I'm not sure I see how we're being used Ock.  If anything we are using Stardock.  We come here and blog, free, but it also gives us access to a much larger audience (if we want one).

For instance, if I google Tova7, there I am at the top of the search engine.  When I was at blog spot I didn't get that.  Because of this I have reconnected with people who knew me decades ago.

I see this site as mutually beneficial, but skewed toward ME not toward Stardock. 

If I felt used I wouldn't be here.

P.S.  Ok I just read about Whip's threat of exile yesterday.  If I was threatened with it (for such minor things) I'd certainly feel unwelcome.  Maybe I'm wrong, but my idea of most of the WC people is they are much younger.  Not all of them of course, but a lot of them are 20somethings?

In my experience that younger crowd doesn't appreciate a good brawl or even heated disagreement.  JU and WC are two diff demographics in my head, but like someone said above, its about business.  Stardock is a business that caters to most age demographics so when it put business (WC, etc) together with hobby (JU/poltical machine), it kinda shoved the metro passengers in with the school bus riders.

The problem is, now we have a bus full of people with different expectations and destinations, it's crowded and unfamiliar with new faces and lots of new stuff all crowding our space, and essentially everyone really wants the others (read new guys) to just go away.

I get WHY people are dissatisified, but I still don't feel "used."

I am really enjoying blogspot.  It's easier to post articles, it's prettier, and you *CAN* stay connected with other people and know when they post something.  It's getting a lot more interconnected. 

I have 7-8 JU'ers I'm reading via blogspot.  I have an update on the sidebar on my blog when they post something new.  And while I may not get as many readers, I still get as many comments as I did here. 

I was getting tired of feeling like I was bothering people with my family journal posts and pictures, and now I feel like I have my own space instead of feeling like I'm intruding on others' space.

I still read JU because there are people here who haven't moved, but I am a lot more likely to comment on the blogspot blogs.  It just seems a lot cozier, welcoming, and more personal. 

And if you want lots of weird people you don't know reading your posts and arguing with (or agreeing with) you, you can add tags so that your post is easily searched out. 

I don't know if I feel used but the place has changed. There usually is an up and down with the cycles of articles. However, it does feel a bit different this time. As for me, I am usally in the category most people don't read anyway, writing. I haven't seen my fellow JUWC in awhile. I also haven't been writing either. That is changing, even as we speak. So, I hope the rest of you guys do too.

I set up a blog at blogger in March but I never used it. It feels like a relative you visit on holidays. You like going there, but don't get around to doing it as much as you want.

As far as being expendable that's boloney. Pardon my language. Those mixture of articles are what made the place so unique as well as the interaction. I don't want the blog to be a communist site where you get yelled at for stuff like you mentioned above.

 I am not interested in computer stuff. My computer is a vehicle to write and nothing more. I will keep plugging along though. I hope that something can be worked out because this place truly was a gem.

My plea to admin. to is to let the bloggers be. I don't mean the old look, but maybe the old style. In this case I can honestly say I am for segregation.

I really like JU. I always have.

I have several other websites that I own and moderate but none of them ever draw as much exposure collectively as a single blog posted on JU. The 'searchability' of JU is its key redeeming feature. The ability to be read and by proxy heard is what this site has to offer that no other single blogging tool can.

That being said, I'm not really what could be considered a contributor. I read a lot, I rarely comment and the last blog I posted was some time in July and it was for no other reason than to try to win a stroller.

I guess in that last post I used JU.

If you want a place to not be heard as much but one you can call your own, I will host you. I pay for more than 1000 times the bandwidth I ever use. You have to understand that there are no fancy submission techniques and practically no one watching for new stuff. The private ventures, while fun, are often lonely.

Why I am SCANDALIZED!!  He's never HEARD of MOI?  (But thanks for the compliment btw.) 

I bet he reads every article you have here now.

I am not as "straight forward" and "honest" as you are LW , but I would not be surprised if my form of expressing myself (which would probably equal about 15% of your style of expressing yourself) may eventually bring exile threats to me as well since I have notices a few new faces around that seem eager to blast you with their comments yet don't seem ready for the "hit them 3 times as hard" answer they will most likely get from us JU Seniors (and I don't mean old age people). I mean I consider myself one since I have been here for about 4 maybe 5 years now. I was here before I moved to Puerto Rico and that was years ago.

Some responses in no particular order:

For those of you that don't understand the use of the word "used," I will explain what I see.

