It is said that no one ever faces death wishing they had spent more time at the office. I don't know who said that, but it made me realize two really important things:
1. That person must have had a really crappy job.
2. Perhaps we will lament in the future over our inattentiveness to this establishment, but in order to rectify the situation, we need to resort to something other than guilt trips as they have proved to be ineffective on previous occasions.
Too many of our members must view the blog as something akin to the office. Blogging becomes a duty, and something that must be done regardless of if we feel we have anything useful to say at all. (Reference my Spring Break 2004 Posts) Surely the caliber of the posts is not suffering, as evidenced by some very heart-warming posts on the front page. We lack, however, the wackiness that so characterized us when we started many years ago. Perhaps it is the lack of social interaction amongst the members. Due to geographic limitations, this is unavoidable. Manteca points to spin offs as the primary culprit of our current state. (in the doldrums.) I must whole heartedly agree. Xanga, Facebook, My Space, and even other Blogger sites have robbed us of our talent base, and spread our once impressive membership way too thin.
It is, of course, much easier to complain about the subject than it is to do anything about it. Indeed, barring a failure of the networks on which the spin offs reside, we have little hope of having the projects canceled (although eRIc's xanga suspension is still a subject of intrigue, and indeed, a possible glimmer of hope) His failure to return following the suspension sets a dangerous precedent if this would indeed happen to the rest. If not for this, I would consider recommending a good, old fashioned server hack by means of a joystick. Logically, the only thing we can do to entice our members to return is to raise the bar ourselves. I enjoy a good political discussion as much as the next person, and indeed it warms my heart to see the conservative postings of Matthew which were at one time unjustly deferred to the Convogivoginators, but much of our previous readership (and our previous posters) enjoyed more topical posts. My own views on political posts notwithstanding, perhaps we should make a more concerted effort to entice our membership back, and not just rely on guilt trips. (I've been guilty of that too...) Just my thoughts, now here's change for your penny.
Jeff C.
