Re: can someone please explain what this blog tagging this is all about?

I'm not familiar with newsgroup posting etiquette, as this is my first ever post - i've only ever lurked previously - so apologies.

dizwell website no longer available

I am rather angry.

Angry at myself for having become too reliant on a resource stored on what is a transient-medium (the web).

Angry at myself for not having forseen the consequences of lack of access to said resource, and taken the necessary steps to compile the useful nuggets of information into my own personal knowledgebase.

Angry at the prospect of henceforth having to cynically treat ALL useful info obtained via web sources as fleeting, and therefore manually, laboriously compile my own knowledgebase rather than simply linking to an external resources (duplication of info seems such a waste of valuable time to me).
This has been a wake-up call of-sorts, but not a welcome one.

And to a certain extent, angry at Howard Rogers. Granted, he has given a huge amount of time and effort to the oracle community.
He has run several websites over the years containing a wealth of information, with lively discussion communities being built up as a result - all websites hosted out of his own pocket.

To withdraw a resource he has created is of course his prerogative.

But to do so without warning, without providing a grace period for users to squirrel away the info they find most valuable, strikes me as poor form.

If you have become disenchanted with the actions of a small proportion of a community, i can sympathise with the "to hell with you all, i shall take no further part" attitude.
At which point i would then expect such a website to be just left as is - no further updates. Or at least left up for a couple of months before mothballing.

To take the action of completely withdrawing a website, and even going to the extent of clearing google web caches to prevent any access to articles seems drastic, almost spiteful.

I would be curious to know if any other long time dizwell site users have been left feeling like they have had the rug pulled from under them?

The crux of his argument seems to be that blog spamming/chaining by the wider oracle community has rendered a site he frequents, useless. He is thus inconvenienced (and deduces that others are likewise inconvenienced).
I would counter that his response of withdrawing his site has also inconvenienced people, albeit a smaller subset of the oracle community, that which uses his site.
Various circular arguments could then be spun out, but my point here is this - how can inconveniencing the dizwell site users resolve his situation?
Are dizwell site users expected to mobilise our forces and extinguish all blog spammers with extreme prejudice? How exactly can we apply pressure to fix things? Should we be expected to try and fix things?

He strikes me as a very principled man, albeit rather mercurial of temperament (his sites have been open and closed, forums opened and closed based on previous issues/annoyances with various factors). He does not seem the type who would simply pull a site, in the hope that he then receives a deluge of mails to reopen it, thus making him feel wanted.

He was good enough to respond to my e-mailed questions regarding the reasons for his course of action, albeit in a rather brusque tone. In my last email i mentioned that i would not be emailing him further to try and get him to change his mind - which i will adhere to. But i feel the need to vent, and given the root cause of his ire it was tempting to use a blog to do so.
But i suppose posting to this newsgroup thread will suffice.

I remain angry and saddened by the course of events. Received on Wed Jan 16 2008 - 08:17:42 CST