A Day On The Blogosphere
Yesterday was an interesting day because the source of both our troubles and our ebullience were the same: Blogs!
We came out ahead.
First, we had this ongoing problem of comments getting blocked. Good for keeping the hundreds of spams off of here, bad for customer service. It wasn’t our host’s fault, which meant it was a software problem. At wit’s end, I reluctantly posted a help message at the WordPress.org forums. Since this is free software, there is no help desk and if you can’t find a pro or a tech savvy friend to help, WordPress encourages you to put a thread and hope someone comes around with an answer. I didn’t think this was efficient, but with nothing else to try . . . .
Amazingly, people replied within minutes of our post and the moderator of the board himself chimed in, eventually with the solution. That was so cool!
While waiting for a possible solution, I took the opportunity to peruse incoming links to our humble, months-old blog. These are always interesting. Who doesn’t want to know what others are saying about you?
First was a very nice nice mention and props from Krystle at Crystal Clear Conservative, who I met at the Shad Planking last week. So I left her a thank you. The first time I’ve revealed myself on the blogosphere . . . well, she had blown my cover.
We also had one from Citizen Tom. He said one of our posts was “odd.” Considering it was a post mentioning nothing more than an article, I thought he was odd. Now that I’ve been outed and needing to defend my honor, I posted a comment to him as well. He replied in short order with a rational explanation. No harm, no foul. It’s nice to get clarifications.
Then there was one from our friend Bart Hinkle at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in his Barticles blog. He begins laying the foundation for calling us racists because we support Lisa Miller’s right to sole custody of her daughter. To leave no doubt, in today’s hard copy op-ed page, he does call us racists. Nice! Have no logic or rationality, can’t argue on the merits, resort to name calling. See our response.
We, for some reason, do seem to raise the hackles of several on the blogosphere, while others seem to have the good sense to agree with us. A search on Blognetnews.com/Virginia shows that some people border on obsessive. The way we look at, if they are so busy tracking us, it’s less time for them to wreak more liberal havoc on the rest of us. That alone should earn us a blue ribbon.
But the best part of all yesterday was getting the latest numbers on our readership. Despite all the technical problems we’ve had the last two weeks, y’all keep coming back. The numbers were much higher than we thought (very competitive with the top blogs in Virginia). We’re very proud and very grateful: An ebullient thanks to all of you!
Thank you for the link.
I thought my explanation was clear enough.
There are many things we each might choose to post. The articles you chose surprised me. I would have expected something different.
Tell you what. If you can say whether the Family Foundation supports Jim Gilmore or Bob Marshall (and I doubt you can because of tax laws), then I will provide a more detailed explanation. Otherwise, I expect the discussion would serve no purpose.
Tom – Thanks for the visit! You are right. We cannot and do not endorse candidates because we are a non-profit. As for news articles and blog links about campaigns, we put out what we see as interesting and informative. However, I must say, now I believe I know where you are coming from and what you are getting at.
I am sorry that I blew your cover. I should have e-mailed you to ask first. Please accept my apologies for this error on my end. Unfortunately, I am quite new at the blogging deal. It was great meeting you.
Best,
Krystle
Crystal Clear Conservative
Krystle, please, no apology necessary! I should have put a wink and smile emoticon after that sentence. Now I feel bad! A lot of people had figured out who I was. On our contributors list, there’s three of us, so by process of elimination I can be found out. I attended Lt. Governor Bolling’s bloggers conference and I’ve told many certain people I’m the main writer here (it’s even in my personal e-mail’s signature). When we met I didn’t put any restrictions on you regarding my cloaked ID and I knew you blogged. So, no worries. Some may not put the face with the name, but anyone who wants to know who the bomb thrower here is can pretty much discover who I am. LOL!
Don’t feel bad! It was great meeting you. By the way, this is a great blog.
Likewise, it was great meeting you, too, and I’ve enjoyed your site as well. As with you, we at TFF are new to this blogging thing. We rookies need to stick togther.
We started in October and we greatly appreciate all the nice comments from you and many others. Now that we’ve got our footing and session is over, we’re putting more effort into networking with other bloggers and learning the blogging ropes.