Some Comments Have Been Lost

While I was browsing some of the old blog posts here on my blog, I noticed some posts that had "0 comments", which I was pretty sure that I did receive several comments on. Needless to say, I never authorized such a deletion of contents and I am very disappointed how Google would let something like this happen. I did not suppose Google would be unreliable so as to lose dozens of comments on this blog.

I am going to communicate with Google in an attempt to retrieve as much as possible of the lost comments (I think its unlikely they lost the content for good, although I cannot be sure how co-operative they will be in this regard).

Anyways, any concerned blogger should recheck old posts for missing comments. If my observation is correct, the affected posts are those made during or before the year 2006.

Why This Blog Is Not Being Updated...?

Simply said, I am on an open-ended break... I have absolutely no idea when I will continue my work here, but my work is not done yet... I still want to carry on this work on my blog, but currently I have no enthusiasm to write.

To make things even clearer... I, Devil's Mind, have more than one hobby... Writing down my thoughts -in a blog or otherwise- is one of those... But currently I am more occupied with one of my other hobbies, programming!

Its kind of a cycle. For all the period of my blogging, I have been occupied by blogging and neglected programming. This is the time when I shift gears, I got back to programming and neglected my blog... I guess this blog shall wait until I finish some programming projects, and get enough of programming... That would be the time I get back to this blog with new enthusiasm...

I hope this would answer most inquiries of why this blog is not being updated!

Serious Plans To Establish A Blogs Aggregator (Updated)

Why a New Aggregator:
It has become clear to me that although the blogs aggregation for our small country (Jordan that is) is high, with numerous blogs aggregators serving the readers, there is still something that is missing. Respect. Most Jordanian bloggers started blogging with one reason in mind: To avoid the restrictive one-sided journalism, a free voice to speak up their mind with no censorship or boundaries. But it seems to me that none of the currently existing aggregators have had any serious policies that give the readers a grantee against censorship.

For this reason, I am planning one such aggregator that will actually promise its readers their right to know what goes behind the scenes. No blogs or posted entries will be censored abruptly. There might be some criteria to delete some posts, but all such criteria will be publicly announced. In the extreme cases where one post\blog has to be removed, that case will be announced publicly along with the reason for it. There will be NO silent removals while secretly hoping no-one will ever notice [like some have previously done!!]. The reader will have the right to know what material has been removed, and why it was removed... But my hope is that there will be no such removals to start with.

What Has Been Done So Far:
I registered my own domain and I am working now to configure an aggregator. I have installed several aggregation (content management softwares) and I am testing which one suits my vision best. In a few days, I will post preliminary links to temporary test aggregation attempts in order to ensure their suitable configuration. After I become satisfied with the result, that aggregator will hopefully go to wide-scale consumption and site feeds will be added.

Note: Updates on this project will follow in the coming days. Please provide my with preliminary thoughts whether or not you think I should go on with the project.

Please Tell Me What You Think:
1- Should the aggregator be strictly for Jordanians?! For Arabs?! Or multi-cultural?!
2- Should the aggregator have low requirements for inclusion?! Should new and\or mediocre blogs be included?! Or should it be picky with high requirements?!
3- Any other recommendations?!

Update: (May 19, 2007) An aggregator is setup and running. Please note that I am in the process of adding blogs as I am exploring blogs to find good blogs. The policy of the aggregator is not ready yet. Also note that, neither the site look or feature set are final. I am working on a completely new look and feature set, but this will take a while (maybe two months)...

Devil's Mind The Blog Is Censored On JordanBlogs.Net

Censorship on JordanBlogs.Net has reached intolerable extents. This blog -Devil's Mind- has been suspended from that aggregator. This censorship act follows a series of questionable blog removals from JordanBlogs.Net including -but not limited to- Jordanian Issues which has been censored recently for expressing political views that are not "nice" to the Jordanian regime. Khadder, the maintainer of the blog Jordanian Issues has written a post objecting on that act of censorship.

Other fellow bloggers have also addressed this recurring issue of censorship, you can read some of them here and here.

Regarding the censorship of Devil's Mind Blog, this is the reply I got from JordanBlogs.Net maintainer:

Dear Blogger,

Please refer to our policy, your blog has been suspended till further notice for publishing porn materials.

Publishing porn?! What the fuck?! I think, he is referring to my latest entry on Valentine's Day. First of all, the entry itself contains no pornographic content. Secondly, the entry warns the reader of the explicit sexual content that follows some of the provided links.

But most importantly, this blog has always supported pornography, and will hopefully keep on supporting pornography in all of its legitimate forms. Censorship needs to be abandoned, because once we put limits on the freedom of speech, we become the pathetic nation that we already are!!

Finally, I recommend my readers to visit this blog directly without intermediate services or aggregators because only here you are assured to receive the content I publish as is - without censorship or filtering. Nonetheless, if you want to use aggregators, my blog is currently enlisted on Qwaider Planet (Thank you Qwaider, again!). Please note that Qwaider Planet also does have some policies that support censorship, although I have not noticed them being enforced.

Devil's Mind The Blog Enrolled In Jordan Planet

In an unanticipated event, this blog -Devil's Mind- has been enrolled as a Jordan Planet citizen. Almost a year ago, this blog was submitted to blogwise and Jordan Planet. Blogwise's response was pretty much timely, and the blog was being featured on this page since Dec 27th 2005. A year later, on Nov 5th 2006 this blog was added to Jordan Planet blogroll.

Good news? Bad news? I'm pretty much positive its not bad news. This leaves us with the other possibility: that its most likely good news to have a larger readers base that is expectedly generated through Jordan Planet. I hope this blog will retain its quality for its old-times readers (who are highly appreciated :D ), and hopefully for its new readers as well.

Lets just hope for best!