Adil Najam
This has to be an April Fool’s Day joke. Or is it?
Like so many others, the three Metroblogs in Pakistan - Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad - are my daily visiting haunts. Today, however, I find this notice there from Sean Bonner from the “Metroblogging Headquarters.”
KMB taking a break
By Sean BonnerDear Readers of Karachi Metblogs,
It is with a sorry heart that we at the Metroblogging headquarters in Los Angeles have to announce that Karachi Metblogs will be shutting down for a while while we decide what is the best future for it. While I could certainly try to sugar coat this and blame corporate restructuring, the truth is we are just sick of the constand bitter rivalry within the ranks of the authors which has lead to absolute chaos on the site.
Honestly, not a day goes by that one author isn’t e-mail me complaining about this or whining about that, and quite frankly I just don’t care enough to keep putting up with all of it. It’s become a nightmare and it has to end. To solve this issue we are forced to start afresh close the site entirely, step back, and decide what is the best future for this site… Please know that this wasn’t an easy decision for us, but for our own sanity we had to do something. I’ll be disabling comments because I’ve seen how long comment threads get here and really don’t have the patience to sort through something like that.
Karachi Metroblogs has been a great experience for us at Metblogs and we hope that it shall return to the forefront very soon, please bear with us. Until then KMB Rests in Peace.
Could this really be true? Or is it an April Fool’s Day stunt?
I certainly hope that it is the later. Though I should add that I am generally not a fan of April Fools Day stunts (just don’t feel that “Fooling” people is all that funny!) and this one would be particularly distasteful. Some months back I had the opportunity to meet and spend some time with a number of KMB authors and while I am sure there are rivalries and strong opinions, I had the feeling that this was a committed and earnest set of individuals. I certainly enjoyed and learned from that experience. And I certainly have enjoyed and learned from the site itself.
On the other hand, there is enough in that message that is believable enough and the bickering dynamics described are familiar. All the more to us here at ATP where we are sometimes similarly frustrated by the bickering and language of some commenters.
If it is, indeed, an April Fools Day prank then we should find out soon enough. I guess, some would even find it funny. If it is not, then it will not be funny at all. It will be very very sad. All the more sad if the situation described in the message turns out to be so. I am hoping that it is, indeed, not so and I look forward to my regular KMB dose soon!
April Fool’ day joke, or whether it is true, I think I agree with the metabloggers idea about taking a break and then deciding what their course of action will be! There certainly is only so much that one can take, unless he has nothing better to do at the end of the day …… at 32 years of age, and after several different life experiences, I have stopped trying to figure people out! Not that I am not supportive of the idea of debate, but there has to be respect for all opinions and that too conducted in a healthy, positive fashion ….. unless I sense that, I’d say, atleast for the time being …… ‘whatever!”
@Kashif: it does.
Apart from LA blog, no other MB city’s so alive (alive in whatever way though) …!
I don’t really think KMB generated “that” much revenue so that metblogs people may consider it a cash cow. If this is for real then its moral responsibility of KMB authors to come forward and explain this bitter rivalry thing.
KMB’s a revenue generator for MB HQs … this better be April fool’s stunt … ahh we don’t like being fooled around :\
@Kusloom, KMB used to be a decent site with very few comments like Islamabad metroblog but then in late 2005 some people started heated arguments there and I actually liked that change. It helps people to listen to others’ views and develops tolerance in a long run. I learned a lot about different ideologies and mindsets behind that via those comments.
I guess it is a prank but it is very distasteful to write in such manner about the authors who we[/a]re writing voluntarily. I agree that some authors like MB and Teeth Maestro were full of hatred but then we had some good authors too like Zainub, Ramla, Umar, and Mansoor etc. MB and Teeth Maestro used this platform as political stage and abused their authority especially MB’s posts and his comments were full of hatred w/o any rationale behind it. If it is closed down then I will definitely miss it but then every good thing comes to an end. May be it is an opportunity for some one local to setup a new blog for Karachi.
I hadn’t noticed the date when I read the post on KMB but it’s entirely believable. As a former kmb author (Extiinct), I can safely say that the bickering, disagreements and general disgruntlement is the norm. What started out as bloggers who ranged from all walks of life (student, professionals, teacher etc) has slowly turned into a bunch of author who are mostly professionals and believe that they know it all. It’s pretty much turned into a corporate group where the professionals believe themselves to know it all and everyone is convinced that their’s is the only opinion which is worth anything.
What used to be a fun filled place has now turned into a cut throat environment where if u cant be as loud or brash as the other then it’s better to stay quite.
I think it is about April Fool, but sad thing is that the attitude of bickering is so typical that we can believe that. Specially the comments of that site are so nasty that I stopped visiting it after a little while. So, even the joke highlights something terribly wrong.