JU is a blog site.  People come here and sign up for free.  You get a nice white space and an editor.  That is your "page."  Let's say you blog for a while and become quite popular, like Little Whip, for example, because I sure as hell am not speaking about myself.  You're told how lucky you are to get such a wide distribution.  You're happy about that.  You continue to build YOUR readership.  100s of different people are coming to your blog to read your stuff.  Too cool.

Tomorrow, you get up, and on what was once your pristine page is now littered with a bunch of ads.  Doesn't it seem to anyone else that this popular blogger's popularity is being leveraged?  (There...is that a more comfy word than 'used?')

And let me make something infinitely clear.  I wouldn't care about the ads at all if I had the OPTION to simply pay a fee and not have them there.  If it's MY blog site, I'd like it to look the way I want it to.  (And I'd like to be able to customize it a bit, as well, beyond our current options of adding links to other places in the sidebar.  But that's another story.)  Having the OPTION to pay and not have the ads would remove the feeling I have that I'm sailing a boat across the Atlantic, and random people are jumping on for a free ride.

And as far as blog sites go, most of us are adults.  If we don't want someone posting on our blog, we can ban them ourselves, thank you very much.  We don't need big government threatening exile everytime someone's feathers get ruffled.  Sounds to me like someone or one's need to relax.

As for the articles, ID, shadesofgrey gave you the answer I'd give.  In fact, props to shades for capturing EXACTLY what I meant.  Go read Shades response = #16.  It was perfect. 

I care about people's thoughts, even when I don't agree, and I care about people's lives, even if I'm not fond of those people, and I care about stories and creative writing, and some whacko mutant who thinks space aliens are tapping his phone to harrass him and are spying on him by posessing the bodies of his next door neighbors family.  I do NOT care about Impulse, or Stardock products IN TERMS OF THE JU SITE.  Read the caps part again.  The business of Stardock is out of place in a blogging community.  Best wishes to it, don't get me wrong...it just doesn't fit in the middle of everyone's blogs.  That's my opinion.  You're welcome to not share it.

JU doesn't work well, from the perspective of the JU's themselves, as a platform for the furthering of Stardock's business.  It used to just be a side thing that happened to be there and Brad kindly let us use it.  Now it's an integrated part of the business.  That's what has changed.  That's what I think a few people aren't fond of.  I know you gotta pay the bills, but at least give people the option to remove themselves from that aspect of it without having to leave altogether.

Or don't.

The only ads that bothered me were the Muslim singles ones that implore users to browse through pictures of Muslim women who are wrapped from head to to toe like a Lon Cheny Mummy. The ad should read release a woman from the 7th century today and enter contest to win 10,000 or a jeep grand cherokee!

That is what I don't understant though, some of the Ads are rather weird?!  Often they have nothing to do with the article posted.  Often it is weird stuff being advertised!

I wrote an article about having the right to really say what you want to say but didn't realise all of this was going on?  I do dislike the fact that people are being threatened with banning and having their site locked just because some people don't agree with eath other, that is just wrong!  

I can understand the need for the Ads, earning income and all.  As for being used, I understand Ock's point, personally, no I don't feel used, that is my honest answer, but I don't like the types of Ads on some of the articles posted because they really don't make sense. But I know it doesn't matter that I don't like them so patooey to me!lol!

Leauki!

I like it here. It's a good mixture of blog site and Web forum. Blogspot might be a better blogging experience, but it doesn't connect me to enough people.

I know from my other blog site that I alone just draw 20 or so readers and they wouldn't comment because most of them know me personally and talk to me in real life.

Pure Web forums are not my thing because users come and go and you have to explain everything again every month to everyone new. Here at JU we have developed a history. I don't have to explain everything again and again (to most people, anyway). If in a Web forum I said something about the original meaning of a Hebrew word somewhere in the Bible I'd have to explain every week why I believe that I know that. Here most people know that finding such words is my thing.

I don't know why all you people are leaving. Would it not be simpler, if you just want a blog site, to write your articles without posting them to the forums? You wouldn't draw the crowd you don't want, but you'd still be here and could flood the forums again whenever you felt like it.

I'd still be following the blogs of people I like to read. But I won't follow them on blogspot because I never know how to find them. Plus it wouldn't feel as integrated as here. I'd visit everyone individualls rather than walk through a community or group of houses, if you know what I mean.

In my case, Yes I do. Somebody has to pay for the blog site. And I don't mind Stardock making money from my blog entries (in any way). If I feel that a blog entry is particularly "mine", I put it on my own blog site and just link to it from here to get an audience.