One of the great shining lights of the blogosphere’s firmament is flickering, maybe terminally so.
I’d hate to see that light go out. Steven Den Beste’s comments section (registration only) was where I first tasted the blogosphere, and from there I was inspired to begin Daily Pundit (originally “The Blogical Suspects,” believe it or not).
For that alone, Steven, you have my thanks. Some bloggers would kill to get as much notice as one email a month. Perhaps only those of us who have been living more or less constantly in the public square for years will understand the reasons underlying your decision. I think I do understand. I feel them myself with varying intensity far more often than I’d like. I won’t attempt to dissuade you.
But I’ll miss you.
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[copied from OT and General Interest]
Damn.
Damn damn damn damn damn.
First Kirk gave it up for an extended time, and now Spock is hanging up his pointy ears indefinitely.
Kirk (aka Bill Whittle) eventually returned, but I fear Spock may not. We (the collective, whole-internet we) have driven him to this — because the brightest flame draws the most moths. And the brighter candles burn down more quickly…
Just…damn.
P.S. Stephen: thanks for the last three years.
P.P.S. Everybody else: Whatever you do, DON’T WRITE him LETTERS. That’s what caused this in the first place. Good letters. Bad letters. Fan mail. Hate mail. DWL for God’s sake!
The sheer amount of quality writing Steven has produced for the last few years is mind-boggling. To have produced it in the pressure-cooker environment of the internet is even more amazing.
Like the effort of producing a daily comic strip grinds down even the best cartoonists (eg: Gary Larson, Bill Watterson), high-profile blogging puts the pressure on every day, with the additional stress of the email and the comments section. It’s like being an air traffic controller.
I sometimes wonder if I would have lasted longer if I’d never yielded to the temptation to open up comments. While they have their good points, they are a tremendous time/energy sink that distracts you from your original essays.
As always, YMMV. You seem to be hanging in there quite well, Bill. (knocks on wood)
Yeah, but keep in mind I once took a three month hiatus for no particular reason other than I was sick of the grind. To my knowledge, Steven has never even had that much of a break.
I’m bummed. USS Clueless has been one of my daily reads for a long time. I knew that Steven would usually have something interesting for me to read. Hopefully he just takes some time off and decides to come back.
I have a suggestion that I would have emailed to Den Beste… but that seems like a bad idea right now.
Actually it’s more like a question, followed by a suggestion. Anyway.
Why do you have to have your email available to every spammer and annoying troll on the internet?
My suggestion is that, if you ever wish to return to blogging, is that you have a trackback function. That is it. No email, no comments. If someone wants to reply to one of your posts, they are free to start their own blog. It’s easy and it’s free, but it would still cut 99% of the DWL out there. And from that small pool, you can choose to pay attention or not, depending on your mood. You will have still brought any objections to your readers, in the blogosphere ethos of extreme openness, and made your email inbox a place to look forward to visiting again.
As blogs grow in popularity, I think that this, or something like it, is the only way that people can keep their sanity for a long time at a high level of popularity. It’s not unreasonable; the burden of communication is just to high once you start getting a lot of hits and are writing about topics that a lot of people think they know a lot about (alternative energy) and cling to their delusions with the fervor of a drowning badger.
Whatever you think of it, I really enjoyed your site, and I learned a lot. I’m sad to see it go. I’ve been reading it for years. Good luck in whatever you do. (And if you want to take the site down, email me or something; I’d like to set up a mirror if it comes to that).
I still check the USS Clueless every day. I’ll probably continue to check it every day, hoping beyond all hope, until it comes up 404 on me.
The day it does, will be a grim day indeed.
Toxic: I’ve sent Steven the same offer, privately, just in case he wants to turn off his server and spare himself the sysadmin hassles, not to mention the bandwidth bills. I suspect, though, that he’s getting similar offers from all over the place. (Not to mention people trying to make copies of his site in the belief that it’s about to go away forever, some of which are actually crashing his server! Not cool!)
Your idea of having him only support Trackbacks might work, but I don’t think the software he uses (CityDesk) supports them.
Well… who knows. All I was saying is that, if contact with the public is driving him away, then the public be damned.