{"id":2587,"date":"2004-06-15T17:57:13","date_gmt":"2004-06-16T07:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/06\/15\/winer-goes-off-the-deep-end\/"},"modified":"2019-12-10T13:52:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T21:52:13","slug":"winer-goes-off-the-deep-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/06\/15\/winer-goes-off-the-deep-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Winer goes off the deep end"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10806,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/weblog.burningbird.net\\\/archives\\\/2004\\\/06\\\/14\\\/black-and-white&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20060527052602\\\/http:\\\/\\\/weblog.burningbird.net:80\\\/archives\\\/2004\\\/06\\\/14\\\/black-and-white\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 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02:17:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-05-08 02:17:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:10813,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.wired.com\\\/news\\\/culture\\\/0,1284,63856,00.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20070104091625\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.wired.com:80\\\/news\\\/culture\\\/0,1284,63856,00.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 09:07:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-20 21:03:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-20 21:03:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Rather amazing, <a href=\"http:\/\/weblog.burningbird.net\/archives\/2004\/06\/14\/black-and-white\/\" title=\"Black and White\">the things you miss<\/a> when you disappear for a few days.<\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scripting.com\/\" title=\"Scripting News\">Dave Winer<\/a> suddenly decided that due to a number of factors, he could no longer support the weblogs that he, along with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.userland.com\/\" title=\"Userland Software\">Userland Software<\/a>, had been hosting for free under the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogs.com\/\" title=\"Weblogs.com: Recently Updated Weblogs\">weblogs.com<\/a> domain. Rather than do something reasonable, like contact the people about to be affected by the change to warn them or give them time to archive their posts in preparation for a move to a new hosting solution, he simply <a href=\"http:\/\/halleyscomment.blogspot.com\/2004\/06\/blog-murder.html\" title=\"Halley's Comment: Blog Murder\">pulled the plug<\/a>, replacing the affected sites with a <a href=\"http:\/\/old.weblogs.com\/\" title=\"old.weblogs.com\">tersely-worded notice<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  This site is for people with sites that used to be hosted at weblogs.com.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I can&#8217;t afford to host these sites. I don&#8217;t want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements.<\/li>\n<li>There are several commercial Manila hosting companies, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogger.com\/\" title=\"Weblogger.com\">weblogger.com<\/a>. Thomas Creedon maintains a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edithere.com\/directory\/22\/websiteHostingServices\/manila\" title=\"editHere.com: Website Hosting Services > Manila&#8221;>list<\/a> of commercial and free hosting services. If you want to have your site hosted more cheaply, consider the possibility of forming a co-op of some kind.<\/li>\n<li>If you want a copy of your weblogs.com-hosted website, post a comment here, include the URL of the site. Sometime after July 1, 2004, I will export all the requested sites, without their membership groups. You can then download them and do with them as you wish. I won&#8217;t export them before July 1, and this is a one-time offer.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s an  that provides background on the transition.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>: http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/gems\/crimson1\/aboutWeblogsComHosting.mp3 &#8220;.mp3 link, ~3.76Mb&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Jeneane Sessum has <a href=\"http:\/\/allied.blogspot.com\/2004_06_13_allied_archive.html#108726528857935905\" title=\"Typed Transcript of Dave Winer's Audio Post.\">transcribed Dave&#8217;s audio post<\/a>, which (to me) really doesn&#8217;t do that much to clear things up.<\/p>\n<p>What blows my mind about this is not that Winer\/Userland decided to stop providing free hosting services &#8212; that&#8217;s certainly within his\/their right, and to a certain extent, you should expect to get what you pay for. However, his methodology here was flat-out ridiculous, as is his proposed &#8220;solution&#8221;. I have no idea just how many weblogs.com sites were affected by this, but I&#8217;m sure that <em>nobody<\/em> was pleased to see their weblog just suddenly up and disappear, with no method of retrieval beyond kissing Winer&#8217;s ass (he started off the comment thread for the announcement with &#8220;Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining.&#8221;) and hoping that he gets their site exported sometime in the near future (just what sort of timeframe might people be looking at here, anyway? &#8220;Sometime after July 1&#8221; leaves a lot of wiggle room) so that all their past writings don&#8217;t just disappear.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s difficult for me to even conceive of doing something like this. While I don&#8217;t host anywhere near the number of sites that weblogs.com did (whatever that number might be), I do host a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hanscomfamily.com\/\" title=\"The Hanscom Family Weblog\">few<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekmuffin.com\/\" title=\"geek*muffin\">friends<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interalia.org\/\" title=\"Among Other Things\">sites<\/a> for free, and I can&#8217;t imagine simply pulling the plug on their sites. Not only is it an amazingly callous thing to do, but the guilt alone would have me up at night &#8212; and that&#8217;s just for three other people!<\/p>\n<p>But then, I&#8217;m not Dave. Good thing, too, I&#8217;d say &#8212; I&#8217;d hate to have engendered such fear in people that they&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/culture\/0,1284,63856,00.html\" title=\"Thousands of Blogs Fall Silent\">afraid to say anything bad about me<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Some bloggers contacted for comments for this story said they didn&#8217;t want to make disparaging comments about Winer&#8217;s actions, for fear he wouldn&#8217;t provide them copies of their blogs.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;People have been really afraid to discuss this,&#8221; said a New York blogger who asked that his name be withheld. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of concern that any nasty comments will result in Dave not getting around to making a copy of your blog. I think a lot of the politeness and &#8216;We love you, Dave!&#8217; sentiments that you&#8217;re seeing in some Web posts is just pure paranoia.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The biggest lessons to learn from this? I see three.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong><em>Back up regularly.<\/em><\/strong> Make sure that the online copies aren&#8217;t the only copies of your work. Never hurts to be safe.<\/li>\n<li>If at all possible, host on your own server. Don&#8217;t trust your work to a third party &#8212; no matter how trustworthy they may seem, there&#8217;s always the chance that something might go badly in the future.\n<ul>\n<li>Of course, I say this while I post my entire website to TypePad &#8212; a third party &#8212; and as I act as a third party for the friends that I host on my server. Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury, after all. ;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>And lastly&#8230;Dave&#8217;s being an ass.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;Mr.\u00a0Johnson Takes A Bow&#8221; by 12 Rounds from the album <em>My Big Hero<\/em> (1998, 4:03).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s difficult for me to even conceive of doing something like this. While I don&#8217;t host anywhere near the number of sites that weblogs.com did (whatever that number might be), I do host a few friends sites for free, and I can&#8217;t imagine simply pulling the plug on their sites. Not only is it an amazingly callous thing to do, but the guilt alone would have me up at night &mdash; and that&#8217;s just for three other people!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[599],"class_list":["post-2587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}