Category: Uncategorized
WordPress, Stop the Arbitrary Suspensions
As many of you no doubt noticed, The Mad Reviewer was not available yesterday. It was ‘either archived or suspended for a violation of the terms of service.’ I’ll explain what went down.
At 8:00am I logged onto my WordPress account to check to see if my Othello review had gone up nicely and that there were no unnoticed spelling mistakes. When the page loaded I found the exact same message everyone else did: that my blog was either archived or suspended. I followed the link to the dashboard and it said that The Mad Reviewer had been suspended for a violation of the terms of service of WordPress. So I re-read the terms of service and followed the link to appeal my suspension because I absolutely did not violate the terms of service.
I sent an email to WordPress around 8:15am on Monday. I had absolutely no response from WordPress until 2:26pm on Tuesday, over 24 hours later. Until then I had no access to my posts, my stats or the forums. I took the step of exporting my blog just in case WordPress decided to be total jerks and permanently suspend it. Honestly, I was in a bit of a panic because I’m still waiting to hear from publishers about some ARC requests. If they saw my blog was down, there was no way I’d get approved. Thankfully this didn’t affect me in that way but I was seriously considering other hosting options at this point.
It sounds ridiculous to get angry over something as trivial as a blog, but I was extremely pissed off that two years of pouring my heart and soul into daily posting was taken away in an instant with no warning whatsoever. I finally got an explanation from WordPress support at 2:26pm:
Hi there,
Thank you for getting in touch. Your site was flagged by our automated anti-spam controls. We have reviewed your site and have removed the suspension notice.
Please be sure to clear your browser’s cache and, if necessary, restart the browser.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clear-your-cache-and-cookiesWe greatly apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may have caused.
Seriously, WordPress? How about you not have automatic anti-spam controls that have been known to flag perfectly legitimate blogs and suspend them automatically? How about you have someone approve suspensions at their discretion so that legitimate blogs aren’t suddenly taken off the face of the internet and suffer stats-wise and follower-wise. Or you just have that handy ‘report spam’ button that’s on the top of every WordPress task bar for a blog and use that to find spam blogs.
I’m happy that you all stuck with me through the random suspension, but it could have been a lot worse as I’d been reading of cases where WordPress did not get back to people in upwards of a week. A week! Yes, I know WordPress is a free platform and they can do whatever they like. However, people who use the service (free or not) deserve a little due process, not a guilty until proven innocent approach.
So basically, sorry for the confusion guys. I’m glad you stuck with me through it.
Discussion: NA Lit
For those of you that don’t know, ‘NA Lit’ is New Adult Literature. It’s literature aimed at, well, new adults in their early twenties. It’s one of the fastest growing genres out there and has exploded in popularity in just a single year. But it’s controversial.
Supporters say that NA can portray a time in people’s lives that is still very turbulent because it’s a time when most people are off to post-secondary education, they’re on their own for the first time, they’re starting to date outside their comfort zones, etc. Critics say that NA lit is basically a sexed-up more violent version of Young Adult literature.
Personally, I don’t really have a stance on NA. Like with every genre, it has some good and some bad books. That’s just how it is. As for whether it’s a legitimate genre or not I figure I’ll let the literature snobs in magazines and newspapers argue about it while I read or ignore it at my leisure. I don’t intentionally seek out NA lit to read but I have read some books and they weren’t really all that different from YA. But I have limited experience in the matter.
So what I want to know is: what do you think of the emergence of New Adult literature? Is it an important genre for people in the targeted age group? Do you like NA? Let me know in the comments below!
The Best and Worst of January 2014
January was a record-breaking month for me. Not only did I welcome 64 new followers (about two per day) my total views for one month record was shattered. My previous record was 6,927 views in September 2012. Now January 2014 is the record to beat with 8,228 views, including 5,133 unique views. It may be a while before I break my record again but I’m very happy that my traffic has been consistently high this month. So which articles brought people to my blog?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. An Apology to Self-Published Writers
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge 2014 Sign Up
5. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
We have a new article on the top 5! Thanks to more than a little bit of help with Twitter promotion from Mark Lee of The Masquerade Crew my article ‘An Apology to Self-Published Writers’ went from getting two views in the entire month of December to climbing to the #2 slot this month with 834 views. That, my friends, is the power of promotion. Even with help it couldn’t beat out my Game of Thrones article but I was very pleased with the results of the Twitter promotion. It also helped that people like you, my readers, spread the word about my reading challenge so I got 45 people to sign up this year. That’s double the number that signed up last year.
So which articles were my worst this month?
1. Discussion: Posting Schedules
3. Cleopatra Confesses by Carolyn Meyer
4. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
5. Your Shameless Blogging Self-Promotion Thread
I’m not really too worried or annoyed at any of these appearing on my list of least popular articles. They’re either outdated articles like the self-promotion thread and the discussion or they’re older books that aren’t really popular much anymore. It’s not the end of the world because none of these have appeared on the bottom 5 list before and likely won’t for a while yet.
In January I had record-breaking stats, read some great new books and re-read several of my old favourites. All in all, it was a pretty good month. How was your January?
