Still, the whole “it’s not a community if we’re not all happy friends holding hands” mentality gets on my nerves. I’ve even seen a few smaller bloggers mention something along the lines of they don’t feel safe or welcome in the community because of last week’s spat. I do believe that many of those complaining will readily admit they blog to make friends, I don’t think they necessarily want to be the next BRK but liking and being liked by everyone is important to them. (I’m not going to deny that I love having my ego stroked as well, the ego boost from blogging is definitely what makes it addictive.) But hearing that the community is going downhill and that there’s a big bad bully on the loose because two bloggers had a squabble, a squabble no different than the squabbles hundreds of bloggers have every single day really annoys me.

I enjoy meaningful conflict, discussions and personality. I’m in no position to complain since my own blog is very mellow, but it makes me angry to see that “the community” is so intolerant of those bloggers who are less inclined to please, those bloggers who are, you know, interesting.

Now I’m rambling.

Anyway, thank you very much for dropping by! It’s great to hear views from someone outside the immediate vicinities of Blog Azeroth.

I read the Blog Azeroth post you linked and your post, and laughed when I saw you use the words “circle jerk” – I have, quite vocally at times – called the WoW blog community a circle jerk.

Also, insular, self-impressed, boring and eye-rollingly lame.

Mean? Yeah, probably. But I don’t hang around BA or the comment sections of WoW blogs anymore for the same reason Belwether detailed in her BA response – as a long time blogger (over 11 years now) – I guess I have a kind of cranky old man thing going on, but I know I was definitely getting a reputation as the cranky or hostile one. And that’s aside from the fact that I don’t really write about WoW, anyway.

To be honest, the WoW blogging community got pretty lame a long time ago. More and more people have jumped in, I guess, which is nice and all. I’m supposed to say here “There’s room for everyone!,” right?

Except there’s not.

And so many people post the same stuff as everyone else, over and over. But every blog is a good blog, right?

Except they’re not all good blogs.

Everyone can do it!

Except not really.

To me, it goes much deeper than being afraid to disagree because of potential backlash.

In the world of blogging as a whole, the WoW niche is quite small. However, the people inside that niche often forget that there’s anything outside of WoW blogs, and hang on tightly to this little community and stand in awe of the “big” blogs within that community. Since the perceived community is so small and insular, no one wants to say anything negative for fear of affecting – yes, I’m going to say it – traffic numbers.

Oh, I know, I know. Everyone writes because they truly love it. No one cares about traffic or comments or popularity or anything like that. Everyone writes their blog because they truly love to write, not because they secretly hope to the the next BRK.

Except, BS. The community is so small and so circle-jerky that it seems like these days, with the exception of some bigger, long-standing WoW blogs, the people reading and commenting on WoW blogs are the people who are also writing WoW blogs. You’ve got to be nice to all of the other writers because if you don’t, they might not read your blog anymore. Don’t rock the boat, or your traffic stats will go down.

I’m not saying everyone should be a jerk.I’m saying that it’s okay, to me, at least, to admit that not everyone is a good blogger. NOt everyone writes well. Not everyone writes correct, well-researched information. The WoW blog community has a few – a very small fraction – of stand out blogs, with a whole pile of half-assed, weak, gee-this-looks-easy-let-me-try blogs clustered around the bottom. And everyone tries to desperately to cling to that traffic by falling in line and not rocking the boat that it’s boring. There’s no discussions, there’s no debates, there’s no forward movement – just continued hollow accolades with a desperate air of “please, please, click on my link” trailing in a cloud behind.

Where am I going with this? God only knows. Why am I so worked up about it? Because the attitudes of these bloggers/commenters/readers of WoW blogs carries over into my comments at times and drives me insane. The blog world is bigger than WoW blogs and the WoW blog community is stifling itself into irrelevance. A few people need to sack up, figure out what makes a blog community thrive, and push it forward.

BA is nice, but another venue for back pats and circle jerks isn’t what the community as a whole needs.

And, uh… that disjointed, asshole-ish ramble is all I have to say about that.

Misinformation happens. Its not always intentional. Lord knows I’ve made more blogging and publishing mistakes than the community at BA combined. I’ve had people who hate me for no other than reason than for being me.

I once got a rather hateful email about my blog because I didn’t write about Warriors. Try to figure that one out ^^.

Since I often hear of WoW bloggers as a “community”, and most everyone seems to know most everyone else, the family analogy was easy to come up with.

And I’m very glad that you both enjoy my comments and find them thoughtful. A fear of not having anything worth saying is a large part of what kept me from commenting for a long time, and I’m glad that I’ve finally gotten over it.

When correcting misinformation, you do have to keep in mind what it is you want to accomplish. If you want to vent (as Kurn did) or get people riled up or drive a point home to a clueless audience (like Anna did), then yes a flamboyant approach is very effective.

But if your goal is to get a wow.com to publish an erratum, you’re better off sending the writer in question an email saying “love your work, but I’d like to point out a few discrepancies here, here and here and I’d like for you to correct them”. If the writer ignores you, you go to an editor. If the editor ignores you, you might want to let a clueless audience know that wow.com writers don’t pay attention to their emails. However, from what they report and from corrections they’ve made in the past, it seems that they do read emails and act on them. (I haven’t gotten around to reading your post yet, so I don’t know if you’ve tried the email trick already or not!)

It’s the same way if you want to deal with any IRL company that ticked you off. The “I’m a loyal customer BUT X AND I’d like if you Y” email format is usually very effective.

I find that people in general tend to shy away from being direct in communicating what they want. As strange as it sounds, it is less intimidating to write to a faceless audience than it is to a person. But if you want to make sure someone in particular hears what you have to say, you have to tell them directly.

When the information that goes up is so likely to mislead, so likely to misinform, it is our right, nay, our responsibility to try to correct the slate. I obviously don’t have the pull of Kurn … Noone has called me even a fan-of-the-person-who-hates-the-wow.com-guy , but I would hate to see some baby Holy Pally give up and go back to DPS because they have gone OOM or don’t have <1 sec GCD via haste after reading that article

No, Chase may not be Kurn's poster-boy, but maybe if WoW.com actually addressed some of the issues raised, the furor would have died down. They seem content to either ignore us or bury their heads in the sand, which is hardly helping the situation.

I didn’t even think of the hits perks of being linked until I saw Spinks’ comment on your blog about how she would have loved to have a big blogger disagree with her when she was first getting started. Not that hits are a big deal on a free site, but big numbers spice things up, and even though the initial attention is negative, some people like what they see and stick around.

I’d love to see someone try to start a fuss about Gevlon’s lack of sugar coating! I actually don’t find him that nasty, not compared to some politics, news or celeb gossip bloggers, just very opinionated and unconventional, but all the other large WoW bloggers are either very kind or very neutral. I do find it impressive just how much influence he’s had on the community. I mean, the expression “Gevlon would stamp a Social label on my forehead” has become part of the regular vocabulary of a number of bloggers I read.