Do you raise a child and suddenly, at the age of 3 or 7 or 12, decide to abandon it? Maybe my question is unfair as CNN reported today about a Nebraska safe haven law allowing parents to abandon teens. But generally speaking, do you support child abandonment?
Should a blog be any different?
How many times have you searched for a keyword or a product, reached a blog that provided advice on it, and scrolled to the home page only to realize the most recent post was months or years ago?
If you're like me, you notice the URL or the blog name and think to yourself, Now, that's a clever URL or name. I wonder if the owner would be willing to sell it, nay, hand it over to me?
Unfortunately, if the blog hasn't been updated in x amount of time, chances are the owner abandoned it and left no means of contact. In some cases, his or her name may have been erased too. Maybe the owner started a new job and didn't want to be associated with the blog, or maybe the blog was a temporary school project and once graduation occurred, the blog died. Who knows the reason.
But blogs do not die. Blogs remain indexed in the blogosphere.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission removes abandoned and derelict vessels, the British town of Ealing removes abandoned vehicles, and Texas A&M University removes abandoned bicycles, so shouldn't someone remove abandoned blogs?
The only question is who should police and remove derelict blogs. Google, owner of the Blogger hosting platform, admits they won't remove expired blogs.
My initial suggestion was to run a grassroots campaign and ask the world's search engine companies that control robots and autonomous spiders to remove abandoned blogs from the index based on some criteria that if content hasn't been updated in so many years. But when squatters are taking over abandoned blogs or hacking them to make $500 a month, my suggestion is now shot.
If you treat your blog as your child, hopefully you won't abandon it. If you recognize up front that you'd need to care and provide for it over the long-term, you'd do that, right? Else, you shouldn't conceive the blog's creation.
Is there any way to remove abandoned blogs, like society removes bicycles, vehicles, and vessels? Or, do you think blogs should remain the way they are?
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