Sunday, October 7, 2018Why This Blog Has Moved |
The Libertarian Astrology Blog formerly resided on the Blogspot platform, owned by Google. I have moved all of the blog's contents here, to my own private domain, into raw HTML format. Here's why, and how some things will henceforth be different: Formatting Flexibility The Blogger platform makes it easy for a blog author to write an article on a whim and then put it at the top of a vertical stack of articles. The reader automatically sees the lastest entry, at the top of the stack, making it easy to see what the blogger has been up to recently. To find past material is somewhat more difficult, as it often involves scrolling and paging down the pile of posts until one finds what one is seeking. Blogger is a simple and elegant interface that assumes that the most recent material is the most relevant to the reader -- a fair assumption for the the reader of blogs that function as public journals or as ongoing news reports or commentary on current events. This blog, however, is those things (somewhat) but also a sort of encyclopia or research archive that undergoes constant updates. For my readers, the most salient material is often not going to be the most recent -- it's going to be the material relevant to a web search on a specific event or astrological topic. The raw HTML format for the main page makes it possible to organize the blog in a somewhat intuitive fashion, by date (as before) but also by topic. For example, it should be somewhat obvious on first glance at the main page for this blog that I have quite a bit of research on mass-murders, ethics scandals, and disappearance events -- something that perhaps would not have been clear to a peruser of this material on the Blogger platform. Censorship Resistance The "Big Social" media companies, of which Google (owner of Blogger) is one, have shown a willingness to censor content for political reasons. These companies lean heavily to the Left, and have been deliberately silencing conservative and libertarian voices on their platforms. Moving this content to my own domain removes some of my vulnerability to this sort of thing. No More Comments (Sorry!) There is no easy way for me to add a public comment section without relying on a third party host (and thereby re-introducing the censorship problem). And, frankly, most of the comments I received on Blogger were "spam", did not provide significant insights on the material, or espoused views with which I do not wish to be publicly associated. The good news here is that I read all the email I receive, and I will probably write back or respond in a future blog post if I hear interesting data or questions from you via email. Write to me at "alan" + "@" + "zot.net". Weblog Index Home |