Very well written, both the Blogging Baby interview and your post. This may be blogger suicide here, but I have read Dooce more than a few times. I see nothing spectacular about her writing, but that isn't to say she doesn't write well. Personally, I am a bit put off by her self-isolation from the blog world (unintentional or not, it seems arrogant), but that is MHO. I don't know how I would react if I were in her shoes, nor do I know all the circumstances behind her actions, but I do tend to think I would want to be actively involved with my readers...afterall, without them, what's the point of blogging?

whose dooce?

She doesn't have comments but she does have her email address available to anyone who wants to email her. And she does go out into the community and be a part of the blogging world at large = perhaps not so much in commenting but she attends blogging events and stuff like that.

I think she doesn't owe anyone anything - a lot of bloggers don't answer comments or even have comments enabled, and with the amount of emails she must get a day how could she possibly answer them all?

I just think that people ought to not take her blogging so seriously - she doesn't - and cut her some slack is all. She's just a mom like the rest of us who has a blog that got famous because of her being fired. She doesn't ask for the publicity, but she has it. And I think she, like anyone, is of course going to use it - if people are offering her money or whatever to do interviews, I would too, you know?

Just my two cents.

The thing of it is, if I got some of the trolls I've seen on her site (she did allow comments on her daily photos for awhile til a war broke out AGAIN, stupid people) and I had been dealing with depression and then having a baby and MORE depression compounded by Post Partum Depression, I would self-protect and close the comments too.

Just something to think about.

I don't understand why you say:
In my community, I hope not to have neighbors that shut the doors never coming out and never saying "hi" to me at the mailbox.

My wife and I are those neighbors. How can someone like that hurt you in any way? Do we detract from you community? Do we litter your lawns with our missing presence? Are we rude to you by not interacting in a method you prefer? Perhaps we just enjoy our privacy and the company of one another more then we enjoy sitting on our porch.

And then you say:
Perhaps Heather you should come out more often and be a part of the blogging community you mention.

This just seems like a condemnation of Heather's preferred method of interacting with other people. Besides, I don't believe she ever claimed to be writing to promote community. She has generally maintained she is writing for her daughter.

Then you say:
You talk about hard work to get to where you are, and I don't doubt writing one or two posts a day and and not being part of the community is tough.

This just sounds a little like sour grapes...
It sounds a little bit like you are disappointed that Heather is so popular that she can avoid interacting with the community while you need have to respond
to everybody or they might stop reading (which they wont, by the way).

I think Heather's comment (assuming it was Heather... we need a distributed comment authentication service for blogs) is rash and unfocused. But I think your post is in the same vain, which doesn't help matters.

I like Heather's posts for their honesty and darn right insanity.

I was a little taken aback by her lack of commenting availability, but then I respect that.

I emailed her once, not expecting a response, and that's what I got. But that's okay.

As someone who was called an unfit mother because of my post-partum depression and had to fight a custody battle for over 10 years, I have a lot of respect for what she's gone through.

Yes, I'd like to be able to comment on her site, but I also hate the trolls. Lots of the infertility sites get trolls and those trolls are despicable.

But I do like your post. Well written.

Where the hell is that baby?

I wouldn't call myself an avid Heather-reader, but I do regularly visit her site and catch up with the goings-on in her world. Not once have I wondered why I can't write a comment on her site. It is her decision to omit comments, and I respect that. She is cheeky, sometimes offensive, and quite often not exactly PC...very different from myself, which is probably why I gravitate to her writing.

I also read your site on a regular basis and leave a comment whenever I am here, mainly because you have comments. And, I enjoy seeing what others have to say as well.

You both have different philosophies for blogging. And that is okay. It is a big world we live in with innumerable opinions and standards. I respect both of you for the writing you do.

Mr. G -

I've been reading your blog for a few months now, and I've always appreciated your humorous approach to the normalcy of life.

I love it.

But to that end, I also love Heather's site. I've noticed that she has comments disabled most of the time, but I couldn't really care less.

Sure, I have comments enabled - as you do - but I don't necessarily read Heather's blog with the intent of commenting on her life. Rather, I read it for the pleasure it brings me.

Define community however you like; in fact, if community is a measure of the interaction of bloggers and their readers, then you're justified in your perspectives. But if community is more loosely defined as "the blogosphere," then she's contributed to said community in at LEAST two ways....

...you and I are both passionate bloggers, in part, because of Shug.

Keep on rockin', my friend...

personally, i like Dooce's blog for the simple fact that she writes for herself, her family and friends, and to chronicle her life.

she doesn't write to receive a bajillion comments and i can say, after seeing some of the comments that she did get when threads were open, that i can see where she's coming from and would have closed comments too.

i would rather read Dooce a thousand times over than read someone who plasters comments everywhere just to be seen as "participating in the blogging community."

just my humble opinion.

I've never read Dooce I don't think. Generally I avoid sites I am not able to comment on. The reason is that I love getting to know people. Not just through their writing but the written communication after commenting. I am a people person.
However she wants to run her blog more power to her. In the end she is the one missing out on getting to know others. That is her option.

i've only read it once or twice but have a friend who reads it a lot.

nice site design!

I'm another one who has no problem at all with Heather's choices. There are a million ways to approach doing a webpage, and I care far more about the content of a journal/blog than I do about whether or not a page owner has commenting enabled, especially when -- as in Heather's case -- email contact is available. Likewise, when it comes to putting oneself out in the 'community,' there is no one formula for what that means -- linking back and forth with other pages or doing the commenting thing doesn't mean a whole lot to me if the page itself doesn't have something that grabs me or maintains my interest. Ms. Armstrong puts herself out there in ways that most who consider themselves bloggers don't, including participation in events, as a previous comment pointed out, and a style of writing that might be considered fairly naked and risky by some.



