Having a check through all my links I've noticed that Blogphiles seems to be up the swanny. I've tried going over to Paul's site (the ring owner) at Aardvark.dj but that doesn't seem to be working either. Blogphiles was, and still is from looking at the stats, a very large Netring. Looking at the queue I can see that it's full of mainly spam applications. I wonder if Paul just got overwhelmed and chucked in the towel. I hope he'll try to let some of us know so that we can remove the link; not just wait for it to die a long lingering death of missed sites and broken links :(
It's easy to get overwhelmed though. It takes work and effort to maintain ring integrity and a large ring means more work. I have a ring check happening on Blogging Brits this weekend so no doubt there'll be sites to move to the queue while I try to find out what's happened to them. Blogging Brits costs money to maintain and I question the logic of it at times when so many people are either too lazy or just plain rude by not maintaining their own admin in the ring. There's no excuse. I'm always available by email if help is needed. It's not just rings either. I've tried going through some blog listings and directories and notice broken links and missing sites there. It's very frustrating. And demoralising too.
Sometimes I really feel that Blogland has lost something. It was a much more vibrant place when I started the Blogging Brits ring over 5 years ago. It's been a shame to see some very fine bloggers up and leave because they seem to lose faith in blogging. Paul and Blogphiles may be another such casualty. A real loss.
Ack! Take no notice of me. I'm just feeling pissy. I'm sure once I've had my meds and I'm tucked up snug and warm in bed I shall feel very much better...