What happened to the blog I used to read all the time?
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what has happened to “Inquisitive Geek with Fibroid Tumors” blog? I’ve been reading it for year and receiving regular digests of postings and now they stopped and I can’t seem to find it here any more. That said, I and other readers have tried to reach the creator of the blog since early 2007 when she seemed to suddenly stopped writing anything on the blog. It continued very strong and active without her, but I always wondered what happened. She really started a great blog that provided quite a service to many women, and I really hope it isn’t gone…. please tell me what’s happened!
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You did not specify a blog address or reason for posting when you created this topic.
This support forum is for WordPress.com hosted blogs only. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog you need to seek help at the WordPress.org forums, not here.
If you don’t understand the difference, you may find this information helpful.
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Frankly this whole thing is confusing.
While I didn’t give an address, I did give the name of the blog, that said, the the address was: blog.geekwithfibroids.com
And you say I am not giving the reason why I created this topic. It is in the title, I want to know why I can’t find that blog any more.
Now when I go into my old emails and click on the digest I used to get, the link lists the above address, but when I click on it, it forwards to wordpress.com – so that is why I am asking this question here.
And yes, I did read the differences between the .org and .com sites before I posted.
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That is an autoresponse.
It looks like blog.geekwithfibroids.com has been deleted. Staff will not comment on these kinds of issues, in part to protect the privacy of the bloggers. If you commented on that blog, the owner has or had your email address; if they wish to restart the community, they know how they can reach you.
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As I said above, I and others became concerned about the blogger because she stopped showing up in early 2007. The auto response above assumes the blogger deleted it on purpose.
So while I completely respect the blog founders’ privacy, what I would wish is for someone at wordpress to look into this situation.
If the founder of the blog has actively asked to have it deleted, fine. But I can’t imagine that she would, as she was had been so active and clearly understood how important the blog was to the women who were reading it and posting on it.
I always worried that something actually happened to her… I mean, I hate to say this, but what happens to a blog if someone dies? Is the blog gone forever? Is there any way for someone else to take it over as a service to others? I would hate to see this blog’s history lost. It was a tremendously informative and helpful blog for many, many women.
Sure, I could start another blog, but years worth of information from maybe even thousands of women would be lost. When talking about people’s health, this is really important. For example, pregnant women with fibroids often have excruciating pain, that isn’t even fully understood by doctors, but many women found this blog and were so relieved to find that others were suffering the same pain and that many even went on to deliver healthy babies.
Many of the women who posted on this blog were regulars and kept each other informed about their condition and supported other women who were going through the same or other very difficult situations: losing large, large quantities of blood (literally being afraid of bleeding to death), deciding what to do about the fiborids, preparing for surgery, dealing with the devastation of miscarriage, deciding whether to have a hysterectomy, dealing with fertility issues while dealing with fibroids…
Obviously I could go on and on.
So, can someone check on the blogger?
And is there anything at all we can do to resurrect the blog, in case the founder just abandoned it?
Once she stopped blogging, I was always afraid this might happen one day….. and here we are.
Please help.
Thanks.
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If a blogger dies, or for some other reason, simply stops being active on their blog, it won’t be deleted. If the blog has disappeared, that required an active decision by the owner of the blog (or possibly WP staff, if there was a TOS issue, for instance). If the owner of the blog doesn’t want it to be visible any more, then there is nothing that can be done. That is the nature of the internet – nothing is permanent. And no, it would be wholly inappropriate for WP to check into the personal circumstances of its bloggers and then report that to the rest of the internet.
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If someone dies before setting the blog to Private or deleting it, the blog remains available to the public.
If the blogger abandoned it, you could always contact her, IF you have her contact info, and ask her to either restart it or hand it over to someone else.
I’m very familiar with the kind of situation you’re describing, and believe me, it happens every day online, to thousands and thousands of people who thought themselves a community with a safe refuge. But if that safe refuge belongs to someone else and she dies, loses the password, loses interest, or decides not to be the focus of so much attention, there is nothing you can do but attempt to build or recreate a community elsewhere.
You COULD hire a detective to find out what happened to her. I’ve heard of that being done. But it never results in anything good happening.
