"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A Note to Blogger...feel free to join in.

Dear Blogger:

This week-end I finally figured out how to "unfollow" blogs I had previous followed. The process was time-consuming and tedious.  But I did it. I went to everyone of the blogs I was following, signed in, and unfollowed if the blog was no longer current. You'd be surprised how many blogs that was, over 1/3rd! That was 120+ of the 350 I followed. That's a lot.

I understand when a person decides that blogging is no longer their thing or they need to take a hiatus. I am not faulting the 120 that stopped. But I think there are a few things that you, BLOGGER, could do to help us FOLLOWERS.
  • Several of the blogs have had no activity for over a year, a few have been inactive for over two. My suggestion, when a blog reaches 6 months of activity, Blogger should contact all the Follwers and give out the directions for how to "unfollow." Better yet, just unfollow them for us. But, at the very least, do a color coded system on the blog roll. Black=active; Blue= no activity for 3-6 months; Red= over 6 months inactivity. That would be helpful.
  • Three or four of the blogs had been hijacked by other businesses.  I had no way of unfollowing these sites and now I am being SPAMMED with information every time they update with information that I never signed up to receive.  How do I officially complain about these? And why is that possible?
  • A few of the blogs have changed their settings so that they no longer display GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT button.  How do I "unfollow" if they have removed that button? The directions I found do not address this.
  • Some bloggers kindly said good-bye, closed their blog, and redirected us to another spot. Now am I stuck being a FOLLOWER of a dead blog? How do I "unfollow" something that no longer exists? Another suggestion here: when a person actually closes their blog, BLOGGER should automatically purge all names from the follower list. That seems only fair. Either that or give us a GARBAGE BUTTON next to each blog that we follow on our Blog Roll.  That would make "unfollowing" possible even when blogs have been killed by the author. Please, pretty please.  A garbage button would be awesome.
That's about it.  I sure hope to hear back from you, BLOGGER, with answers to my questions.  I do love blogging and I enjoy having followers, I just hope that you can help make the whole following/unfollowing process a bit better.

Thanks for your consideration.


 

 PS:  Followers: please make comments on this blog that you would like to address to BLOGGER yourself. Hopefully we can get some response to our questions and our issues addressed.

10 comments:

  1. The garbage button sounds really good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. In google reader, if you click on "trends" you can see "inactive" blogs -- it shows you the last day they posted, with the longest ago listed first. There's a trash can next to them that you can quickly "unfollow." Now, the problem is that the trash can think in reader, in my experience, doesn't always work. THIS is a problem that has been posted many many times on different forums, with no resulting solution from reader. It's worth a try though. At lease you can easity get a list of blogs you follow that haven't posted for a long time.

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    Replies
    1. That you, Annette. I just followed how Blogger suggested that I unfollow blogs and it said to go to each blog and sign in. What a time-wasting effort. I did what you suggested and was able to "garage" those blogs that I couldn't get rid of before because of the reasons I outlined. Phew. I was pretty worried about the blogs that had been hijacked by people, often from other countries, to sell products.

      Delete
    2. I tried putting inactive blogs in the trash can through google reader....but they're still showing up in my Dashboard blog list. and if they don't have a display where I can "unfollow" on their site, it doesn't look like I can get rid of them.

      Delete
    3. Bev, you are right. I just went back and checked and all the blogs that I just "garbaged" are still on my list...and those are the ones that I really want off my list. Help.

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  3. Agreed! It is kind of hard to delete.

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  4. Your timing is perfect! I also unfollowed a bunch of out of date blogs, but couldn't unfollow the ones that didn't have Google Friend. Totally annoying

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    Replies
    1. I know. How irritating. It is making me think of not following anyone, but then I would get so out of touch. What to do?

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  5. This is SO true. It's really annoying that you have to unfollow each blog individually. Couldn't they make a "Manage your blogs" page where you can at least check multiple blogs at once to unfollow them? I unfollowed about 100 blogs before and it took FOREVER.

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  6. I third or fourth or whatever the garbage button idea, and some kind of notification for blogs I follow that have 6-12 months inactivity. Definitely a notification for blogs I follow that have been deactivated/deleted.

    Great ideas!

    ReplyDelete

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