hontou ni
22Mar/069

The End of Animeblogelion

From time to time, anime bloggers have halted their quests for anime instrumentality - common reasons include "No time!", "Hobby has become like work!", "Nothing worth to blog about...", "Does anyone even read what I write?", "I've been arrested by the RCMP" and so on... Out there in the vastness of the internet, one spies the traces of abandoned, derelict anime blogs. A blog is very personal thing and each blogger has the right to do whatever he or she pleases with it. However there are a few things I consider to be ideal, in my own personal view, for an anime blogger to do when hanging up the ole keyboard.

Do sign off with a farewell post. I just find it a little depressing to see blogs with a 'business as usual' type post that was dated over a year ago. If one feels that saying goodbye, farewell is too definitive, then a long hiatus announcement. Your regular readers will appreciate this and also gives them the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings about your decision.

Do leave your archive up. This is probably the biggest thing on my wish list. Other blogs might have linked to your posts, premising their own writing on something that you've written or screencap. Breaking the links damages the knowledge infrastructure as well as the social fabric of animeblogdom. As bloggers come and go, it is reassuring to know that the cumulative thoughts and musings of past bloggers can continue to be referred to. Unless, of course, your blog contains vital evidence against you and you have to delete all traces of it before the Mounties break down your door. If you host your own blog and are giving up your domain with the consequent loss of all the data, do consider entrusting your database to another member or group of the community.

Do continue to comment on the other anime blogs if one hasn't given up on watching anime altogether. I've put this in because I am a total comment whore and would just like to keep the numbers of potential commenters up. :P

Do consider coming back. Giving up anime blogging and one's anime blog should not be a one way ticket. It might be a relief not to have the pressure of episode-by-episode blogging but then again there are those of us who will still feel the itch to say something that comment fields can't fully accommodate and can't centralise as a space and platform of your own. And perhaps do things differently in a new incarnation: An excellent pioneering example of Death and Rebirth being Jeff Lawson's nowhere to hop step jump!.

Well, this turned out to be rather shorter than I expected. Anime blogs may all have to die one day but they needn't fade away.

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  1. deftoned
    March 22nd, 2006 - 01:31

    Nice post! I hung up my keyboard after a short run mainly because of the time constraints. I’ve considered starting up again because I’ve had so much I’ve wanted to rant about, but haven’t decided on it yet. I left everything I wrote up because I was looking at it as a really long hiatus instead of of completely shutting down, plus I know of a couple people that have linked to it. I may very well jump back in one of these days… I just have too much to spew about for only a few people. I agree with comments… in fact I see a lot of great ideas in comments moreso than entries many times. Blogsuki is pure greatness, so everyday I’m temped to jump back onto the bandwagon.. :)

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  2. moyism
    March 22nd, 2006 - 02:59

    Good post. I find it kind of funny based on the stuff I’m currently working on this week. Timing couldn’t be better I guess? hehe

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  3. Problematic
    March 22nd, 2006 - 05:56

    Zyl- you aren’t thinking of quitting right? T_T Weird, I wonder what brought on this post…is it foreshadowing? :( Haha jk…but I completely agree it’s just mean to leave without saying bye first. I would never quit without explaining to everyone why first, so essentially I agree with everything you just said above.

    OOO Guess who’s back? Another animeblogger has decided to blog again!

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  4. Zyl
    March 22nd, 2006 - 13:14

    deftoned – Some comments are just so funny or insightful that they’re the most popular linked items! e.g. Mentar on Mai HiME.

    moyism – My three ‘banzai’s were in Kimura voice. ;)

    Problematic – I can understand why some people don’t sign off because the thought of looking at the blog itself can be incredibly pressuring or that it just pales in significance compared to RL events. Coursework and deadlines have also been orz-inducing lately but anime is easily the biggest source of entertainment for me so I do hope to go on and on.

    Btw, what on earth has happened to Albert Elegance (moetry)?

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  6. Zyl
    March 22nd, 2006 - 15:33

    Thanks, moy! Phew, thought he’d been busted by the Alberto Gonzales posse or something. And looks like the fashion is to use subdomains – which my hosting plan doesn’t allow for. T_T

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  7. Sheldon
    March 22nd, 2006 - 17:51

    This is a good and very informative post. I started my blog in the beginning of this year and from time to time I was thinking about quitting coz I don’t get any comments on my post. I have links to well-known as well as rotation sites, but I still didn’t get any comments. Plus as a college student I didn’t have the time or was to tired to do a post. Eariler this week I got a comment about a previous post I did and I decide to keep on going with it and do a post at least three time a week. I also looked at the archives of some popular blog and at the time these blogger started they wasn’t getting that much feedback too. So I just keep on doing this of about a few more months or so. Also I think instead of doing a episode by episode posts of anime, I just do a post with about 2 or 4 episodes of a certain anime.

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  8. Anga
    March 22nd, 2006 - 18:37

    Comments are funny thing, person who don’t have blog don’t probably know how much it raise motivation to do posts. I know i didn’t before. At one point i was almost ready to give up since blogging felt like i just talked to the walls. And i had to make choice because of little free time, online game i played or blogging. It was comments why i chose blogging. Even if it’s just one short sentence value is still high.

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  9. Zyl
    March 22nd, 2006 - 23:31

    Hmm… looks like the subject of comments is another hot area for further discussion. At the start, sustaining readership interest probably helps as only a percentage of readers are likely to comment so a larger pool of readers increases the chance that some will comment. And posting regularly is a major factor in sustaining that traffic – particularly if you get most of your traffic from aggregators or RSS feeds. I find that, after a while, active blogs tend to attract a pool of regular commenters who have established a rapport with the blog author(s). Being social i.e. giving thoughtful/interesting/ funny comments at other blogs will also help garner interest and publicity from within the animeblogger community thus increasing blogroll and post links.

    However my larger point would that while comments do provide useful extrinsic motivation (you blog because readers enjoy it), IMHO it’s really more important to have intrinsic motivation (you blog because you enjoy it). The latter, based on interest in anime and interest in discussing anime, can be enhanced in a few ways – by feeling that one is making a distinct contribution to the wider community (i.e. don’t reinvent the wheel); by focusing on a particular genre, character, studio, seiyuu etc. which will build up one’s reputation for being a certain type of specialist fan and that attracts others who share one’s interests (i.e. find a niche). To be sure, both intrinsic and extrinsic complement each other but it’s just that if I’m not really enjoying blogging, then it’s unlikely that my readers will enjoy it – and thus be less likely to comment.

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