Sunday, May 16, 2010

An Open Letter

Dear House Panthers,
Has the time come to fold up our doors here at this blog?
This is not my blog, I just took on the admin functions here - it belongs to all the House Panthers (and their typists) listed on the sidebar.  It just seems we have hit an impasse on posts here.
Now that House Panthers has a Facebook page, should we keep the blog, too?
I cannot make that decision, it needs to be discussed amongst the bloggers.
In my opinion, if we can't have regular posts with regular interaction here, then I would rather close the site than have it sit un-updated, a fodder for spammers.  I try to delete the spam comments as soon as they pop up here, to avoid distraction for the real blogging commenters, but spam comments now number about 5 to 1 compared to real comments now.
What are your thoughts?
Mo (aka NTM)

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16 comments:

Brian's Home Blog said...

Well, I'm not an "official" House Panther so I can't say either. I am on Facebook and can follow you there.

Cory said...

It would make me sad to see this close down, but I can add my panther self to the Facebook page if needed. I feel bad Nigel and I have not contributed that much but we have a hard enough time keeping our one blog going.

We support whatever decision is made.

Purrs, Cory and Nigel

The Island Cats said...

Well, I admit I was pretty good at doing regular posts in the past...but it's been so hard to keep up and do our regular blog too. I sure would be sad to see the blog go away, though...we are following House Panthers on FB, but not everybuddy is on FB...I sure would like to see the blog continue and I'd try to be better about adding a post, even if it's just a picture, but I'll support whatever decision is made...

Ernie

Raymond and Busby said...

I'm not a very regular contributor but my human is on fb and not me. She doesn't intend to put us on fb. I'd like to see the blog stay. Facebook isn't a blog. As for the spam comments, how about either turning the comments feature off or changing the security so they have to be approved before they are published? Since I am probably the newest House Panther, I feel like members with more seniority should decide the blogs fate, but those are my two cents. xo, Raymond

KC and the Giggleman Kitties said...

I feel bad because Sol, Smokey & BJ and I promised numerous times to help out here. And we never did.
I don't know a thing about Facebook, frankly, and don't know how I will get the skills to use it.
But put the four of us: Smokey, BJ and Sol, the black cats of the Sherwood House and their Mom ML down to help.
(Maybe someone could give me some pointers to get started?)

KC and the Giggleman Kitties said...

And Raymond, you may be the newest, but that is an excellent idea.

JEWELGIRLS KATZ said...

As we've spoken previously about the fact that Facebook is this moments "it" social media. It is a new and much faster paced audience. I would
be willing to contribute if you continue the blog or if you have other ideas I would love to hear them. Let me know if I can help in anyway!? :)

jenianddean said...

I know I have been negligent in updating or supporting the House Panthers site. I was also given admin rights when the blog was initially handed over to a few of us, but (excuses time) life got a lot busier for me, and I focused on hopefully getting a few posts on my own blog and maybe a few visits to others. This site kind of got set aside, unfortunately.

Personally, I'd rather have the site remain for people to look back on, and maybe turn off comments if spamming is an issue, or turn on word verification (which isn't perfect, but helps).

I know in the past different cats took certain days. Maybe we should look back at that again.
--Jasper (non-House Panther, typing for his House Panther brother Huggy Bear)

Marg said...

Well we are certainly guilty of not posting. Our assistant has trouble keeping up with all the blogs she visits and doing our blog. But if enough people want to keep this one, we sure will make a bigger effort to write more posts.
We do Facebook too so we can join you there.
It really is too bad to shut it down but we understand.

Lynx217 said...

we would be willing to help however we can, if you wish. just email our bean what you need help with and we'll see if we can help.

Mark's Mews (Marley, Lori, Loki, and Binq) said...

We can make one part of yer question very simple.

We dont DO facebook.

So if you stop blogging, we won't get to read about you anny more. And that would make us very sad.

Mark's Mews (Marley, Lori, Loki, and Binq) said...

Oops we should have mentioned that it is easy to block spammers. Just set your comment moderation to "Moderate". If they attack old posts, just set the moderation to "older than 3 days" or always if they spam new posts.

Don't surrender to them. They win that way. Just thwart them.

Contact us if you need details...

Rascal said...

I'm a negligent House Panther. Unfortunately, I can't even get Mom to update my blog regularly, let alone contribute to this one. We aren't on Facebook and have no plans to be, so that option is out for us. Spam is definitely a problem and seems to be getting worse, but switching to comment moderation seems like a lot of work(?). Maybe find a new volunteer to be admin? Mo you've done an excellent job, but we don't want to burn you out. The other option might be to make this more of a catalog of House Panthers. Each member has a post and we only add new posts as new members join. Kind of like the torties and ginger cats do.

Lynx217 said...

We are more than happy to take over moderation. We can do it from TSB's PDA, so that won't be a problem. We also think that maybe people should just post what's going on in their little corner of the panther-verse as they can, kinda like on NKC. But as we said earlier, any help we can provide, we'll be happy to.

Robyn and The (Mostly) Badass Cat said...

I would be very sad to not at least leave it here for history. Why take it down? If there are no new posts, just leave a link to the FB page.
I am not allowed to have a FB account, because FB removes anipal accounts (they consider them fake) when they come to their attention. So FB isn't the be all for everyone.
I am sorry I cannot pawticipate more, but I would hate to see the blog go away.
Sad purrs,
Pepi

Mr. Hendrix said...

wow, this is a hard one. you've done so much work and we can't ask you to do more. we promised we'd help and then the blurpy came along and i hardly have time to update my own blog or visit friends.

i would hate to lose the whole blog, maybe it can live on as an archive. we took a day to think about how to make this work, and maybe all members should be assigned days. for example, i would post on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month, "fluffysmith" would post on the 1st and 3rd Fridays etc. That way we could set our posts to automatic and could be pre-planned and most days could be covered.

what does everyone else think?

Facebook is good, but like with my blog, my mommy just isn't keeping up the way she wants to.