I don't know why people do it.
If you feel you have had enough of blogging, that's fine by me. I have no problems with people stopping blogging. After all, I've gotten to feeling like I have reached that stage a few times myself.
However, if you decide to stop blogging, please, please, PLEASE... do NOT delete your whole blog. Just leave it alone. Don't post any more... but please don't delete the whole thing.
For a start, it means that all the links you were given are now dead links.
This might seem a minor point. After all, blogrolls can be edited fairly easily now.
But it isn't just the blogroll. I'm not a big-time blogger by any means, but my daily visitor numbers (at about 350 a day, when I blog regularly... it's dipped a bit lately) aren't bad for a Catholic lay woman who isn't a professional journalist. I appreciate the leg-ups I've had from other more established bloggers, and I try to help by giving links to other bloggers in my turn.
Yes, it's all about linky love...
I have noticed, however, that when a blogger quotes another blogger, if the whole item is included in the first blogger's post, then the comments (and visitors) often stay on the first blogger's blog - especially if people are reading through an aggregator such as Google Reader. So, in order to give other bloggers credit, one will often just give an indication of what is being said, and whether one agrees... and then provide a link so that visitors will be encouraged to go and visit.
The next blogger then gets to see that a particular post has proved popular, or controversial, or whatever... and this gives them ideas about further posts and discussion threads, and so on.
But, if you then go and delete your whole blog, the link is no longer available. Sometimes this is more than a minor inconvenience, and can ruin a whole post.
It also discourages bloggers from making links in posts that are anything more than acknowledgements of where one has seen something... because you can't guarantee it will still be there in a few months' time...
So please... DON'T DELETE BLOGS.
I've been checking my blogrolls for dead and inactive links... if I have culled your blog by accident, feel free to let me know, and I'll reinstate it. Likewise, if I haven't linked to you before, and you would like to be added, leave a comment...
Linky love makes the blogosphere go round, after all...