I just saw that www.metajournals.com is closed.

Anyone know why this happened? Lack of interest?

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2000

Answers

I think that question is best addressed to Gabby.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Metajournals required a huge amount of time and work on the part of eternally patient and very busy people, all of whom were volunteers and all of whom worked in the virtual workspace.

Every issue took between four and six weeks to make: graphics, writing, editing, assembling, and testing. This does not account for the numerous times pieces and people we counted on simply bailed during the issue and had to be replaced.

All of this done in whatever spare time that we - inbetween jobs, children, spouses, cooking dinner, dealing with illness and generally feeling tired - could muster.

I wanted to contextualize this for you. Most people had no idea what it required to create Metajournals.

Metajournals, I believe, served its purpose: it showed that a bunch of clueless and well meaning amateurs could put together a journal community project and succeed wildly. We allowed people to vent and to shine, we introduced new ideas about what this community is or could be.

But Metajournals was not the be all and end all - I don't think it was well suited to continue to serve a community which has become so very different than it was in July 1998 (when we launched).

I would love it if MJ's closure would inspire others to band together and come up with a new project, a new approach for the community. Fill the gaps you see - you can do it, believe me, you can do it.

Metajournals was simply a beginning, a start - it's now time to create the rest of the story. I'd like to leave it up to you.

I'm looking forward to it.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Well the Journal News will continue as always. I've been doing THAT since October of '97 and Heather of more.than.this is the Blogger Babe who set it up and now we are BOTH reporting the news. In a nice, easy and best of all, FAST format.

http://www.nowhere-girl.com/news/

Heather of more.than.this: http://www.nowhere-girl.com/passages/

Renee of Just Me http://www.justme.org

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Might the archives remain available?

Metajournals had some nice tutorials, articles, etc. that I've found useful as reference, and would probably continue to be enjoyed by visitors...

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Unfortunately no. There are simply too many copyright issues involved.

Most of the information, at this point, is also widely available throughout the web (design, writing tips, etc.)

The only exceptions I am willing to make are for the Diary History Project, in terms of research and dates, etc. and for article writers who would like pieces for their clipfile.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Copyright issues? Really? What copyright issues, exactly?

Just curious.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

Erm -- if people want 'em, I can certainly post the HTML tutorials that I wrote on my own site, since well, I wrote 'em:)

Donno if those were the tutorials you referred to or not ...

Cheers

-- Anonymous, August 11, 2000