Life after the Biblioblog Top 50

Seems I am a bit slow off the mark since returning from England last week. I hadn't noticed that the Biblioblog Top 50 had finally thrown in the towel, after threatening to do so for some time. The Biblioblog Top 50 blog has gone the way of its author's earlier NT Wrong blog and has decided to hide the whole thing behind password protection. For what it's worth, I think it's a real shame. Although not as much fun as the old NT Wrong blog where it originated, the Biblioblog Top 50 was still a good laugh. I always felt that the real interest was in the annotations that accompanied the chart, the pictures and the gentle humour and sarcasm. But there were other things of use too, not least the big list that had become a great resource in its own right, and which I had linked on my NT Gateway blogs page. So that link is going to have to go. It seems that the Biblioblog search engine is still working, and that the database was last updated in November 2009, but you can no longer access it from the Biblioblog Top 50 site itself (of course). Instead, go to this Google link, or search directly from my NT Gateway Blogs page. But a search engine is only as good as the database it is searching, and if the dean of the Biblioblog Top 50 has given up that blog, it's doubtful that he is going to continue updating the complete list that feeds the search.

I now understand what I had not realized earlier, that the Free Old Testament Audio Website blog is attempting to replace the Biblioblog Top 50 itself and not just the occasional updates that used to appear on Jim West's deleted blog. So thanks to Jeremy for that, and kudos to the artist formerly known as NT Wrong that his absence is so clearly felt that others spring up to fill the void. I wish people would not do this, though, and delete or hide old blogs. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Even if you become convinced that there is so little value in it yourself that it should be removed from the web, it might just be that others have a higher opinion of your efforts and that the archives might continue to be of use. Luckily, there are ways of accessing archive material if you know how, but it would be so much more beneficial to keep the archives for such blogs publicly available. So this is me informally registering some general grumpiness about the whole business of hidden and deleted blogs, with perhaps a bit more to come in due course.