The following is the working version of the "Is BlogExplosion Worth 42 Cents" letter. The plan is to get as many people as possible to print a copy (or a few) and mail them to BE's owners on Feb 20 (next Friday). Read this forum for more information. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, let use know.

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Put one of their address blocks here. (see other posts in this thread for address blocks)



As a BlogExplosion community member, I am dismayed by the lack of attention that the site receives from its owners/operators. BlogExplosion.com used to be an online community where bloggers could connect with one another. As everyone well knows, the value of this once flourishing online community has plummeted.

I understand that economics play a big role in how much time and attention gets put into this site by LiveUniverse. I also understand that the site may be up for sale, more reason for LiveUniverse to not want to invest more money into BlogExplosion. Has LiveUniverse considered other options to hiring a paid staff to run the site?

There is a group of active members who would gladly volunteer their time to help the site return to its previous form. They can not do so without at least some effort on LiveUniverse’s part. LiveUniverse at least has to delegate some control to users so they can clean up and maintain the site.

Since the site came back online after the recent server move, a small group of users have been actively working to steal the forums back from the spammers who are flooding daily with advertisements for various products and pornographic sites. Burying the spam is helping bring users back into the forums. I sincerely believe that there are many other users out there that would love to see the site become the community it once was.

At this point in time, we have come up with the following issues that we feel need addressed:

Forum Spam and other Forum Issues – Someone needs the ability to erase the accounts of spammers and/or banning their IPs. Also, existing spam need removed, older locked posts need updated, and threads about nonexistent products like BlogCharm need removed.

Blog Approval – There are a couple moderators left that are attempting to handle blog approvals. If we could add at least a couple more to get caught up on the backlog, it would improve retention of new users.

Support Tickets – There needs to be at least a couple people given permission to review and respond to support tickets. Saying “Sorry, but this issue can not be repaired” is better than ignoring people until they finally give up.

Updating Site Content – Some of the site content should be removed because it applies to features that don’t exist anymore. Having bad or outdated information on the site implies that the site operators don’t care about the customers.

Bringing Back Features – Losing the Shoutbox chat on BlogExplosion definitely had a negative impact on how much time the more active community members spent on the site.

Contact at LiveUniverse – Someone at Blogexplosion needs the ability to contact someone at LiveUniverse in case of emergencies. This could also be used to handle banning IPs or reviewing/making content changes if LiveUniverse did not want to give that kind of control to users at Blogexplosion.

By turning over these functions to willing volunteers at BlogExplosion, LiveUniverse wouldn’t have to incur any additional support/admin contracts like they did in the past. These volunteers want BlogExplosion to thrive for their own sake, which should also help LiveUniverse improve ad revenue or credit sales or a sale value for the site.

No matter which side your decision falls on, please respond in some manner to the BlogExplosion community. No response will only reinforce the notion that BlogExplosion has been left for dead.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME.
YOUR EMAIL.
YOUR BLOGEXPLOSION ID.

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Watch,

I am very impressed. This letter you have created is very nice and to the point. I vote to have whoever we have to get this letter out to the different contacts you dug up ASAP.

We need to gather a complete list of all willing to send a letter and who they are going to send it to. The quicker we act the better chance we have at saving Blog Explosion. I did a site valuer for this .com and it is well over $150,000, so it still can have great value to its current or new owner. Maybe we can bring them to realize it.

Thank you for taking the time to do this.

McSpazz

Supposedly from what I read, LiveUniverse was trying to sell the site a year ago for 125,000. That was pre-credit crunch and economic-sky-is-falling days though.

I don't if it's still on the market or not.

How's about we give everyone until the end of tomorrow to make suggestions on changes to my draft. Then this weekend we all post something on our sites to try to recruit more blogexplosion members to the cause. Then we drop everything in the mail on Monday? They'd most of the letters by Friday. I'm going to keep searching online and maybe alter my list of who's who at LU.

How about we push the "mailing date" off a week? That way we have a full week to have a notice on our sites for BE members to see, so that more BE members will copy, paste, print, and mail the letter.

The letter above is good, we just need an intro to ask for other BE members to help and explain what we're trying to archive.

I'll see if I can dig up the correct .htaccess code to redirect all people coming from BE to a page holding the intro and letter.

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M.J. Taylor
Publisher
from Reason to Freedom
News and Opinions supporting non-aggression and individual rights for all.

Member: Save BE

I saved a draft post on my blog. I titled it "Is BlogExplosion Worth 42 Cents?" and explained what we were trying to do and how that if people want try to help convince the owners of BlogExplosion to give the community more control instead of letting the site die that they could help us by sending a letter or two (I don't think I used giant run-on sentences though).

We can delay it a little. I can keep running it on my site for a week or so without any new posts. Since it's relying on snail mail, the letters are all kind of going to get there at different times.

The .htaccess idea is a good one. Push all people refered by blogexplosion straight to that post.

They are persistant little spammers, aren't they? Everytime I imagine one of these people just sitting at a CPU trying desperately to get some poor sucker to come and by crap that they are trying to pawn off as real goods. It makes me think that they look like trolls or evil gnomes.

McSpazz

I think it's evil trolls. I don't like evil and I don't like trolls, so that must be what a spammer looks like Besides which, I kinda like gnomes, well other peoples garden gnomes, but I doubt I'd ever own one...

thewatchlist, post a link to your intro and I'll do an edit/rewrite tomorrow, and I think I have the .htaccess finished, but I need to do a couple more tests on it, but it's late, so I'm headed to bed.

sleep well all,
MJ

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M.J. Taylor
Publisher
from Reason to Freedom
News and Opinions supporting non-aggression and individual rights for all.

Member: Save BE

I like the letter.

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*Just breathe.....*

*Blogging about my life...*

I sent you a PM.

I think that the letter is good. We do need extra time to get as many people together as possible. Letters should then be arriving from all over the world. It's a good thought.