Sunday, January 27, 2008

Bloggolalia: Increase in Protected Sports Blogs

Just a short news item for today. I'm noticing some people are taking their sports blogs private. See, for example, this one and this one. I didn't mention their names, just in case our blogging heroes are going undercover to avoid stalkers. But I'd like to know why they made that choice, if someone knows. (You can e-mail me if you know, and I won't report it if you don't want me too.)

I have wondered if at some point sports blogs will be set to "private" or "protected", thus creating an exclusive community of commenters and blog-writers. It would allow the blog owner to be crazier and feel less concerned about nutty commenters, and the readers would feel privileged to be invited, right? Maybe they'd even pay for the privilege. Just a thought.

10 comments:

  1. The Starting Five is going from wordpress to a .net Friday the 1st.

    We also are incorporating a login feature I feel is necessary because of our content and the candor of our comment section.

    We're not charging anyone for anything, but to become part of our community, you have to login.

    Eliminates the trolls.

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  2. Having a log-in and having it set to invite only seem to be two totally different things. I'm interested to know of the reason as well...

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  3. Yeah, I think protect your comments from trolls is a smart idea, especially if you have a big, or heavily-commented upon, site.

    I don't get keeping your site private, though. It goes against the grain of what we are suppose to think, which is that "hits" are all that matters, and that you want to have the biggest audience possible. The only thing I can imagine is that it's no longer a sports blog, but a personal blog with personal info and pics on it.

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  4. Mike, I actually thought you were another Mike the first time you posted on here, ha. That makes sense for your site; the Internet must be moderated for true success to occur. Ask Google why video.google.com failed while Youtube succeeded. It was because Youtube actively showcased creative talent, while Google just ended up with a lot of dumb commercials on its "top 100 videos" list because that's what sites linked to the most.

    Sarge, JC, SML--I think for both, in the end, they needed to go private to protect their careers/persons. Jen is a pretty girl, and L had a public position but liked to make inappropriate jokes and rants at times. I think they thus both had to close their sites to overly curious outsiders. But maybe there's more to it than that?

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  5. I'm not buying that. Buck and I work high profile gov't jobs and we get away with it rather easily (knocking on wood) by using fake names.....

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  6. You mean Cobra's not really your last name, Jack?!?

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  7. Sheesh, SML, do you also go around telling kids that Santa isn't real? What a killjoy. You've ruined the magic for me! Jack Cobra's REEEEEAAL!!! haha.

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  8. Yeah, the point of these sports blogs is to put your voice out there to the internets and let the masses read and discuss. I see the need for moderating comments when ignorant folk run rampant. But on the note of masking names and such, that's been one of the big arguments against bloggers -- they get to hide behind their blogentity (blogger identity) and spout random accusations and opinions, whereas media folk have their name and reputation on the line for every word they write.

    I say keep it open, and logins are ok so you can kind of moderate it if your site gets out of hand, but not make it a site where you have to know the handshake...

    www.mindritesports.com

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