Outsider banned from Austinbloggers.org
This is a quick note to those readers who have discovered us through the Austin Bloggers metablog. We have apparently been banned from posting on that site. Although, we’ve asked for an explanation but haven’t received an answer, so your guess is as good as ours. We were, however, locked out shortly after posting this.
It’s not a huge deal, because you can still read everything here on the site, but we did enjoy feeling like we were a part of the Austin blog community for a brief time. Oh well, we didn’t title this site Austin Outsider for nothing…
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
There were some draft guidelines the people who run the site were proposing for the metablog. I think this could be the one that applies to your site: “Do not post the entire contents of your site to the metablog–even if every article you blog falls within our charter. In this case, just pick a few of your best articles and post them here. If people like what they see they will follow through to your blog and bookmark or subscribe to your site.”
Yeah, we were beginning to get a vague sense of what their guidelines were, but after they mentioned not posting everything, we cut it back to about 25% of our posts, if that. Anyway, it’s cool, it was just fun being a part of the official Austin blog world for awhile. It would be great if they made it a little more clear somewhere or at least gave an explanation for when they decided to lock a blog out.
I had a post pulled from their site. It was about Strayhorn’s signature campaign. She’s a longtime Austinite but they said it was outside their charter because it wasn’t about Austin or Austin people. Go figure. Perhaps my politics were wrong.
Well, that’s not exactly being banned without explanation is it? FWIW, posts about celebrity sightings were specifically mentioned in the discussions about the posting guidelines if you’d chosen to participate.
I am cool with them controlling the content that they post and anytime they told me a post didn’t fit their guidelines I was cool with it.
But I was never told anything about celebrity sightings nor was I invited to participate in any discussion about posting guidelines. And I still haven’t received any response to my e-mail asking why our account was locked.
Wel, could someone explain why they banned me too without telling me why, despite my repeated requests?
-Queen of Sky
AustinGossip.com
What’s the point of having a “metablog” if it only lets in a fraction of Austin blog content? If you judged the Austin blogosphere by reading Austin Bloggers you’d think it consisted of nothing more than Burnt Orange, Boondoggle and Austin Hip-Hop Scene.
Ed, that’s the point of some of the posting guidelines. Boondoggle prompted the development of the stated guidelines, since Sal was clearly abusing the site. I’ve got to say that when this site was launched, it also posted all or nearly all of its posts to Austin Bloggers. And, yes, the local-politics-only rule was meant to address sites like Burnt Orange Report. I’m not the one doing the moderation, I don’t think that austingossip or Austinoutsider were being frugal in their posts to the site or respectful of the site’s intentions. It was created primarily for people with personal blogs to share their Austin experiences.
admin (why don’t you use at least a handle?) my point is that you can’t really claim that there’s “no explanation,” just because Chip or whoever isn’t emailing you back as fast as you’d like. You had a sense of the norms of the site, and you knew you were on thin ice. Why not respect his project, instead of pushing the envelope? Chip does this in his spare time, while you’re running ads, presumably to turn a profit.
Oh, so sites with ads are not allowed to post on the Meta-Blog? WHERE ARE THESE “STATED GUIDELINES”, PLEASE?
Changed my handle for clarity.
McChris - Your comments are very lucid. Like I said, I like Austin Bloggers a lot. I actually didn’t have a sense that I was on thin ice. When I got e-mails from Chip saying certain posts were cool and others were not, I always tried to adjust accordingly. This is a very part-time thing for me as well and the BlogAds are mainly there so I can promote my own projects and projects by contributors.
Anyway, this has definitely become a bigger deal than I intended. There are no hard feelings on my end.
I’m also curious about where one goes to find the stated guidelines.
They changed their post ping recently, guys. Have you double-checked to make sure you’re using the right one? All of my stuff’s going through, and I’m a cranky bastard.
Looks like I must be blackballed also. My latest post disappeared into a black hole. The trackback returned no error, but my post never appeared.
I have posted probably 10 times total before without any problem. I post about once a month. Always a restaurant review. They always appeared immediately.
Strange.
Cool…
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