November 07, 2010

The fall (?) of WeBlog

There has been a discussion going on in a part of Indian bloggers' world. This post is just about throwing more light on the issue by accumulating the links where you may like to read more about it and/or participate in the discussion.

First of all, this is the group that is in question: http://www.facebook.com/WeBlogg

It's a page where a few of fellow bloggers were allegedly verbally abused and blocked out of when they asked about the authenticity of the people behind the blog. Pathetic!

A comprehensive post mentioning what all has happened on and around WeBlog and it's owner (who claims to have sold it off now) here: http://mysterious-kaddu.blogspot.com/2010/11/biggest-controversy-in-blogosphere.html A few more posts by Kaddu on this issue can be read here and here.

There has been a debate going on Facebook here. See if you can go through it (Update: The picture has been removed from Facebook now).

A discussion was also going on on a thread on IndiBlogger. The thread seems to have been removed from the site. (Update: The thread is back on IndiBlogger, and again it has disappeared)

The purpose of this blogpost is just to make sure that more people are aware of this series of incidents so that people stop falling prey to scams like this.

PS: I'll keep this post updated in case the links I provided aren't enough.

Updated: Added the hyperlinks which previously appeared as plain text.

Updated (2100 hours): Made updates on the Facebook picture and discussion and on that thread on IndiBlogger site. I guess the further discussion will mainly follow there itself.

Updated (Dec 5, '10): Current/Final status of things as on December 5:

(i) The WeBlog Facebook page and its site on .co.cc domain, of course, still exist. However, 5 of my Facebook friends 'like' the page now against the figure of 20 when the controversy just came up.

(ii) As far as I know, no active discussion or activity against WeBlog seems to be going on anywhere on Indian BlogSphere.

(iii) The thread regarding this controversy which was opened by a famous blogger Mohan was closed, reopened and closed again. The probable reason behind the closure of that thread is IndiBlogger moderators/officials' belief that the discussion going on there was not very healthy.

Updated (May 18, '11): IndiBlogger blog mentions about Sourav Pandey's plagiarism here. A good move indeed.