WordPress.com does not “check up on” bloggers. If you wish to do so, presumably either you or someone you know has enough information to begin the search. If not, presume that she meant it to be that way.
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She stopped posting in 2007 and only NOW you’re wondering if she died? And it’s only because you’ve lost your comments there?
You could do a search in Google’s cache to see if your comments remain there. Otherwise, if you didn’t subscribe to a service like Constant Comment which tracks every word you say everywhere, you’ll have to chalk it up to experience. When you write on a wall, the wall still belongs to the landlady, and she can do what she likes with it.
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I certainly didn’t mean for wordpress to look up her history or try to contact her *and* then report it to the rest of the world.
That said, I just did a search for the blog and strangely enough, while some links on Google just went to wordpress, others worked and I was actually able to post something.
So next question: can someone at WordPress make sure all the features of this particular blog are still working? (This is now under the assumption that the blog has not actually been deleted as stated above, because as I stated, I was able to post a comment.)
Thanks.
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Whether the features are working or not is the up to owner, not up to wordpress.com. wordpress.com does not check if a blog works or not.
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Maybe she’s made a lot of the posts Private. That would account for this kind of behaviour.
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She never renewed her domain mapping. You can find the original blog at http://geekwithfibroids.wordpress.com/
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Dozens of blogs I’ve visited throughout the years just stopped updating for whatever reason. They couldn’t continue or if something horrible happened. I’ve come to find out that the ones who don’t leave a goodbye message might be upset that they have to stop and don’t have the strength to say goodbye. So they just leave without any notice. I’ve also known bloggers that stopped updating for a year and came back out of the blue.
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Raincoaster:
Why don’t you try reading what I posted before you make a comment like: “She stopped posting in 2007 and only NOW you’re wondering if she died? And it’s only because you’ve lost your comments there?”
First of all, I don’t give a damn about MY comments at all. Jeesh! Try reading my first posting above where I specifically said: “I and other readers have tried to reach the creator of the blog since early 2007 when she seemed to suddenly stopped writing anything on the blog. It continued very strong and active without her, but I always wondered what happened.”This wasn’t a opinion-type of blog, this was a highly informative useful, medically related blog read by thousands of women. The blog’s founder did a lot of work to set up a blog with lots of different threads covering a large number of topics, it had news feeds, etc. She did such a great job it has continued quite strong without her….
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Doncha,
Thank you!!! So, I don’t really know what that means….but when someone doesn’t renew the domain mapping, can someone else do so? Depending on what’s involved, I might be willing to do so….
If something did happen to the owner, I was hoping the continuation of this blog could sort of be her legacy….
I wouldn’t really want to or need to change anything (well maybe start a new thread for one that is realllly long), I would just like to see to it that people could continue to read old posts for reference and post new comments and questions.
Thanks!
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I am also wondering what happened to this site. I found it very helpful and even tried to email the “geek with fibroids” and never got a response. Is there another forum for women talking about this issue?
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The domain mapping has to be purchased along with the domain. If the person does not renew their domain geekwithfibroids.com , then anyone else can buy the domain and do what they wish with it. Like when someone buys a celebrity’s domain name without permission so to redirect traffic to their own site and later sell the domain for a much higher price. But the site itself can never be taken over by someone else unless the original administrator hands over the administrative controls to whoever they want. No one really knows what happened to her. Maybe she passed away or maybe she is taking some time off from blogging after getting too over-worked with it. A free blog will always remain online. The only time a site will be taken completely offline is if they were self hosting & don’t renew their domain
Maybe start your own blog with the same topic and pick up where she left off. Pick a different name though to be more original. And maybe leave a comment in her blog comments saying here’s a new blog I started.
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Pornstarbabylon: how do I find out if she was self-hosting and didn’t renew her domain? Also, you said a free blog will always remain on line… however, now when I try to google the site, the links no longer work… so only a handful of women are getting through to the site, and previously there were several posts a day…. I really can’t see starting a blog from scratch and don’t want the very rich history of information to be lost… any suggestions from anyone would be extremely appreciated.
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re: self-hosting:
this:
http://blog.geekwithfibroids.com/terms-of-use/
leads to this:
“Warning! Domain mapping upgrade for this domain not found. Please login and go to the Domains Upgrades page of your blog to use this domain. ” -
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