Not long ago, I wrote a post which commented on the BoingBoing/Violet Blue situation where Violet Blue, a one time contributor to BoingBoing discovered that all of her posts on the site had been unpublished. Today, the NYTimes has an in depth piece which continues the story and the backlash which has come from fans of the site.
After reading the article, it’s worth noting that the unpublishing of Violet’s posts had taken place over one year ago. Only recently has it been discovered that all of her posts were unpublished. Because BoingBoing did not properly address this issue at the time of it taking place, this recent development spurred rumors and conspiracy theories up the ying yang. The backlash of comments have given BoingBoing a chance to reassess their decision to unpublish her posts but so far, her posts have yet to be reinstated on the blog.
By the way, BoingBoing did publish a post back on July 1st which has seemingly cleared the muddy waters.
Here is a quote from the NYTimes article by Jardin who is one of the contributors to Boing Boing.
“Any unpublishing of a statement,” Ms. Jardin said, “can become a really big thing. We are no longer just a small personal blog, obviously, and the way I think about the blog has changed.”
This is the subject that I wanted to discuss with you. They are few and far between, but have any of you been able to turn a mediocre blog into something much bigger? So big in fact that you had to reassess the way you make decisions in relation to the blog? For a small personal blog, you can easily make the decision to just delete someone’s comment or to delete a guest post. But, once you become a big player in the blogosphere with a dedicated following, if you screw up, there is that possibility that if you are not transparent about the situation, your readers will pile on like a mob and let you know about it. Thus, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has managed a blog that has had to go through an experience similar to the one BoingBoing has gone through. How did you handle the pressure, the constant barrage of conspiracies and rumors from your audience?