September 27, 2007

Blogger is Buggered?

Well, three posts in a row about Blogger is a little unusual, but I think this is merited.

From time to time I amuse myself by following the "Next Blog" links to get an idea of what was going on in the blog stream. If today's experience is typical then about one blog in three is complete spam, obscured by a pop-up ad window and full of links to pornographic sites. It seems clear that nobody is exercising any kind of critical control over Blogger content, and frankly it's got to the point where I am no longer sure I want to be associated with it.

I've been a web use for a long time, and it saddens me to see a potentially fantastic medium ruined by the swarms of lowest-common-denominator advertiser scum. If this is "what the people want" then they are welcome to it. I really don't think Blogger are doing themselves any favors by letting this situation continue.

5 comments:

Paddy3118 said...

Any thoughts on an Alternative?

The few times I've commented on wordpress sites have shown that to not support Python indenting too.

- Paddy.

Anonymous said...

One simple hack is you can change your links in your template to always include #header at the end of your links:

http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/#header

Over the last three years, I moved my blog from blogger to Wordpress to pyblosxom. They all have strengths and weaknesses, but I am happiest with pyblosxom at the moment.

Steve said...

Paddy: no thoughts yet, but if necessary I will just migrate to my own web site (www.holdenweb.com).

Zeth: I'm not complaining about the content or presentation of my blog, but the way having it hosted on blogspot.com makes it "crappy by association" - the whole site would appear to be going rapidly downhill in terms of content. I'm not sure what linking to the header of a page is supposed to improve.

Christopher Armstrong said...

On a whim I just clicked "Next Blog" on my own site. I don't have to describe what I saw, but it was offensive to say the least.

This is my biggest problem related to what you describe in your post. I don't mind so much that my blog is hosted at the same site. I just don't want any direct links on my web site directly to various horrible pornography.

I wonder if there is a petition or some sort of movement to get Google to drop this linking. I think I'll look around and try to make myself heard.

Steve said...

Thanks, Christopher, it's the linking that I object to as well. I don't want people getting to that stuff from my blog, and would happily check a "noi adult content" box on my blog configuration if required to do so.