Sadly, in the last few months its owners seem to have abandoned the site to let it run on autopilot. Most of it is automated, but there are features that require administration: approving new blogs and banners, moderating the forums, etc. The few volunteers with the ability to approve submissions are swamped, the main page promotes features that no longer exist, and the forums are overrun with spam.

In the past two months the community has attempted to take back the forums by out-posting the spammers, and it seems to be helping, but it’s not enough. The next step is a letter-writing campaign to convince BlogExplosion’s owners to at least delegate some authority to community volunteers who are willing to put in the effort to take care of the site.

Rather than send the form letter, I decided to write my own, and sent the following this morning:

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I have been a member of BlogExplosion since 2004, and it has been disappointing to watch the site fall into disrepair over the last year. I understand that LiveUniverse may not want to spend the money on dedicated support staff, but many of the issues the site faces can be handled by volunteers – and there are community members who are ready and willing to volunteer their services if LiveUniverse would only give them access.

The most critical areas that could be improved by allowing community volunteers:

1. Blog and Banner Approval. There are a few volunteers who have been working through the backlog of new blogs submitted to the site, but they are months behind. Other members have expressed interest in helping, but need to be authorized to do so. No one seems to be approving banners at all.
2. Forum Moderation and Administration. In the past few months, the BlogExplosion forums have become overrun with spam. Without the ability to delete posts, ban spammers’ accounts, or ban spammers’ IP addresses, the community has been attempting to out-post the spammers. Additionally, there are forum sections that refer to non-existent products that would best be removed.
3. Support Tickets. Someone needs to be able to read and respond to support requests.

Additionally, the main site contains extremely outdated content. This implies an abandoned site, discouraging new members from joining. Simply removing references to services that no longer exist would go a long way toward encouraging growth of the community.

Most important, in order for BlogExplosion to thrive again, members need to be able to contact LiveUniverse and get a response in the event of an emergency.

Please consider these suggestions, and please respond to the BlogExplosion community so that we at least know that the site has not been abandoned.

Browse Happy — the classic.

• Goal: Move users away from Internet Explorer.
• Target Audience: IE users.
• Promotes: Firefox.  Also Safari, Opera, and… um… Mozilla.  Hmm, someone needs to update that.
• Pitch: IE is dangerous.
• Method: Banners

Alternative Browser Alliance

• Goal: Keep multiple standards-compliant browsers viable.
• Target Audience: All users
• Promotes: Opera, Firefox, Safari.  Also Flock, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, Camino,etc.
• Pitch: Competition is good for everyone.  See what’s out there.
• Method: Banners

End 6!

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: Firefox, Opera, Safari, Flock, IE7
• Pitch: IE6 is outdated, buggy, and unsafe.  Use something modern instead.
• Method: Overlay for IE6 visitors

Save the Developers

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera
• Pitch: Coding for IE6 is a pain.  Stop putting us through that.
• Method: Animated drop-down at top of page for IE6 visitors

(Yeah, I’m catching up on old draft posts.)

Of course, things have changed a lot since 2005, so I’m planning an overhaul of the whole site.

Definite plans include:

• Reflect the current state of web browser marketshare & technologies.
• List new tools, such as Dragonfly and Firebug.
• Update the list of browsers. (Add Chrome, figure out whether anyone uses Galeon anymore, etc.)
• More button/banner sizes.
• Release the whole thing under a Creative Commons license so that it’s easier for people to do translations.

I’m considering adding a blog for browser-related commentary. This would have to be low-frequency, comparable to something like css3.info, or I would have to bring other people in, because I just won’t have time to keep it updated regularly. On the downside, it adds a layer of software complexity. Also, I’m not sure it would add anything to all the blogs out there that currently focus on browser news.

I’d appreciate any suggestions from the general web user, developer, and browser fan communities.

Thanks in advance!

The idea is that a diverse browser “market”—one with three or four major browser suppliers all competing with each other—is the best way to maintain innovation and security. Anyone following the classic browser wars, the lull in IE development, and the sudden appearance of IE7 can see the difference competition makes for innovation. As for security… If someone can hit 90% of the world’s computers by hitting IE on Windows, we’re in trouble. But if they have to hit 30% each on IE, Firefox, and Opera, and even those are split among Windows, Mac and Linux, it’s a lot more effort for the bad guys.

I got the idea back in May, during some rather heated Firefox/Opera flame wars. It seemed to me that fans of the two browsers had more in common than they thought, if they’d just stop fighting each other. I worked on it during June, and launched a test version last month, asking for feedback from friends and from the Spread Firefox and My Opera communities. It’s still not where I’d like it to be (Comic-Con, then procrastination), but after the net went crazy over Paul Thurott’s “Boycott IE” article I realized I’d better launch what I had and refine it later.

So, without further ado, I’m officially launching the Alternative Browser Alliance.

Stop IE [archive.org] is, as its name implies, a negative campaign. It focuses on the security risks inherent in using Internet Explorer and provides a list of alternatives, though Firefox is the only one it deals with in any depth.

Browse Happy is my favorite of the bunch, because it’s an inclusive campaign. It’s run by the Web Standards Project, so the goal isn’t to promote Firefox or eliminate Internet Explorer, it’s to promote choice and get people away from today’s Internet Explorer. The WaSP’s ultimate goal is to encourage people to build a vendor-neutral web in which you can use whatever browser you want—including IE—and get the same high-quality experience. That’s a goal I can agree with, and that’s why Browse Happy is the one I promote. The meat of the site is stories of people who have switched away from IE, with profiles of four browsers: Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.

Update (June 2007): Stop IE is long dead. I’ve updated the links to point to the Internet Archive of the site.