“This year, I’m resolving to update my blog from the WordPress mobile app. My phone is always nearby, which allows me to blog from wherever I am, and there’s something about the smaller screen that seems to take the pressure off for me. I can whip up a post draft on the spot or publish a photo immediately.” — Sarah Blackstock

This explains the low quality of so many posts I try to read … and give up on before I finish the first paragraph. It’s the complete absence of thought and a sense that this is merely a text made public — a sure-fire way to not have well-thought-out stories or ideas. Or high quality photographs. Or high quality anything. It guarantees that people lured in by promises they can do it all on their mobile phone will be in and gone in less than a quarter of a year. A few weeks, a long silence, and then the posts linger forever in virtual space and no one goes there anymore.

I have long known this is what WordPress has been pushing. I guess they have not noticed the kids who start out on their phones come, send a few messages and when they don’t get followers, they quit. Those of us who write seriously and pursue photography as something other than snapshots … are ignored by their “happiness engineers” because we don’t need to be happy.

Too bad. With nearly 6,000 posts “in the can” and I don’t even know how many photographs, I am reminded how WordPress doesn’t care about me. They are expending all their efforts to lure aboard people who are not serious and will never be worth reading. They made a decision long ago to ignore “these boring people” who’ve been blogging for years, have substantial followings, and care about what they say and to whom they say it.

Every once in a while, I wonder how come someone in their administration or planning departments might at least consider the possibility that they are missing the point, but I have noticed that WordPress — like every big corporation — will stick to foolish decisions, even when they fail. Bad decisions inevitably get pushed ever harder because no corporate manager will admit to being wrong. Even when the ship is sinking.

I’m not suggesting that me and those like me should be the only focus of the organization … but ought we not be included? Respected? Not treated like the least important part of the WordPress group?

Ought not the editing and photography functions be useful to people who write in complete sentences? A text editor with a find/replace function like every other text editor in the known universe, for example? Proper spacing between paragraphs? Fonts that use points, not “small-medium-large-huge” as if we are buying cheap, unisex clothing?

I’m still using the old, old, old interface because the new one is awkward and poorly designed. Maybe that’s because it’s designed for a telephone — and I use a computer. I’ve been working on word processing tools since they were invented, applauding with each advance in the art. WordPress does not advance. They go backwards, stripping out the stuff that might be useful and leaving us with glitches and a baffling inability to recognize what writers and artists need.

Dashing off something on your phone sets up blogging as a kind of advanced texting. A diary of your life? Is that what blogging is? At the risk of asking a dumb question, unless you are a brilliant writer (on your phone?), who cares? Are you writing it for yourself so you can remember every place you’ve been and every cup of coffee you drank? It doesn’t encourage thought, intelligence, or craft.

I suppose I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing as long as they don’t make it any harder than they have. Call me crazy, but I believe in thinking before doing a brain dump through my phone.

Categories: #Blogging, #Photography, #Writing, Customer Service, social media

Tags: #Photography, Daily Post, mobile phones, what is a blog?, WordPress, writing