency IS the problem and I'm a big girl and I can admit that. I'm not trying to stir the pot; I'm trying to let readers know that I understand that.

    I could also choose to post less and that would solve the problem, but that's not what I want to do with my blog.

    I'm more than happy to work with ER, but I haven't been asked to do that. I'm a writer, not a techie, so I have no knowldge of how to provide a weekly feed. I honestly don't know what I can do to solve this problem.

    And that's not passive-aggressive, that's just fact.

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  20. I found this blog via Eating Richmond as well and I did (and do) count myself a fan. It has been an extraordinary look into Richmond by way of her life and interactions and I hope she keeps at it. I do not know the blogger and cannot presume to call her anything but a good writer but it does seem needlessly "dramatic" to take this approach. Amusing as some of this blogger's self-deprecatory asides are, I find this instance to be a bit less so. It cannot be denied that there was a technical issue that needed to be addressed vis a vis frequency and appropriateness to the existing platform (a work in progress by the way). I'm sorry, but to claim anything but, appears disingenuous at best.

    I'd add that some of the comments above are quite juvenile. Ironically, I remember a torrent of abuse being directed at *this* blog for the very same reason a few months ago. If you dont like what you read, find something else, instead of making derisive comments about it. These are blogs for crying out loud - meant to "log" the authors stream of consciousness - whatever that may be. There is plenty of other reading material online for the naysayers. I'd like to see what spectacular contributions to the internet/blogosphere some above are making before they snore at others.

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  21. pamparius here to say we officially support internet drama of any sort. keep posting and don't let the man get you down.

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  22. Their new layout stinks, looks prettier than before, but lost functionality. That being said I have always checked it, in hopes of interesting blogs about RVA, and most of the time no one is updating but you. They are probably doing a disservice to themselves, at least when you were on the list folks were guaranteed some new content. Maybe they should just have an "I could go on and on" section so your blog doesn't always take over the others due to your frequent or their infrequent posting.

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  23. Since no one is taking the opposite point of view, I will.

    Let me first say that the new ER.com is absolutely awful. NO ONE who would visit that version of it for the first time would come back. What a major miscalculation.

    On to this blog. You are obviously free to (and should) write whatever you want, however you want, as many times as you want. But your blog has zero business being on a food blog aggregator.

    With the frequency at which you blog, and the topics you blog about, how can you be surprised? Whether it's right or wrong, you blog a TON more than anyone else that gets linked thru that site. That means you are dominating the site just because you feel like posting more than anyone else. They probably wouldn't have cared as much if it was mostly a blog about eating in Richmond, but it's not. It's about your life, which no one else there is doing (at least not anything close to this degree).

    Perhaps there is more to it behind the scenes, who knows. If I were you I wouldn't worry about it, the site has signaled its own death knell with that redesign.

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