Lost in Bloglimbo

There’s a place where distressed bloggers go for help. It’s called the Blogger Help Forum. It’s a kind of limbo for bloggers with blog problems (“blogprobs”). The idea is that you post a question – or a cry for help – and wait for fellow bloggers to post an answer. I discovered this as I was trying to get an old blog site working again, and was looking for answers to my login problems (“loginblogginproblim”).
I discovered a woman in hysterics over losing her blog: an ordinary house mom with kids, who just wanted to blog out, happily posting pictures of her little dears...Hers was a heartrending story. You can read about it on the Blogger Help Limbo, sorry, Forum. Go to “Login Issues” and sort by “most responses”, or something like that, and it’ll probably come up easily; it was a long thread.
What intrigues me about this system is that a question is as likely to garner fellow sufferers sharing their story of their sorry state as any real answers. This was certainly the case with this thread. But there also seem to be a couple of “pros” prowling the threads proffering help. One is called “Gadsby” (or was it “Gatsby”?). I’m tempted to call him (or her, who’s to know?) “the great Gatsby”. Gadsby, if the by-line is any indication, seems to be part of the Blogger support team. He joined the thread to assure everyone (by this time, the thread had gathered quite a collection of bloggers who had lost their blogs) that Blogger support was trying to sort the problem.
What further interested me was that soon after this the original questioner “disappeared”. I have no idea whether her blogprob was solved. Gadsby’s intervention was followed by another wail from her that she’d received an incomprehensible (to her, and to me to be honest) official reply (via her husband’s email account) to the effect that Blogger support needed to be sure she was who she said she was: “Of course, I’m me!” she howled.
Perhaps Gadsby sorted out her problem on the quiet: I don’t know. What happened next was that others began to post the names and URLs of their blogs that they’d lost and wanted restored. One or two had lists as long as their arms, and some seemed somehow to depend on their blogs for their source of income. Anyway, Gadsby must have sorted some of them: there were grateful bloggers thanking him, or her. Once it was realised that Gadsby had some clout, bloggers clung to his/her coattails begging for help.
There is a kind of hierarchy of bloggers inhabiting Bloglimbo. You are assigned to a level. But then there are “top contributors” (I saw an official advisory that, when help was needed, one should look for a top contributor). One such is “nitecruzr”. He (or she, who’s to know?) pops up quite frequently on threads. “Nitecruzr” is knowledgeable, that’s for sure: and slightly supercilious. He has a picture above his moniker: I thought it was the head of Darth Vader at first (why I can’t think). On closer inspection, I notice that it’s the head of a camel: maybe this is because “nitecruzr” knows the 99th name of the blogger god. Actually, he’s quite reasonable and helpful; he offered to ask Gadsby if he (Gadsby) could help out with one blogger’s issue. This suggests he himself is not part of Blogger support and, in fact, he (or she, or they – it gets a bit confusing at this point) has his own website that offers help to distressed bloggers. Anyway, nitecruzr joined the thread to offer some advice on why people might lose access to their blogs (especially if they were foolish enough to forget both their user name and their password). You see, Blogger Support needs to know whether you are “the righteous owner” of the blog. But there are ways to get the blog back – maybe. It has something to do with front doors and back doors. This elicited a rude reply from another blogger. Nitecruzr kept his cool, but gave no ground – he also admonished us to be polite to the Blogger Support team as we might need them. If we can find them: don’t try contacting them, they have a fiendishly clever questionnaire system that will neatly land you back where you started.
Anyway, I posted a question: and then a couple of weeks later, realising that it might be a good idea to arrange for a notification to my email address should someone reply, I went back and posted a “reply” (really another question) so that I could tick the “box” (or whatever I did) to make sure I was informed when someone joined the thread. Of course, I was informed that I had had one reply – my own: I was talking to myself. But, lo and behold, I did get another reply a few days later. And it was most helpful and to the point: thank you “the new Katney” (don’t you love all these pseudonyms?).
By the way, my posts in Blimbo are labelled “level one”. The new Katney is “level four”. Ironically, when I started my exploration of Blimbo (there are loads of other interesting threads), I was reading up about “elites” and “non-elites” for my Biblical Texts in Context class. And I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that Blimbo is a region for the elites (as they say, knowledge is power) and the rest of us: the hoi polloi who blongder along offering our meagre crumbs of advice (where we have them), or simply saying “I share your suffering”.
I hope that Gadsby and nitecruzr (should they stumble across my blog) will know that I do really respect them – I am not taking the mickey (not a moniker). I would hate to be cut off without a blog, consigned to bloglivion...
P.S. Of course, besides the Blogger Support Forum, you can go to the official Blogger Help page. There you will get all the advice you need and want, except that if you are like me, you will probably need an interpreter, someone like Gadsby or nitecruzr perhaps?