A News Salad - celebrating 100 followers, upcoming posts and why my blog was down

    I'm back, everybody! Welcome to another blog news post - and welcome to another post of me taking my sweet time before my series. But there's a reason I need to make this post right now and not even one post later.   

    I get it. I do too many introductions. I did two in a row when I first started my blog, but I guess that doesn't quite work that way when you've been headlined. If you're feeling like this:

    then I'll gladly move on (after all, I have three posts in the works right now). I just need to get this out there. A lot has happened since the last time I actually had a blog news post, and it's important that I tell you about all of it, but also one thing in particular.

Why my blog was down

    This is "the thing", the topic du jour, the biggest piece of news on the post (because there always is one), and that's why I'm putting it first. But I'm also putting it first because I want to clear this up before anyone gets the wrong ideas about it and it becomes a much bigger problem than it was supposed to be.

    I was muted for about 8 hours on Monday. At first I thought it was because of a forum fight, things I seem to get into that no other Top Blogger does, but no, it had to be something else. 

    When I was muted, it was because of something I didn't even do.

    Of course, there were complaints concerning this particular forum fight, and I've untracked the threads on which it happened and am committed to not getting into a flame war ever again. I've learned my lesson about that and from now on, I'll strive to only make helpful posts on the forums. Now on to the real point.

    Slanderers are a nasty bunch. They cruise around threads saying the nastiest things about someone's mother, and they never seem to stop making new accounts with a different number on the end every time. But when you quote and report them, they become even more dangerous, accusing you of hacking their account, and leaving a faked quote behind which just might get you in trouble with the site.

    For me it meant 8 hours of not being able to post. For someone else, it could have been a month or more.

    I won't name and shame. As much as I want to, I won't even name the thread where the slander took place. All I'm doing is sending a clear message to my slanderer: you know who you are, and now everyone who reads this post will know when they see you.

    When we're alone, we're all vulnerable to slanderers. But when we stand together, they are less than nothing.

Upcoming Posts

    The blog posts ahead have also changed. Where before four posts separated me from a new series, now a few more are in store, and one or two have been dropped. Here's the rundown:

    Dropped Posts:

    I won't be making a post on reaching 1600 Live Rapid rating, nor will I even mention anything but the most significant rating benchmarks unless that's the theme of a series. I'm on the front page now, and every post has to be worthwhile.

    I in all likelihood will not be making a post on my chess lesson on January 24th, just because blogging is a "feel" thing for me, and that lesson felt significant after I had finished it but it doesn't feel significant any more.

    Added Posts:

    Event posts, event posts and more event posts are in the near future, at least for a few weeks, but I won't reveal anything because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.

    When I offered the post on how to analyze and annotate games (a suggestion by @dubbler) to @JMurakami, I figured it would work out well enough, but then he turned me down, saying Hehe, it isn't that difficult and proceeding to make it look like the most difficult thing in the world for someone who has never read through an actual game collection.

    As I mentioned here, I'm not qualified to teach anyone to annotate well. So instead, I'll take the journey with them in a new series called Annotation School (coming after Rising Stars or Head to Head and a second batch of the popular series Everything Openings) where using my nonexistent resources and tips from a master, I learn to annotate games better.

Celebrating 100 Followers?

    I'm really wary of doing anything to celebrate any number of followers anymore: after all, I tried it at 50 and nothing ever materialized. Now I'm at 102 and I still don't know. Will anyone actually care enough to take part in whatever activity I decide to do? How long will it be until I hit the next big number? If you have any ideas, please leave a comment.

    P.S. Want to interact with 35 bloggers and 7 Top Bloggers, get notifications whenever a new post comes out and improve your blogging skills? Join Blogosphere, Chess.com's largest and most active group for bloggers and blog fans for all this and more!