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February 23, 2007

Where have all the bloggers gone?

Just finished spring cleaning MeskelSquare's lists of links to Ethiopian blogs in the right hand column. And it was quite a depressing task. The country's once exploding blogging scene seems to be shrinking.

Gone but not forgotten (nothing for ages)

On the critical list (nothing for a while)

Thank goodness for the few new faces, including Bernos and Don't Eat My Buchela!

But what has been happening to the rest of them? A few ferengi bloggers have left Ethiopia. Others have just run out of steam. One of my favourite bloggers told me he decided to stop after getting spooked by the first Great Ethiopian blog blockage (proxies like Anonymouse.org have also started to disappear by the way).

As for everyone else - no idea. If it helps, I know why I stopped writing for a couple of months. It may sound pathetic, but somewhere around early January blogging stopped being an enjoyable thing to do. The main reason was simply the growing nastiness of the comments section.

People at home always say that they are amazed at the bile that often pours out in the comments under these posts. (You should see the comments that don't get through.) There were two occasions when I linked to posts by two quite well known bloggers, one in the UK, one in the US. Both times, the bloggers emailed me to say they had been inundated with aggressive, often vicious messages, from readers of MeskelSquare.

So why is the Ethiopian blogosphere often such a nasty place to be? You tell me in the comments section below. Don't hold back now.

Posted by aheavens at February 23, 2007 1:47 PM