Sharing Blogs

As noted in the rules for this forum, "This is not the place to name drop or link to your travel blog." The intention behind this is to keep our community together and not disperse them across the web. It defies the point of having this forum. Thank you kindly for asking.

HA HA! It was so obvious, I missed it! LOL Thank you.

Well that is a shame, on tripadvisor.com you are allowed to post links to your personal blogs,,its doesn't take away from tripadvisor.com and doubt that it would do that here either. I do not blog, so won't be breaking that rule, but will have to go on other sites to enjoy being able to assess that feature, which I guess does "disperse " me away from this site anyways, but temporarily,, I think there is more then enough to keep me coming back here without having to worry about other sites. Travel sharing is travel sharing. I mention this site on tripadvisor.com( recommend the tours too) and its not a problem there, such a shame someones decided that sharing here is a problem. Perhaps as this site matures it will see that.

To each their own I guess. In my opinion, I would love to find a place where I could share with others. Unlike what the WB said, it WOULD keep me coming back as this site is such a go-to ressource and that would be just one more great thing to find.

I like blogs photos,, people will post shots of the great meal they report on, or the great apartment they found, pictures rock!

I agree with posters. Accessing blogs isn't going to take me away from this site but makes it easier to see photos and other information about certain places then we can come back here to get more information. This is certainly the main hub and the other links are just helpful stops on our research journey.

Simone, checked out your blog, it was great,, will keep looking at it!

Well, no links to blog at this side. That's the rule. But I can write short story about my trip on this side and say: if you want to know more, PM me. And when you PM me I can send you a link to my blog. So until the rule changes, it can be done this way.

What does "name d r o pping" have to do with sharing blog addresses? What are we afraid of - someone saying they saw George Clooney in Italy? Really? So, given the charming restriction of limiting our questions and responses to a dozen or so sentences, a report after our upcoming 5-week trip to numerous locations in Italy will have to be very brief. That should be informative... How, exactly, is providing a blog address a problem? If you find blogs tiresome, why would you go to the trouble of reading it? Just ignore it. And how many people REALLY want to read trip reports, but REALLY don't want to be be bothered by a blog address? So I CAN give a so-brief-it's-pretty-much-useless trip report, but I CAN'T follow that tidbit with a "If you want to know more..." blog link? Instead, I have to do the Private Message dance? That's efficient.... I could understand that posting nothing but a blog link would be annoying, but as a tag on the end of an otherwise full post? I don't get that. I suggest a rethink of that rule at the next staff meeting.

I think the issue with posting the link to one's blog is that some blogs have ads and, therefore, have earnings. I have two blogs and have chosen not to advertise anything on the blog. As previous posters mentioned, these blogs contain more information and pics than a trip report post can have. I think mentioning that you have a blog in your trip report and that you will give it out in a PM is a viable option. And, unfortunately, it's our only option. I guess this is a step towards the right direction.

I couple comments here. Denise brings up one of the reasons why we can't allow for links to others blogs. We aren't here to serve as a promotional tool for someone's site which may or may not be generating money for them. We are not in a position to approve what sites do or don't generate money. Generating money isn't always the promotional goal either. This website is HEAVILY targeted by spammers, promoters and other people looking to improve upon their Search Engine Optimization. We will not let our site be a tool for web savvy promoters. We feel that the promotion found on other sites is a significant detractor from their value, especially when we are trying to provide the best possible advice for travelers. The "no blogs" rule for this forum already existed in the Helpline. It is part of our "no promotion" rule in our Community Guidelines. I knew this could be an issue here which is why the guideline was clarified that this does, in case you were wondering, include linking to your blog. Randy, there is nothing preventing you from adding a second, third or fourth post to allow you to write your full trip report. I even suggest you do that on the page where you start your new topic in this new forum. Pat and others have a lot of good points too. There is utility in being able to see what others have to share even if it is on another website. The trick is that we can't have it in the public forums. One of our options in a long term plan is to create a proper "My Profile" page where each individual is permitted to share whatever website they'd like. This is just an idea at this time and isn't set in stone. I know you are all eager for improvements here and I appreciate that feedback. We are taking things one step at a time and I hope that opening these two new forums shows our interest in improving the Helpline.

Webmaster; Thank you for your response. I'm sure that there are spamming issues you have to deal with that few people here (certainly including myself) have any real concept of. And that those issues influence the rule-making. I think there is a large group among us who do not blog or keep any digital record of their trips, but who might be willing to share a tidbit or two about their trip that others find useful. For those people, this could be useful - or at least a different way of passing along the same sort of information they would have otherwise in the form of answers to questions on the other links. But then there is this other, smaller group, who blog - who have already devoted a great deal of time and effort into keeping a web log of their trip. Some of them do it on a daily basis, and I'll bet that some of them (including myself) write it with the intent that it could be read by strangers and found instructive. This "Trip Reports" location is not very useful for us since the only way to contribute is to reproduce in a more concise format (and in a much less attractive format without photos), work that we have already done. Anyway, I'm not expecting the rule to change just for me. And I understand that there are other good reasons for having the rule. It just seems like an odd contradiction regarding the efficient exchange of information.

The way I see this new forum being most useful is for people who want to "report back" on how something or some suggestion worked out for them. Many times first time travelers have lots of questions, and after their trip they are enthusiastic sharers of the new information they gathered. I see this section being used as a way to let everyone who helped them know how their trip turned out, without going into great detail.

I think a modification on the rule would be a good compromise. Is it because they don't want other commercial interests posting on their website? Ok, I have a great travel blog that I keep just for travels. And I have found other inspiring blogs through here but I keep coming back here for information. It doesn't distract me in fact it's just the opposite! On travel blogs there can be more in depth information then what is posted here.

I thought that the no-blog rule was annoying, but then I read the Webmaster's comment and now I understand why. I recently took a one month trip to France and posted about a dozen stories on my travel blog. A lot of time and effort went into them, and I don't really have the time now to summarize them, or even cut and paste snippets. So if anyone is interested, let me know and I'll send the link. We covered the southern Ardeche, Aveyron, and Gascony (a week in each), plus a few days in Annecy (2), Beaujolais region (1), Bordeaux area (2), and Paris (2).