Thank you, nice post, very informative. Regards.
Still, I hate the idea that Dare is giving up, that he’s conceding to unnamed forces who are intimidating him into silence.
It could also be that I weighed all the positives of continuing my blog in its current form and all the negatives then decided that the negative column outweighed the positive.
By the way, I asked on Twitter what the benefits continuing my blog would be to ME and I didn’t get an answer from you. The fact that a bunch of people I’ve either never met or barely know will miss my blog isn’t a significant reason to do anything in my book.
I miss Kathy’s blog too :(( I learned so much from her. I still have the “featuritus curve” on my office wall.
I really miss Kathy.
Hopefully this means that Jeff will keep writing here for quite a while - as I visit every day.
I noticed a lot of what Dare speaks of at another blog I read quite a bit - the Old New Thing by Raymond Chen. Whereas his blog used to be a great resource to get the “how and why” of Windows and contained a lot of background information pertaining to Microsoft, now he spends a lot of time pre-emptively addressing the “snark” and utter BS people leave in his comments. It makes for a lot less enjoyable reading when his obvious jadedness is right in your face.
I suppose running a popular blog exposes you to all kinds of people, and on the Internet idiots are a dime a dozen.
“It’s not my place to tell them-- or anyone, really-- what to do.”
This is actually kind of a lie. It’s clear that you don’t feel they should have the choice to abandon their readership. Why don’t you just say that? Instead you’ve sprinkled this lie throughout your post, and it clearly betrays your actual feelings.
Oh, please, don’t compare this to the Kathy Sierra hysterics. I loved her blog, and I fully understand her initial shocked reaction to the abuse she was subjected to, but they were no more than childish, misogynistic, vile and extremely tasteless but alas hardly uncommon ‘jokes’.
I’m glad people still find that kind of crap shocking, but one vile photoshop job and a few demeaning comments on other blogs do not constitute serious ‘death threats’, and is nothing compared to the kind of pressure Dare had to deal with, both personally and professionally.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t discount the way Kathy Sierra personally experienced these events, but she clearly recovered fast enough to initiate a witch hunt against everyone she for some reason held responsible for that episode, settling old scores and ruining other peoples reputation in the process.
For those asking “what did Kathy do to piss them off?”, the answer is “she became more popular than them”. I think this post explains it pretty well:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/08/physics_of_pass.html
I miss her writing too. Her books are great to read too. She was definitely very different in a great amazing way that made me excited to read whatever new post she made. That light is now gone out.
It is sad. I agree. I hope she comes back eventually and hasn’t shut the door forever.
I see a lot of this on YouTube where popular vloggers receive many death threats and are driven off the site. It has become a serious problem there. However, I am surprised that the same sort of thing happens to bloggers and IT professionals.
I expect there are idiots who treat you the same as the other bloggers you mentioned experienced. The world would be a less enjoyable place if you were to stop writing. Thank you for your work.
Jeff I just tried your site in internet explorer 8 beta just to let you know the page formatting doesn’t look correct anymore it justifies the main page much further to the right than IE7.
Also I don’t think this is particularly your website problem but these text boxes are very slow to refresh when using IE8. You have to stop typing for it to show what you have written (takes a few ms). A mouse click in the text box doesn’t put the cursor in the correct position either it puts the pointer further to the left (probably beta bug).
A long time ago I tried to make sure that my “professional identity” and my “internet identity” were thoroughly bifurcated and obfuscated (to the point where I trash my “internet identity” on an annual basis and make a new one). We’re a species that evolved in tiny villages and kin groups, and we don’t have the slightest clue how to behave appropriately when we become a giant anonymous, interconnected mob. Too much of a risk, not enough of a reward. Even just arguing with people on a discussion page of Wikipedia can get unpleasant e-mails to your boss, administrator, adviser, etc. if you aren’t careful. I had one crazy calling up my academic advisor (though he didn’t realize it, as he didn’t know my actual identity) to try and weigh in on a content dispute. Blah. No thanks.
I think part of the problem, which has been touched on above, is that blogging is, at its core, a solo activity.
Which means firstly, that when Kathy Sierra gets worn out with the inevitable blogging weariness, her blog will shut down, unlike a blog maintained by several people, where one can drop out till they recover; and secondly, that work weariness will break her much easier, because she hasn’t got anyone supporting her that can really understand the burden involved with creating something at that kind of rate.
Couple that with the inevitable extra burden faced by anyone in this medium who is not, let’s say, an overweight white Western male with the stereotypical geeky social problems, and it’s incredible that any such blog keeps going at all. It’s fairly impressive that they start.
I was listening to a Penny Arcade podcast where one of the creators asked the other what it must be like to make webcomics alone, without someone else to bounce ideas off. The answer came back: “A Living Hell”.
Jeff, it’s hard to articulate, but Dare has reasons for his choices just as you have reasons for choices in life that may not best inspire or edify others. All that being said, don’t stop blogging before or during your prime (I love your insight), but please don’t wait until you suck. Remember, suck less every year.
As much as it might be ‘silly’ – this is why I keep my internet anonymity, at least to the extent that I never post or use my name or any personally identifiable information about me on my blog.
What I also find funny is that so many of these blogs close because of the amount of beatdown … while my blog certainly isn’t all that popular, for a while I just disabled comments. If people wanted to talk about it, then they did it elsewhere. Obviously that approach won’t work for everyone, but sometimes you can avoid the frothing at the mouth folks by simple ignoring them.
Agreed +n. I am a product manager and my philosophy towards product management is guided by Kathy’s blog more than any other single source. I very deeply and sincerely wish she was still blogging 
I miss Kathy too.
And this is a great example of how to avoid the echo chamber.
Man, I used to read Kathy Sierra’s blog religiously. I loved her stuff. It’s incredibly sad that there are asshats who have to ruin it for everyone else…
I think this attack on Kathy represents the insanity of the egoic mind (see ‘The Power of Now’), which is getting worse and worse. 100 million human beings were murdered in the 20th century. How many do you think will get it in the 21st? Kathy was providing something smart and heart felt and controversial. But there are many sick people in the world, who feel threatened by any woman who demonstrates independence and intelligence. Did you know that the Catholic church murdered about 3 million women during the course of 300 years? They were burned as witches, which meant they showed some sign of independence or creativity. So why should we be surprised if a half dozen males choose to threaten and persecute Kathy for her independence?