Au Revoir

Interpersonal feuds are rarely worth celebrating, let alone exposing to a wider audience, and blog-based feuds are almost always painfully presumptuous. However, a disagreement among the Beat Bike Bloggers has put me in the unfortunate position of having to quit this fine and worthy undertaking. Hereunder, a brief explanation.

You see, dear reader, we used to have a contributor named Rich. Some months back, Chillwill, our founder and Editor-at-Large, had a falling-out with Rich, over a personal matter wholly unrelated to the blog. At the time, Will sent Rich an e-mail expressing his anger and disappointment at Rich's transgression, and Rich denied that he had done this bad thing. Later, Will got some independent confirmation of said bad thing, and he and Rich pretty much ceased to be friends. Months later, while doing some administrative maintenance of this blog, Will recalled the offense and decided he simply didn't want to collaborate with someone who would betray his trust. So he removed Rich's posting privileges.

Will and Rich are both friends to me. I don't have any interest in the underlying facts of their dispute, although I certainly sympathize with both Will's feelings of betrayal and Rich's feelings of being wrongly accused. My feeling, though, is that none of it has anything to do with writing about riding bicycles in Hartford. I also feel that while the blog was Will's idea and he set it up, promoted it, and generally put much hard work into it, it belongs to all of us. (Not for nothing, but I've accounted for 29.7% of the posts to date, while Will has written only 15.3%).

I have put this matter to Will privately a number of times, telling him that the fair thing to do is restore Rich to posting privileges and put the matter to a vote of all the contributors. Most recently, a couple of weeks ago, I told him that I would quit if he didn't make this right. We talked today and he said he simply could not work on a shared endeavor with someone he feels has betrayed his friendship, that he didn't want to put the matter to a vote of the contributors (being justifiably concerned about needlessly airing personal matters), and that he would absolutely not resolve the problem by quitting the blog he founded (fair). So principle demands that I go. Oh well.

Thanks, dear readers, for your jolly comments and good advice. I think I'll start blogging at the New London Commercial Fishermen's Blog, which I started yesterday just so I would have a funny link in my last post. Come check me out over there, and keep riding your bikes!