The Month in Re-Reads (#1)
In addition to reading 14 new books this month, I had quite a bit of time to re-read some old favourites. It’s rare that I have enough time to actually read books more than once so I took advantage of it and re-read 10 awesome books, 1 short story and a novella. Here are the ones I read again here in January:
1. Prophecy of the Most Beautiful by Diantha Jones
I loved the first three books of the Oracle of Delphi series so much that I made a concerted effort to re-read all three. The first time around Prophecy of the Most Beautiful was awesome, but it’s even better as a re-read because I saw all the little hints Diantha Jones planted in the story for the later books. With Prophecy of the Betrayed Heir coming out in September I needed to re-read the series anyway to remind myself who everyone is.
2. Prophecy of the Setting Sunrise by Diantha Jones
This is another book that was even better the second time around. The end had been just a little confusing the first time around because I read the first book and this one so far apart. But after refreshing my memory I really appreciated all the plot twists of this novel as well as some of the foreshadowing for the third book.
3. Prophecy of Solstice’s End by Diantha Jones
Reading the third book just makes me even more eager for book four! I stayed up late to finish this one even though I’ve obviously read it once before. The best books are even better the second time around and Prophecy of Solstice’s End is one such book. One of my favourite parts of the book was the portrayal of all the Greek gods, particularly Zeus.
4. Solar, Defeated by Diantha Jones
After finishing the first three books in the series I still had a craving for more of Diantha Jones’ fantastic world. Enter Solar, Defeated, which is the Oracle of Delphi #2.5. It fills in a lot of the gaps in Strafford’s story and makes his awful behaviour in the beginning seem a little more logical.
5. The Devil’s Concubine by Jill Braden
Remember how I absolutely gushed about this book? Well, I’m back to gushing again after re-reading it! This time around I really appreciated all the subtle hints Jill Braden gave about the Ravidians’ plot as well as about QuiTai’s past. The plot was just as suspenseful as it was the first time around and I think this will be a book I’ll re-read at least once a year from now on. It’s that good.
6. The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
The Iron Fey series is sort of my guilty pleasure now. I actually like the love triangle in this one and Julie Kagawa’s world of faeries is fantastic. I’ll admit that her book is not the most original but it’s still good and it’s one that I like to re-read from time to time since this was actually the first book I’d read featuring faeries. It brings back good memories.
7. The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
Every once in a while I like to indulge my usually deeply buried romantic side and The Iron Fey series always hits the spot. Forbidden love, attractive men and a heroine who actually learns how to kick butt at a natural pace all make this one of my favourite re-reads.
8. The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa
This is probably my favourite one in the Iron Fey series that features Meghan. She really grows as a person in this one and Ash does as well. They start to overcome their differences and finally admit just how much they really love one another. And it has such a cliffhanger that you can’t help but read The Iron Knight as well.
9. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Who can resist the snarky, ruthless and occasionally sadistic main character of Mark Lawrence’s debut novel? Jorg is at the top of my list of all-time favourite characters, even if he really is a horrible, broken human being. I finished the last book in his trilogy not too long ago so it was nice to go back now and see how much he really had changed by the end.
10. The Return Man by V. M. Zito
I read this book pretty much exactly a year ago so it was nice to re-read it for the first time and enjoy my favourite characters again. I had forgotten how much I loved Wu and Marco and their gory adventures through the zombie-infested Evacuated States. The Return Man is one of my favourite books of all time and I was glad I had time to read it again this month.
11. Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh by Katie Hamstead
After reading Kiya: Mother of a King and still being anxious for the third book I decided to go back and read the first book. I liked it just as much as I did the first time around, but for different reasons. The hints that Katie Hamstead dropped for the rest of the series and the characterization were all good enough for me to overlook some minor historical inaccuracies.
12. Short Story: Feyland: The First Adventure by Anthea Sharp
I had to re-read this prequel to the Feyland series again because I didn’t review it the first time I read it. I didn’t want to rely so much on my memory from a few months ago, but I didn’t need to worry. It’s just as good the second time around as it was the first.
Get Your Nominations in for BlogHer 2014!
BlogHer is celebrating its tenth anniversary and you have from now until February 28th to get your submissions in the Voices of the Year and/or Photos of the Year. I’d heard of BlogHer before this year but never really gave serious thought to nominating anyone. But in the past year I’ve read some pretty awesome posts and I want to nominate a few of my favourite bloggers for the chance to have their work featured on the site.
Although the name is BlogHer anyone can be nominated, regardless of gender. There are a couple different categories to nominate people in as well. Under the Voices of the Year (articles) you can nominate people in the Op-Ed, Humor, Heart or Exploration categories. For Photos of the year there’s also four categories: Slice of LIfe, Faces/Friends/Family, Nature and Selfies. For more information, head on over to BlogHer’s information page here. You need to be logged into BlogHer to nominate someone, but you can use your WordPress account to log in as well. Any post published in 2013 is eligible.
So go on and have fun nominating! If you want to view the posts submitted thus far, the page is here and you can vote for your favourite pieces as long as you’re logged in. There’s a People’s Choice category but the rest of the up to 100 pieces chosen are chosen by the committee so it’s not a popularity contest.