so this is mass communication?

Under the advice of many, I upgraded Wordpress. 

I really only did it to get this comment spam issue under control. Even with my new system of asking my users who want to comment to set up accounts, I still had spam out the whaazoo. See, apparently spammers are people too & they all created accounts for themselves. Then commented as usual. Great.

So. I now have some new fancy plug-ins installed to combat spam. 

I opened up comments again (non-registered users welcome to comment) & I need your help! Can you please comment on this post so that I can see how your REAL comment pops up in comparison to a dumb spammer comment? 

Spammers reading this out there - you are welcome to comment too. I don’t even know why I said that, you probably already have your dumb comment on the clipboard ready to paste into the comment box. 

Comment spam is taking over my blog.

You don’t see it because I have comments moderated. But when I log in to my blog & I have more than 8,000 comments waiting to be moderated — of which only ONE (yes, one) is a real comment — well, we have a problem.

I love your comments & don’t want to turn them off. I like that some posts really become a discussion.

So …. To combat this I’m switching around the way the blog handles comments to see if I can beat the spammers. I know this is going to be a pain for those of you who do like to comment, but it can’t be half as big of a pain as it is for me to wade through all the comment spam.

Here are the changes for commenting on this blog:

• people wishing to make comments must be registered users
• I’ll allow any real, non-spammy person (naughty or nice) to become a registered user
• you must be logged in to comment

I hope you still do comment on the blog - even with these road blocks.

And if you have suggestions for other ways to combat this problem, please register & leave a comment

In the time it took me to write this post (less than 5 minutes), I got 11 more spam comments.

After a 10-month blog pause, I’m back to blogging - better than ever in this new location!

So. My old URL was indeed taken over by a spam blog. Funny how that happens.

But this is me - a new look (to be improved even further),  new software, new URL, new topics,  new perspective, etc.

Since I have all these wonderful new capabilities, I’ll write about more than just blogs this time around. Just check out the categories & read whatever you like.

Enough about this re-release of so this is mass communication? Update your rss feeds & enjoy.

Even though this is a metablog, I try to avoid metaposting as much as possible. But after getting a frantic e-mail from a friend of mine asking if I was still alive because my blog hadn’t been updated since November, I should probably explain myself.

I’m thrilled to announce that I will be joining the team in Grady College at the University of Georgia in the fall. This is an exciting move for me & I look forward to all of the opportunities there. So you can see how planning this move has kept me rather busy.

I have also spent the last few months working on some exciting blog projects. These projects include surveys & I didn’t want to “sensitize” my possible respondents if they happened to Google me & find this blog. I’m not the only one who feels that way - Tom Kelleher posted the same sentiments on his blog.

So this being a blog about blog research, it seems fitting I should update you on the all great studies being published. My blog research reference list shows the studies I’m aware of - but I know there must be more. Among my favorites are those by Tom Kelleher and Barbara Miller, Denise Bortree, and a conference paper from Trent Seltzer. You might call it an amazing coincidence - but all of these folks (save Miller) are University of Florida products.

So now you get it.

I’m in Baton Rouge, La., & watching the hurricane warnings swirl around me (no pun intended). Since Dave Winer & others seem to be interested in people blogging the event from a local perspective I decided to start up a new blog & post as long as I have power.

If you’re interested in my little citizen journalism dispatches about Hurricane Kristina, then check out http://hurricaneupdate.blogspot.com/.

For more than a week I have been blogging Hurricane Katrina. The blog has been linked to by many other blogs & received a fair amount of media coverage - including articles in the New York Times & USA Today.

The best attempt I could do to sum up my experiences as an “emergency” or “crisis” blogger was published in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday:

These blogs no longer belong to the blogger but to the community, as a centralized mechanism for communication and comfort in the face of natural disaster. They amend the coverage in several ways.

First, they are an alternative viewpoint from which one can learn about the situation. Turn on the news and see reporters pelted by the storm. Open newspapers to find pictures of Katrina. Or get direct access to a living room inside the storm and live through it by reading a blogger’s account.

Second, bloggers cover a larger geographical area, reporting more quickly than journalists. Imagine TV news without the set-up time and news production process: That’s how quickly bloggers can disseminate information.

Every day when I wake up, I do the same thing. Check my e-mail, check the blog feeds I subscribe to. I continue this frequently throughout the day & it is always the last thing I do before I go to bed.
This morning as I checked my feeds, I thought “She couldn’t have written another 2 posts because she just posted late last night” as I saw an indication from BlogLines that I had posts waiting to be read from Lois Ann Scheidt’s Professional Lurker blog. Nope it was true. Two completely new posts.

That is when I said, when does she have time to do all this blogging?

Then it struck me. Kinda like when you look in the mirror & see you aren’t 22 anymore & wonder what the hell happened.

I used to blog a lot. Every day. Don’t believe me? Check my archive. Now? Not so much. Once or twice a month if I’m lucky. I blogged more this summer, but alas now that I’m back on campus for the new semester my blogging has slowed again.

It’s not like I have less say. In fact, there are tons of things to talk about in the changes in blogs, the research I’m doing, etc. Plus, my husband says I talk all the time, so it certainly can’t be that. I’m not really sure if it is a matter of having the time - after all, I did watch all 3 episodes of Tommy Lee Goes to College while I was coding for a project the other night.

So what has changed from the grad student me to the professor-seeking-tenure me?

I’m not afraid that what I say will be used against me in a court of tenure. I don’t care if my students read this & think something differently of me. Anyone who has ever spent five seconds on my personal Web page knows I could care less that I have put so much of my life out on the Internet (pictures & such).

I don’t really have an answer as to what might have changed. I am doing more research - especially more solo projects - than I ever was before I received my PhD. I’m sending more things out to publication & therefore a bit more reluctant to post my findings on my site in case a potential reviewer reads my blog (you never know). I’m certainly not over blogging & it still gets me all revved up and inspires me.

So there is no 30-second moral of this post - just a head scratching observation.