Need help with abandoned blog's links…. (WP has helped before! Thanks!)

  • Unknown's avatar
    ensatina · Member ·

    Hi,
    I report this every now and then, and sometimes I get some help but a problem still exists….

    So this needs to go to someone at WordPress who likes to solve problems… but if anyone out there has any suggestions I would welcome them, including how to get hold of someone at WP who could actually solve the problem.

    I visit a blog (http://geekwithfibroids.wordpress.com/) that has been invaluable to me and loads of other women all over the world (it has had close to 1.5 million views) It is for women having a lot of difficulty living with fibroid tumors (e.g. treating them through various surgeries, pain, infertility, pregnancy with tumors etc.!) Since it’s inception in 2006 it has provided women (and some men) with a ton of information, support, personal experiences, etc.

    Unfortunately, the site has been abandoned by it’s founder – a lot of us think she may have died because the last time she showed up on the site was early 2007 – if I recall correctly. And if you look through her posts, you’ll see she was clearly passionate about the blog – she posted often, and regularly worked to improve her blog… and we just cannot imagine she would have abandoned it and not returned to it in 6 years….

    I first contacted WordPress because the site had gone down. Fortunately, I convinced someone on the WP staff of the site’s tremendous value as a reference tool and they were kind enough to put it back up (I don’t know if the domain hadn’t been paid for or what, but it went back up!!! )

    At the time I even offered to take the site on so that I could fix the problems it has and maintain it – but was told that it just wasn’t possible – if anyone knows if this has ever been possible and how to do it, please let me know.

    Assuming WP won’t let me take it on, I would like to figure out how to get all the broken links fixed. One staff member fixed a lot of them but an awful lot of them still don’t work!!

    I wish WP could give someone the task to fix them. I realize there are a lot – but even if it is done over time, it would help those women who go to the site for help with their problems.

    I often post to people in the different threads that they need to put “wordpress.” after “geekwithfibroids.” but frankly, that just doesn’t work for a lot of people, especially if they don’t even get into the site in the first place – and unfortunately, “geekwithfibroids.com” takes them to a pseudo page with other links to fibroid related issues.

    Finally, it bothers me that there is a PayPal donation link on the account – I have to wonder what’s happening with the money that is donated if the blog owner is dead…. it doesn’t seem right that Paypal should profit from this.

    Thanks so much for any suggestions!

    Amy

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    I flagged this for the staff –

    Blogs are owned by the original account and WordPress.COM totally respects the privacy of the original owner – i.e. no matter how sincere and responsible you are they will not give you the blog – the owners heirs would need a death certificate and such to transfer the blog – yes sort of a tough situation –

  • Unknown's avatar
    ensatina · Member ·

    Thanks auxclass – a number of us spent many hours scouring the blog to figure out where she was located and even looked through obituaries to contact her family, but there just wasn’t enough information. I think we got it town to Vermont or Virginia (I don’t remember which anymore), and her husband is a funeral director! But no luck.

    I totally get the need for respecting the privacy of the original owner – and yet, if she is dead, I can’t but imagine that her family would like to keep this going… oh well!! But I’m thoroughly grateful that WP has kept the site up!

    At any rate, I couldn’t remember how I got through to the staff before… but at least – maybe WP can assign an intern to go through and fix the other links!

    I just hate that people are sent to a phony website when they click the bad links! So if nothing else it would be so great to get them fixed -even if it takes a long time.

    (And then there is the issue of PayPal, but at least that doesn’t affect us…. thought it would be great if that $ could be used to keep the blog going….)

  • Unknown's avatar
    jenia · Member ·

    Hi Amy, thank you for your concern. Looking through your previous emails, I’m afraid we still can’t make any changes to the blog without consent from the blog owner. There might be a number of reasons why it’s not being updated (and we can’t know for sure what it is), the policy remains in effect.

    Maybe you and other women can start a blog of your own, where you’ll be exchanging the latest info, make sure your links are correct, and provide a forum for people to communicate? You can start a new blog here: https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/

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