Ads on my blog + Forum deletion and other stupid WP decisions

I’ve switched to WP more than half a year ago from the claustrophobic Blogspot (in my opinion, but I don’t hate it there though) with a boat load of enthusiasm. I applauded their efforts against the SOPA bill earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed the features they’ve provided that free users like me can utilize. I’ve ‘met’ so many great people in this community, a few of them were – and still are – influential to me and I’ve got you awesome viewers!

But not because they’ve provided us with these goodies should permit them to put ads on our blogs, at least without our permission. It was earlier this morning when I checked this here site (after I pledged not to come in the first place to fight this addiction) when lo and behold Global Online Degrees offered by the University of Liverpool appears above my header and my Gravatar in the sidebar. Just like that in a second my mood took a drastic turn, call it irrational but I can’t help it.

I like things just as the were; ad-free. Ads, no matter how helpful, on my blog annoys me. It was neat and clean and, if I may say so, to some extent this blog actually looked professional. Not anymore since the ads popped up. I knew, or I thought I knew, that we had a choice weather or not we wanted to put up ads so I haven’t an inkling on what’s going on but I did tweet WordPress asking what they’re up to but I’m not likely to get a reply so later when I’m in the mindset I’ll go over to the forums* and maybe Time Thief or another helpful blogger can clue be in.

UPDATE: I am so so so feeling foolish but the reason for the ads might be due to the ad-blocker on my browser being inactive. I apologize for that. I could have deleted this first half of the post but I though it’s already there. There’s a possibility others might be experiencing this and are shaking their heads in empathy so this is a heads up.

Again, I’m grateful to WP for such a diverse and exciting platform and it isn’t my intention to come off as unappreciative but as a blogger here I think I have some rights.

* – Late last week I was alerted that the Off-Topic and Showcase forums have been deleted without prior notice to the blogging community. I’ve been here for ten months and I haven’t been in that neck of the woods very often but I do know of its significance. This is where blogger actually get to socializing with each other, well out of their own blogs, I’m told it’s like a community meet or something like that and a lot of my friends met each other. The main thing is this social hub has been dismantled for the reason (as I am informed) that the things discussed there could have actually been blog posts – instead of chatting about whatever it is that they are chatting about, that particular matter should be a post from where others should join in the conversation and not in the forum. What they (WordPress) was:

First, we’ll be removing the Off Topic and Showcase forums. Many of the posts in Off Topic could have been blog posts. In place of that forum we’d encourage everyone to write posts, follow your friends, and carry on the conversation through comments.

And this was Pete Horworth’s response:

Yeah great stuff, although we won’t have any friends because there’ll be no Off Topic or Showcase forums for us to meet any. Then they tell us to look here for more Traffic which also doesn’t work if you’re unable to meet anyone. A lot of us don’t want our real life friends reading our blog. A lot of us don’t want to troll through endless tag pages to find anything interesting.

I hear you Pete, and it is not guaranteed that the random reader who pass through your blog and likes your post will click with you. In the forum you interact with people and based on their opinions you decide weather or not you should get to know them more, rather than searching around here and there not finding anything interesting majority of the time, akin to picking out strawberries from prunes blindfolded.

I encourage you to stop by and read Pete’s post about this issue over at The Dark Globe where a few of the contributors there decided to put matter into their own hands, creating The Dark Forum which was originally for Dark Globe followers but is now open to anyone and everyone to use in the hope that it can do something to make up for the one that we’ve been deprived of.

If anyone on the WP Team is reading this I hope you guys can write something up explaining what’s the happenings to everyone and I also dream of you people listening to the pleas of bloggers all around and put back the forums or at least respond to them (some bloggers made topics in forums for this very issue only to have it deleted by WP without reason.Can we not work together to see if we can come to some conclusion that we all agree to.

Don’t we, the bloggers, have a say in all this? This change affects us all weather or not some realize it. Do our opinions, our input not matter to you? If not, then shouldn’t we all pack our bags and head on elsewhere? What is a blogging platform with little or no bloggers there? I understand not everyone would be in agreement with me, but that ‘s fine and I have not reason to pick a fight with you so please don’t get into one with me. If you’ve something to say, do so politely.

*Sighs* I think that will be all for now and I do hope they won’t be doing anything else that would fall in the category of Unsorted Stupid Stuff. If at any point I came off as harsh my excuses are that I couldn’t help it and I had no energy to sugar-coat anything, and really. I’m now aiming to blunt as I can in my posts because the fact is that the world ain’t all lollypops and cotton candy and there aren’t any unicorns pooping rainbows in the clouds so I want to write my feelings as they are, rainbow-pooping-unicorn free.

I appreciate you wonderful wonderful people behind the scenes of WordPress, and I mean this to the bottom of my heart but please take the time to hear us out.

Thank you all for reading, cheers.

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