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« Tribalism and Politics | Main | North Korea » October 11, 2006Five YearsI was there, at the dawn of the age of the blogosphere. It began in the Earth year 2001, shortly after the al Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Yes, today marks the fifth anniversary of this site. One month after the attacks of September 11, having discovered blogs on that ugly day, I decided to throw my own hat into the ring with mixed results. It took about two months for things to really get moving, but by the end of 2001 I'd bought the domain name and started blogging in earnest, generally posting at least once a day for the better part of four years. I took a hiatus in year four before coming back when I decided that I still had more to say (or, perhaps more precisely, I had found new ways to say the same old thing). It has been a fascinating experience. Over the years some really smart people have stopped by to comment (and some really dumb people, but you take the good with the bad), I've had the chance to do things I might never otherwise have done, and I get to pretend I have a voice in the grand national dialogue we rarely actually have in the United States. Along with my work on the Iraq Report over at Winds of Change and my brief stint at Obsidian Wings, I think I at least got my voice out there from time-to-time, and perhaps even made someone think once or twice. There have been frustrations as well. Building an audience for a blog is hard work, and as someone who believes the cream rises to the top, the lack of popularity of this blog has been a great ego check. And not all the people who've come by have been particularly welcome, of course. But those have all been minor things when balanced against the fun I've had doing this over the last five years. Thank you to my readers (hi Dad); I really am honored that you find my work worthwhile enough to read. I hope I can keep things interesting over the next five years. The blogosphere certainly isn't our last, best hope for peace, but I think it's a damn valuable tool when it's used right, and I plan to do my best to contribute a little to that right here. Posted at October 11, 2006 06:13 AM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsCongratulations! Posted by: Enrak at October 11, 2006 07:07 AM Congratulations Andrew, 5 years is pretty long in blogland. I like reading your blog, but building up a commenters community from scratch is hard. You have te be a bit lucky, get a few good links, have some people engaging in a nice discussion, etc. I know really good info blogs that don't have a lot of readers because their writing styles don't appeal, I know pretty hardworking and well writing bloggers that seem to have mainly extremist and dumb commenters, so luck really is part of it too IMHO. Posted by: dutchmarbel at October 11, 2006 12:42 PM Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
