James Spinti informed me that someone discovered Jim West’s password and deleted his blog. I have disagreed with quite a bit of the stuff that Jim has written over the years and I may have even been on his comments blacklist since I haven’t had a comment go through moderation to be posted on his site in months.
However, deleting someone’s blog is a despicable thing. I know how frustrated I would be if someone did that to me. It would almost make me give up for good. So, Jim, if you read this post I want to give you some encouragement. Even though you draw your fair share of criticism–and from my perspective sometimes deserved criticism–to a large degree you have been the center of the biblioblogging community. If you need to take some time off, I understand, but I hope that you take up blogging again. Possibly you could see this as an opportunity to reboot and start your blogging afresh–Jim West 2.0.
A few months ago I deleted my link to you in my blogroll when I felt that I was on your comments blacklist and I got tired of some of your ranting against various positions–I felt it was uncharitable, unscholarly, and to be honest–you’re a pastor–I expect better. However, as a sign of my encouragement to you Jim, I’m adding a link to your old blog and I’ll add a link to a new blog if you chose to start one. I also encourage other bibliobloggers who might not presently include you in their blogroll to link to you as a symbol of support.
Jim, my inclusion of you in my blogroll shows my absolute distaste to whoever deleted your blog. It also shows my respect for your formative and central role to the biblioblogging community. Without you biblioblogs would not be the same–we all owe a lot to you. I hope you take this opportunity to launch a rebooted Jim West 2.0.
Thanks- that’s very kind. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future but, in all sincerity, right now I just don’t have it in me to start over.
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I wonder if all is really lost. WordPress’ website says:
“For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups . . . ”
I wonder if they have a backed-up version of Jim’s blog that they would put up for him, especially if he lets them know that his blog is religiously-oriented and perhaps attacked for that reason. I’m sure I’m not the first to think of a back-up, but maybe we could all petition WordPress to look into it seriously. If it’s not just some random act, then I feel like this deletion is a hate crime.
Yeah, I was wondering what happened to it. I tried to access it yesterday, but I was required to type in a wordpress username and password.
I do not know fully what Jim’s situation is. But recently I completely wiped out my own blog when I did an “automatic” upgrade on which version of WordPress I was using. Completely broke the site. But I had the backup plugin which once per week sends by email a nice .gz file that contains all the content. Took me a couple days to figure out how to do the MySQL import. Although format and categories and plugins and such were all gone – content was restored.
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Jim West,
If you read this post, I just want you to know that I have your back. I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from a small town girl, but I truly mean it, and I have you in my heart.
Love,
Liane