It's Not You, It's Me. (It's Really You.)

So, I had this whole long piece put together here about the +1 and my own indefensibly simplistic rant on the topic last week, and it was to go atop the following programming note. However, it's been a couple of days now and [hopefully] nobody cares anymore about the +1 mess. The crux of the piece was that dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac and I ultimately agree on the use of the +1, although we approach it from different angles (I think). Make great jokes and appreciate the great jokes of others. If anyone's still interested, maybe I'll post it sometime down the line. At any rate, for now, let's leave it in the vault.

Now, that programming note:

It's very possible that you've read your last Mad Bastards All daily Roundup. Way back in March or whatever, doing a roundup was as easy as looking for Steve_U's three best comments, picking a joke from shuttledik to rough up, brainstorming a few preferably-hyphenated ways to call someone a moron, and slapping the whole thing together quickly. It took me 20 minutes. And nobody knew this thing existed. It was a goofy intellectual exercise, a way for a scatterbrained person to organize his observations into something coherent. In short, I could skip a dozen roundups or not bother with links and it didn't matter. Then, sometime in spring, our first love Gamboa Constrictor outed us to DUAN, significantly upping the ante. Sometime around then also, as folks got more and more comfortable with the new Deadspin and some of the quirks and bugs were worked out, commenting started to surge back to previous levels. Keeping up with that surge has been hugely time-consuming. I'm embarrassed to say I have spent as long as 4 hours on a single roundup, which is roughly twice the time I spend each day on things that lead to a paycheck. Still, the attention was fun and I like to think we had an interesting conversation or two about mechanics along the way. But now, and for now, I'm no longer able to keep up in a way that is interesting but not enormously time-consuming. I can chronicle good and bad comments, but digging up any meaningful analysis is increasingly difficult. Redundancy abounds. That redundancy is additional weight. It's a mad, spinning whirlpool of neuroses. My psyche is in tatters. Just last week, I killed 2 dozen tourists from a perch atop the Washington Monument. I'm sure it was in all the news.

I'm sure we'll still push out the occasional Profile in Commenting and as many long-form pieces as I can talk myself into, but look: Deadspin commenting seems to be in a very healthy place these days. It was decidedly not back in March. Little did I know, back then, how impossible the roundups would be to maintain if things ever picked back up again. Going forward, I expect I'll nod in the direction of some hugely successful comments, especially if I feel like I have something interesting to say about them. Similarly, I reserve the right to beat up on the occasional piece-of-crap comment with as much vitriol as I can muster. I like writing things. Just not daily roundups. Or, at any rate, boy oh boy do I not have time to do those right.

Here are some numbers you might find interesting:

We started the Roundups in March 2011, roughly.

March Pageviews: 175 (of which I'm sure 169 were me)

As of April 20th, we were on pace for about 250 or so pageviews for the month. On April 21st, in DUAN, Gamboa Constrictor announced our existence.

April Pageviews: 11,207

May Pageviews: 13,573

June Pageviews: 18,652

Our five most popular posts were:

1. I'm Having That Dream Where I'm Wearing Only My Underwear in Public, from April 21st. This was our response to being outed. 651 pageviews.

2. Thursday Roundup, from June 2nd. I have no idea why this particular Roundup was our second most popular post ever. 444 pageviews, most of which came that evening.

3. THERE ARE NO LAUGHS BUT THOSE THAT OBEY, from June 3rd. This was our response to a back-and-forth that took place in our comments. 424 pageviews.

4. Guest Lectures in Commenting: dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac, from April 28th. Our first ever Guest Lecture, coincidentally featuring the +1. 354 pageviews.

5. Profiles in Commenting: AzureTexan, from May 5th. In my humble opinion, our finest moment as a blog and the most fun I've had doing this thing. 324 pageviews.

To be clear: I'm not shutting this thing down entirely. I'm just stopping the roundups immediately. If someone wants to step in and do some roundups, email madbastardsall@gmail.com. It might take me a few days to find your email - I'm steadfastly avoiding that email account in the wake of the +1 debate. It looks like all hell's breaking loose in there.

Thanks for reading. Keep doin' your damn thing.