Evan, at On the way to Ithaca, the blog of a Greek atheist, wrote an article on the state of atheist blogging. The stats break down to active (ενεργά), inactive (ανενεργά) and no longer existent (ανύπαρκτα). I do not think the results paint a healthy picture.
Evan says the work took in about four hours. I am grateful for the effort. Thank Evan! I have not updated The Atheist Blogroll since Jan 26, 2014. With my professional obligations, I do not have the time to dedicate to the task.
If a few interested atheists would like to join me in an effort to revitalize the list, drop me a email. I would be happy to get it going again; even if we just list all active atheist blogs as a resource for the community.
Logging you in...
Jack 119p · 505 weeks ago
Cephus 111p · 505 weeks ago
As for the Blogroll, if you're just looking to remove dead blogs, you should probably look for a bot to go out once a month or so and detect dead blogs. Unfortunately, blogging being what it is, people do walk away for extended periods of time and then come back. I know of one blogger that took 2 years off after his son was born, but now he's back producing more content. Plenty of people only post content once a month or less. I don't know what the threshold of being "dead" would be in those cases.
Jack 119p · 505 weeks ago
skepticismevan 33p · 505 weeks ago
As I mention in the article (which Google Translate undoubtably mangles if one attempts to use it) the rise of Social Media has definitely contributed to the trend (and the unfortunate rise of the ephemeral soundbite). I don't know how atheist facebook communities are in the US, but the greek meeting site is an endless parade of cartoons rehashed for the umpteenth time and picture memes interspersed with the occasional news article (which gets quickly buried in the clutter). Kill me now. After I got ratted out by an atheist crybaby for not using my real name and got suspended for 4th time, I said enough is enough. Google+ will have to suffice.
Other usual suspects must include disappointment due to small readership and burnout (maintaining a healthy blog is no easy task; how Cephus manages to write fast enough to accumulate scheduled articles for several months is beyond me :P) I think repetitiveness was also a factor; regurgitating stuff that has been done ad nauseum loses its appeal after a while. I fell for this when I started blogging myself, but thankfully got bored with it before it had a chance to burn me out. The same seems to be true in YouTube atheist channels as well, but in more acute form, since video is a much more demanding medium.
On another tangent, it is sad that much content from the abandoned blogs is often ungooglable due to bad post titles and tagging.
Mojoey 107p · 505 weeks ago
I don't really know the status of atheist blogging. I read everything Vjack posts, and a few others, but anything produced by the social justice warriors does not make it past my filter. I burn out now too. After thousands of posts (like 7,000 at this point), I have to really want to write a post to put it up.
Cephus 111p · 505 weeks ago