{"id":1803,"date":"2010-07-28T00:13:17","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T00:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/07\/28\/this_will_be_my_last\/"},"modified":"2010-07-28T00:13:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T00:13:17","slug":"this_will_be_my_last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/07\/28\/this_will_be_my_last\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowing me, knowing you"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Breaking up is never easy, I know, but it’s time to go” – ABBA<\/em>
\nThis will be my last post on Nature Network.
\nI’ve been blogging here since January 2008, and I’ve greatly enjoyed being part of the community. I’ve “met” and become friends (no quotation marks) with some wonderful people, and I’ve had a whole heap of fun. However, there have been several times over the last year when I’ve wondered whether it’s all worth it – as a blogger, not as a commenter, I hasten to add. Some conversations I’ve had over the last few months – some private, other more recent ones on NN (e.g. here,<\/a> here,<\/a> here,<\/a> and here<\/a> ) – have made me realise that really, it’s just not worth it any more.
\nPut simply, the benefits of the status quo should outweigh the drawbacks. And they don’t.
\nHere’s my reasoning:
\nDrawbacks<\/strong>
\nWhen I started blogging here I kept up my original Blogspot blog<\/a> for my many non-science related posts, and almost immediately realised that it takes a great deal of extra effort to compartmentalise my blogging efforts by splitting them over two sites. I usually have a good sense for which ideas belong on which blog, based on category – but then depending on the tone of each individual post, some categories (notably my grant-related posts) get split between the two sites.
\nThere’s also the problem of motivation. Like any blogger, I go through peaks and troughs of activity – sometimes I have more ideas than I have time to post, and at other times I wait weeks for inspiration and motivation to strike. The specific kind of motivation I need in order to write science-related posts waxes and wanes even within that overall variation in output, meaning that if I happen to hit a trough within a trough, I sometimes have so few ideas for posts on this blog that it starts to feel like a chore to keep it up.
\nBesides, the split feels increasingly artificial. There’s not a Scientist-Cath and an Other Interests-Cath – they’re all just different aspects of who I am as a whole. Things would just be so much more natural (not to mention easier) if I was blogging on just one site.
\nSo much for the drawbacks of maintaining two blogs. What about the drawbacks of blogging on a network provided and controlled by a corporate entity?
\nWell, this is another thing I’ve struggled with. I have nothing specific against NPG, but they’re still… The Man. There are always going to be restrictions on my blogging – for good reason, I do understand that – but it still grates. Earlier this year I had the experience of asking permission to write a specific post, and being allowed to include most, but not all, of the features I wanted. Again, I understand the reasons for this – that’s why I asked – but there are no such restrictions on my other blog (compare<\/a> and contrast<\/a>). Plus over there I get control of my header, blogroll, stats, comment policies, and other features (such as my popular “Bragging Rights Central” feature where I quote and link to my favourite comments and posts of the week in the right sidebar).
\nBenefits?<\/strong>
\nWhen people talk about the benefits of blog networks, they usually mention increased traffic and visibility.
\nWell, yesterday’s events confirmed a suspicion that’s been nagging at me for a while.
\nI already knew that I have far, far fewer subscribers to my NN blog’s RSS feed than to my other blog’s feed (based on Google Reader stats). But that’s OK, right? Because it’s a network, so you don’t need RSS! People will find your blog from the main blogs homepage!
\nErm, no<\/a>. It turns out that even other NN bloggers, who know the site and the system, can’t find my blog that way and forget that it’s there.
\nHence my little “if you read this blog, please click through to where I can see some stats” experiment<\/a> yesterday.
\nHere are some graphs showing the relative hits I received from that NN experiment post over 24 hours, compared to the first 24 hour’s worth of hits on the last post on my Blogspot blog<\/a> (the two were written ~8 hours apart and I tweeted both links. According to my j.mp URL shortener stats, the NN post tweet got 50% more clicks than the Blogspot post tweet). My RSS subscriber stats are also shown.
\n\"NNstats\"<\/a>
\nYeah. Not so much of a benefit, eh?
\nThe hits on my recent Blogspot blog post are almost certainly an underestimate, as I don’t know how many of the people who viewed just<\/strong> my main front page over those 24 hours read the post in question, so I didn’t count them. However, I’m confident that I captured every single person who clicked through from NN.
\nA silly post I wrote this morning consisting of a photo of my dental floss has more hits in 8.5 hours than that NN post managed in 24.
\nThe interesting thing is that the majority of the people who clicked through from my NN blog weren’t first-time visitors to my other blog. In fact many of them are frequent visitors and\/or regular commenters. But they don’t comment over here – and I’ve had two people confirm that this is because of the NN login requirements, which I understand are not going to change.
\nConclusion<\/strong>
\nI’m sorry, but the drawbacks of blogging here far outweigh the benefits. It’s clear that the best thing *for me*<\/em> is to consolidate all my blogging on my Blogspot blog, while continuing to read and comment here so that I can enjoy the community and hang out with my friends.
\nThis is not about MT4 – the technical problems will eventually be resolved, I’m sure. This is a personal, selfish, and lazy decision based on what’s right for me.
\nIt’s not you, it’s me. No, really, it’s me.
\nStaying in touch<\/strong>
\nI do >80% of my blog reading through RSS feeds (and the rest through blog rolls), so I’ll still read all the blogs I currently read, and can easily follow them wherever they may wander over the years.
\nIf you’d like to stay in touch (and I really, really hope you will), I’ll be blogging here<\/a>.
\nI’m also on Twitter<\/a>.
\nSee you around… probably tomorrow morning, in the comments… you don’t get rid of me that easily!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Breaking up is never easy, I know, but it’s time to go” – ABBA This will be my last post on Nature Network. I’ve been blogging here since January 2008, and I’ve greatly enjoyed being part of the community. I’ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}