The big top has come down on Carnival of the Liberals
Dear Liberal Carnivalers,
We’ve had a good run. 102 separate editions, over four years and two months. Edition #103 was supposed to appear yesterday but after reviewing the submissions, or lack thereof, I think it’s time to end Carnival of the Liberals.
I had hoped that changing to the monthly format, and the other changes to the structure and format of the carnival would revitalize CotL, but it wasn’t to be. On average, over 70% of the submissions to each edition now are spam and there’s no denying the apathy, both my own and on the part of carnival participants, toward CotL the last year or so.
I think a lot of it has to do with the changing face of the blogosphere, and social media obsolescing the blog carnival idea. I’ll have more to say on this topic in future days, but the capsule summary is that I think that the two main functions of blog carnivals, high quality, relevant curated content and building blogger communities, are done better and faster by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, et. al. Even I have got to admit that I very rarely read blog carnivals anymore.
I’m sad that Carnival of the Liberals is ending, but you’ve got to know that organizing CotL all these years was bloody fantastic, and so were all of you. I can’t begin to tell you how many friends I’ve made, or how proud I feel that Carnival of the Liberals, and I, have been some small part of your lives these last few years.
Oh, and if anyone out there wants to take Carnival of the Liberals on, just let me know. I’ll happily transfer the domain into your name and even help you get a new website running. Otherwise, I’ll leave the existing CotL site up until the domain name expires.
So, for the last time…
Liberally yours,
Leo Lincourt
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So sorry to hear your news. The Carnival of Liberals will be missed!
Well, bummer. I’ve contributed to that a litlle bit, I suppose, having little to say of late and so little to submit (ironically, I came here today because I actually had something I thought well enough of to submit and wondered when the next submission date was; e-mail notification has been a bit spotty). Twitter and Facebook may have replaced the Carnival, but not as well, tending to be more bite-sized than a carnival. But then, they also take a whole lot less work to “organize”. Oh well, we move on, I guess.