To each their own. The cyberuniverse -- and life itself -- would be seriously tedious if we were all the same in our outlooks and ways of doing things.

I read Dooce for a while. Not any more. The stie did nothing for me.

To each his own, I say.

I read Dooce on a fairly regulary basis. I starting reading right after she had Leta and was struggling with post partum. I read through her struggle with checking herself into a hospital to save both her sanity and those around her. She used to have comments open and it turned into a nightmare.

As mentioned above, she does have her email posted and encourages people to email her. I can only imagine the amount of mail she gets. I have emailed and commented on her site, with no response, but that does not bother me. I too am not always able to respond to my measly 7 comments, by I appreciate them just the same. My sister did email her at one point and she did respond to her.

I think we must all remember that our blogs are a reflection of ourselves, but no person divulges their entire self on their blog. It's not possible to fully know someone from their blog if you never meet them. You cannot judge the book by the blog cover.

Now where is that baby?

Dooce doesn't ask for the publicity? Puh-fucking-lease. Are you kidding me?

Look, if she was really "writing just for her her daughter", she wouldn't care how many people read her, would she? If she hates the publicity and it's really just about writing her thoughts for no one but herself and her family, she could make her site private, she could shut down dooce.com and reopen anonymously with no one knowing it's her. She could turn down interview requests and say, "Sorry, but I'm not about the publicity, thanks though".

Dooce reminds me of Hollywood celebs who enjoy all the trappings of their fame while pissing and moaning that they have no privacy and that everyone wants a piece of them. You don't like it, you can get out.

I have nothing against Dooce's writing, she's a decent writer. Is she significantly better than a lot of other bloggers out there? Does every story about "mommy bloggers" need to include her? Really?

I don't have anything against her writing, sometimes I read her and like what she has to say. What I don't like is the hypocrisy of someone claiming "Who, me? I didn't ask for all this publicity"

when, yeah, you do, and yeah, you obviously don't hate it, so why say you do? Why not just be honest and say, "I LIKE being the World's Most Popular Mommy Blogger! I don't take comments or respond to emails because I don't have to, and you'll read me anyhow! You don't like it, don't read my site!"

Jeez, if Gen had the kind of free publicity Heather gets all the time, he'd at least be honest and say he LIKES it. And I'll bet he'd still respond to emails, to boot.

Did she stop leaving comments? She used to all the time on a lot of the sites I read.I have a lot of trouble reading through all the comments and leaving one myself and I bet it's the same reason she stopped too. My reason is named Xavier and hers is named Leta. And quite frankly with some of the comments she used to get I don't blame her for not allowing them any more. Cyber-fights just aren't fun, as Kim can tell you all about I'm sure ;p

To answer the question, yes, Dooce is a cult.

All I know is that she has commented on a few blogs I read. That and she has trouble pooping. Which is sort of funny if you think about it because she does seem a bit anal retentive sometimes.

Not that that's a problem. I'm just sayin'.

She has had comments open during different periods of time. Often for long stretches of time until people start getting out of hand. If I remember correctly, the last time she turned comments off was because of a bandwidth issue. *shrugs* There were also huge fights and arguments that broke out regularly. Personally, I wouldn't put up with that. I love hearing from my readers, but I wouldn't put up with that for a minute. Especially with 30-600 comments per day! Lemme tell ya...there were some HUGE brawls over there! eek!

Uhm..make that 300-600 comments per day!

I suppose I'm to blame for the word "cult." MetroDad never said it; I did in one of the comments. I have apologized, privately, to Dooce, because I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings by what I said. The comment was not directed at her in the least.

I don't know if she does anything to encourage the bizarre behavior of some of her fans. I tend to doubt it. I've seen websites of fans where people were going to make her scrapbooks and other crafts to send to her. It seems that there are also people who really hate her with a passion and make personal attacks. That's what I meant when I referred to the two cults.

As far back as I'd been reading her blog (which has been quite a while), it seemed that comments were open on the photos -- not on the writing. There were people who competed to be the first post of the day and there were people who were a bit too butt-kissy for my taste. There were, however, people who were downright rude and offensive.

I enjoy reading her blog the way I enjoy reading other blogs. I look at it this way: the writing is free, if I don't like it I won't visit, and if I do like it I'll visit and refer my friends to the site.

Heather/Dooce had comments open for years.

However, as Dooce grew in readership, the comments section changed from actual, topical, comments about her blog into *conversations* between her regular readers who used the comments section as a message board to post throughout the day to each other. Cult-like? Maybe. Enthusiastic? Yes, but not the proper forum.

Heather asked several times for these types of *comments* to stop. Several readers tried to help out by establishing a Dooce message board...but the messages to each other didn't stop.

Then the comment spammers started their onslaught and her blog started crashing. Her hubby spent a lot of time trying to fix it.

So, Heather turned comments off. What's the point of mostly off-topic comments and spam?

As others have pointed out, her email and snail mail addys are both posted on the site. Anyone can contact her. And they do.

I think you've hit on some of the main reasons I don't read or link to dooce. Oh, I visited a couple of times in the beginning of my blog addiction, when the word 'dooce' was everywhere. I had to see what all the hype was about.
But as I've come to discover, there are so very many blogs out there that are equally well written, more humorous and/or touching and/or interesting...and THEY allow the interaction of comments.
Of course people are allowed to..disallow comments, but how do you make a connection with real people if you don't have a conversation of sorts with them? I'm sure she's great, but I like the Genuine thing better. ;)