For the past few weeks, I have been reading plenty of mainly socio-political local blogs mainly to try to keep abreast with the local political scene. There are so many uncertainties currently

I noticed that there are many bloggers who pay no heed to copyright and they will copy and paste whole articles from media sites onto their own blogs. Now, normally, this would be OK to do as long as you provide a link back to source.

However, I noticed that many of these articles are actually from subscription based alternative media sites and such copy and paste will actually hurt the website. Why would anyone want to pay money to read their articles anymore when they could read the same from blogs, if they search hard enough?

I remember that I wanted to copy a table from this particular subscription based alternative media website during the March, 2008 General Elections in Malaysia. however, before I copied it, I deiced to read though their terms of use first, like I normally will do, and sure enough, they mentioned that no one is supposed to copy any part of their content.

I fully understand their stance. They need the subscription fee to support their website and staff. I hope that when people copy the content from another site that they read the terms of use first before copying blindly.

Last evening, blogger Syed Azidi Syed Abdul Aziz or more popularly known online as Kickdefella or Sheih to his friends, was arrested. I think in this case, it is not so much as a “crackdown” on bloggers because this guy works for the opposition and he happens to be a blogger and used his blog as a machinery to spread messages like flying the Malaysian flag upside down to protest against certain Government policies.

I did not actually read that post; I think it’s still on his blog, but I think that what he meant was putting up a banner of an upside down Malaysian flag on our blog or something like that. I am not sure how successful his campaign was because of all my blog hopping to Malaysian blogs, I have never actually seen anyone put up such a banner. Maybe I did not go to enough political blogs, or blogs of politically aware bloggers, or blogs of Kickdefella’s supporters, or maybe Kickdefella actually meant flying a real Malaysian flag upside down?

One thing though, as a blogger of three years, I know that there are always spies going around blogs, reading and making notes of our “wrongdoings” and maybe even purposely misreading our meanings. And then some people may even hold our readers’ comments against us. Whatever the case, we must always be careful because once a post is published, it will be cached and I have read that search engines like Google will remember your text forever.

Of course, if we are somebody “powerful” or with real political background and backing like Dr. M or Uncle Kit, then it’s different. Being armchair politicians, it’s better to watch your words. And I always believe that it is not necessary to show ones true feelings in words or in real life.

Months ago, I wanted to change the layout of my Blogger blogs. I was happily searching for Blogger layouts that I like. I specifically wanted only XML files since I was still using Blogger Classic with HTML files and I felt that I must be missing all the great features that the new Blogger offers. My friends were telling me how easy it is to place whatever we want on the sidebar by shifting them into place.

I thought that since I have a little time on my hands, it’s time to do a little house cleaning on ’em Blogger blogs. You know, all those java scripts that we are forced to place on our blogs really made them load so slowly.

Once I got my layouts ready, I was very excited about changing them but I have been facing error after error, which I subsequently searched on the web and found, too late, that I am not the only one facing this, that I thought, why did I even bother searching all over the web for nice layouts when I could not even use them because of Blogger bX-code errors?

Anyway, after trying (TRYING is the right word) to change my layout multiple times, I gave up. I made reports to Blogger too. It seems that each time I am thrown an error, the bX-code is different. I figured that it should be the same if I was trying to do the same thing and failed, right?

If you are also facing problems with your Blogger blog, it’s a good idea to report the error code to Blogger through this bX-code reporting form. I understand that the “engineers” will only work on a problem if enough people are reporting to them.

As expected, most bloggers who have been with PPP for a long time now have had their blogs dismissed by the network. Well, the thing that everyone who is affected is unhappy about is because there is no reason given on why a particular blog is no longer qualified.

Of course, this just means that a blog will have no chance at all to improve and ask for a re-review. Like I said, I hate the finality of it. Can you just hear the bang of a closing door?

And as expected, there are some bloggers who are so bitter that they are going to remove all posts that have been paid for from their blogs. This will mean that advertisers will not get what they wanted. Yes, they KNOW it is for a 30-day live post but they WANT permanent links.

I also know that some bloggers will not be removing these old paid posts, but will be unlinking them all. Eh…. they have plenty of time on their hands now, don’t they? Why continue to provide link juice at the expense of their own PageRank?

Note: This is an observation post and is in no way critical of the network that I have been with for almost two years. 😀

How long has it been since I implemented DoFollow comments on my blog? Probably slightly over a year. I tell you, while the concept is great, the people who are abusing the DoFollow movement are just spoiling it.

I may have a slight increase in comments from people who would want a link back but I am getting way more spam comments and wasting way too much precious time deleting those that are not caught by Akismet to worth continue implementing it.

It just drives me crazy that there are people with handles like Cars and Garage Doors leaving me a comment. I delete these even though the comments are fine. Sometimes, I may take the time to edit the user ID but mostly not because who is so damn free?

I am Ok if someone, John Doe, leaves me an intelligent comment and his URL is http://www.cars.com. I approve comments like these but if YOUR name is Cars, for example, then no way. You think I’m stupid or what? You can come and check your comment to see if it gets published but there’s no use because I have already flushed it out from the system.

I read with dismay that some blogs have been kicked out of the PPP marketplace. Dismissing blogs is one thing, not providing a reason is another. How then could a blogger improve on his/her blog if he/she does not know why the blog no longer qualifies for the marketplace?

That’s terrible, I tell you. I hate the fact that it is so FINAL with no reason given and no option for the blogger to clean up the blog or revamp it sometime later and seek re-inclusion. Even Google allows for than, isn’t it?

I guess that now that the blog pool has grown so huge, they could keep or kick whatever blogs they like without having to provide any feedback or input. This is just like a summary judgment where an advertiser could ban a blogger based on blog color or worse, skin color. Of course, this is just my personal opinion and no, I do not really know how this “quality control” is implemented.