I began this blog two years ago by anonymously posting short-hand entries about what I was cooking. They were no more than kitchen notes, and they weren’t meant to interest anyone else. In fact they interested about six people, none of whom I had ever met or ever would meet, and I admit that I let that encourage me for a time. But once I got the hang of gluten-free, my limited exercise looked pretty pointless and frankly it was getting boring. So I buggered-off.
A year later, having emigrated, I came back to this blog, now with some degree of proud professionalism: deadline, research, multiple trials, recipe, article format, and I actually put my own name on it. Now a whopping twelve people were interested (there were more hits than that, yes, but I expect that most were one-offs with a mission to make obscure dish X).
But the research, cooking, photography, and writing were consuming the only waking hours I had free each week. And speaking of free, while I may pursue my hobbies without pay (no ads here), a couple of scrapings by commercial sites were enough to put me right off my lunch. Not that it’s important in the grand scheme of things (twelve divided by six billion is a pretty small impact ratio), but for the record it’s why I buggered-off again.
To summarize, when Wheatless Bay is easy it’s also thoughtless and therefore pointless. To make it something more substantial requires that I give up all my free time, gratis, that thereafter it may be appropriated to make someone else his two pence. Thus I have concluded that Wheatless Bay is just not sustainable in either incarnation. So I don’t much know what to do with it, other than leave it here as is.
Your mileage may vary.
I am very sorry to hear that; I did enjoy Wheatless Bay.
You are not the only one dealing with plagiarism, many bloggers have this problem. you might be able to get some help or advice from Food Blog School.
I guess it all comes down to how much you enjoy blogging, and whether you’d prefer to be doing sth else instead.
Forgot to add the link: http://foodblogscool.blogspot.com/
and have a look at this: http://foodblogscool.blogspot.com/2008/08/pravda-russian-newspaper-giant-steals.html
Thanks for the sympathy, and the compliment.
The scraping is purely infuriating. I feel that it’s just not worth the self-inflicted stress of chasing them or of putting up with them. Copyright on the ‘net is laughable, and we all know it.
While I’m less comfortable with the short, sweet and personal style of blogging, I expect it’s a lot less attractive to scrapers than more formal posts. I’m considering going that route, just to maintain the creative outlet.
Besides, I know that less formal posts are a lot faster than what I was doing. Too bad: I’m a researcher by training and by temperment, but the web is not the medium for it. Too cut-and-pasteable.