Perhaps Another 10 Years

Looking around me, I'm steadily beginning to believe that the pronouncements about the death of blogging two years ago may have had merit.  That isn't to say that this blog is dead or that any blog now active is doomed to die; as the Guardian article says, blogging has ceased to be a thing among the casual creators.  Over time, the bloggers who depend upon gimmicks as excuses for content, who depend on giving reviews of long past products or fill up their blogs with pictures are finding there are other, better platforms for that sort of thing.  The writers just keep writing.

It is a little sad.  I used to count on a lot of hits from blogs, especially blogs that didn't like me, as arguments would span several websites, with a particular rant inspiring a week's complaining.  Now I get most of my hits from feeder sites - people who read but don't seek out the blog to comment, helpfully describing my ancestry, deranged sexual proclivities and suggestively predicting my inevitable downfall as soon as people realized how full of shit I was.  About three quarters of the bloggers that used to contribute here so pleasantly are gone now - lost to twitter and instagram, two other platforms that are supposedly dying.

Still, I am beginning to see a day when I will end this blog.  I'm guessing about a decade from now, but perhaps sooner.  Steadily, I don't see the blog format as the one that supports what I'm doing.  I could as easily start writing all my content on Patreon now, something that would probably be a good step for me.  In turn, any content like this that I'm writing now is becoming secondary to the much better content that I'm writing on the wiki.  At best, this blog (or any feed upon which I would write) has to be a vehicle to move eyeballs to the real work that I'm doing on my world.

The numbers demonstrate it.  The wiki numbers progressively compare to the blog, particularly in that the page views are complimented by users who look at more than one page every day.  Here, a reader will typically look at one page, the most recent; a typical reader at the wiki will typically look at ten pages, moving about the content for presumably a much longer period.

Naturally, I think that people do read both; they come here, remember that there is a wiki, then go there.  As I say, this is the goal.  I'm interested in sending the message that I'm creative, versatile, embedded in the material and committed to the game's construction.  On a given day I might write something about combat, about horses, about some strange monster, about a set of rules for ship combat or whatever seems needs attention.

I expect the wiki to outlive this blog.  I expect it to outlive a lot of things; and perhaps someday, when there are ten thousand pages on the thing, it will finally accomplish what it was intended to do: to encourage people to believe that simple, practical rules CAN exist, so that they will start using those rules.

Well, we all dare to dream.

As long as I live, I will never stop writing.  In the long run, it doesn't matter much where that happens to be. As long as some it is still free, yes?