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Did all of the articles just disappear? I’m sorry the blog isn’t being continued. Was my favorite part of this site.
I agree.
I’m mostly pretty lurker-ish, but I have to be honest. I’m really sad the blog is gone. I’m sure it wasn’t deleted, right? But how can we access what’s already there? I love 180 and I’ll still show up, but it feels like somebody just cut down a really cool tree and only left the stump!
A weird analogy. It’s late.
Anyway, I’m bummed. Hope more of the kinks get ironed out and I hope the old blog posts will still be accessible somehow as they’re an absolute wealth of information, especially with everything that’s posted in the comments.
Hey everyone,
Yes, the blog is no more. As we wrote in the Facebook group, blogs are subject to confusion, especially with the many changes of orientation 180 has seen over the years.
Right now, half the people who visit the site each day are new. When they read that pizza and ice cream are good for you and don’t have the context to put that in, how many of them do you think stay? How many people do we lose because they write this crazy guy off, and as a result, they never learn enough to benefit from any insight here?
I get emails all the time from people who point out old articles and don’t know how to reconcile it with the newer material, and it’s a lot of work to orient each person. They don’t necessarily know where to start or what to make of the material on site.
The idea here is to get everyone on the same page, literally, and consolidate the best of the material, the most persistent and useful info, all the key posts and points, without old left behind ideas clouding the helpful information.
Now everyone will get a full course, basically, in the 180D approach. You get information sequentially in a way that builds upon itself but doesn’t require you to go back to the very start of the archives in 2006 and filter out the abandoned information, and grapple with excess cognitive dissonance.
As time has gone on, the importance of the basics has really come to the fore, and we can present that in detail. Basic ideas like attention to your food and fluid patterns, and avoiding extreme regiments, and cultivating mindfulness and instinctual choices can be given the attention they need, while diversions like carb cycling or fructose avoidance or maximum nutrient partitioning are not emphasized.
The goal continues to be to make this information as usefully available as possible, and keyword here is *usefully.* Having a hundred different ways for people to discount what’s written here (even if it was just a part of a long-standing investigative exploration and was later abandoned), does not accomplish that. Streamlining things so people know what we’re about does.
There were other ancillary site related reasons, such as the fact that too many comments allegedly shut the place down a week or two back. We lost the old comment structure and the replacement was not as simple to use, and there wasn’t much we could do about it according to our web developer. Coupled with all of the above reasons, extracting the best material and providing the right framework for it to actually be helpful and useful for readers led to this decision.
Hopefully you see a bit more what we’re trying to accomplish here, and we’ll do our best to make this next phase fun for everyone.
So What will you do when people subscribe to the e-mail in a year or so, which as you say builds upon information sequentially? Surely you’ll be in the same position?
And what about the “search” function? Surely that helps to orient people without you needing to hold their hand?
Rob, not sure how open you guys are, but can I make a few suggestions? Take them as you will, but this is somewhat in my line of work, so I can offer a few ideas. This is based on the idea that 1) the customer experience should be as easy as possible, with a low upfront investment, and 2) One of the key identities of this site is the community around his blog posts (I learned more from people’s comments over the years, honestly, than from Matt himself – that will be a big loss)
1) The video is going to be tough to get people to watch when they come to the site. It’s a big investment up front. It might be better to have just an intro homepage for people to quickly read first, explaining all the principles. Easier than video format and more clear. With a video link if they want to invest more time.
2) Making people register before they get any real info is a tough sell. People like to check things out before investing usually. If they read the homepage, you may be able to get them to register before accessing blog posts (although I am of the opinion that open is better)
3) You could have the newer blog posts in a “blog” tab (not the home page, but accessible at the top tabs) so people can read them after reading the main guidelines.
4) You could create a link to the older archived articles on the site. Not something that is super obvious from the homepage, but a side link from the “blog” page, with a disclaimer that Matt’s views have changed over the years.
5) The comments on the articles were a big part of the community here. Even with the new, more annoying structure, I think it’s better than nothing. Or maybe you could go back to the older way of no option of replies, just all comments go to the bottom and you use @…. to respond to someone. I just think it is a BIG loss to lose the comment community feel.
Overall, I think the whole site feels much more impersonal now, and many people are not going to jump through registration, etc. to figure out what the site is all about.
My 2 cents, take what you will from it.
is it just a coincidence that Matt has this new amazon deal and suddenly all the back content is out of bounds? Didn’t the “community” make half of that content anyway?
Free the blog!
Change always comes with a period of disruption. Sorry everyone.
Here’s the thing: the blog represented the period of active investigation that was ongoing for years. That has been winding down for some time, as some commenters have pointed out, and even Matt has in some of his posts and guest posts (such as ‘Nutrition in Three Words’) said as much. There’s an infinite number of things to say on the topics covered here, but most of them are not all that helpful and can be distilled to a much smaller, more focused set of ideas. That’s what this is about.
You guys don’t see how much goes on in the back end replying to people’s questions and comments and trying to get everyone on the same page. And still it doesn’t always work because there’s confusing material out there and many people end up never bothering to read more as a result
Not everyone has time to scour the archives and see the seven year evolution. By paring things down, we can offer the best stuff that Matt can stand behind and feel confident in. You still get Matt’s writing and his insight, but we get to offer it with the benefit of some hindsight. And a clean slate allows us to build from the start rather than go through hundreds of old posts and attempt to remove incongruences and bring them up to date.
EDIT: Also, for those of you who follow 180, you can get all the material that Matt stands by for FREE. We just will now be able to avoid hosting stuff that no longer makes sense. Newbies will know where we’re coming from and know where to start and regulars continue to get free material, and can continue to share and communicate here on the forums.
I agree with The Real Amy, especially in regards to the introductory video being too much of an upfront investment. If I were coming to this site for the first time I would instantly give up and move on to something else.
As long as the old blog posts are available for us to view later on, I’m happy.
I subscribed to the forums right now just so I could post this comment.
This is terrible. I have been a longtime reader and feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me.
I don’t get it! If you don’t want new people to be confused by the old posts, then delete the old posts! What’s so hard about that?
But to take everything away is just a slap in the face to all Matt’s loyal followers.
I’m disgusted.
Will “The Real Amy” please start your own blog? I love your posts and revisit many of them. Now they’re gone.
I do understand, and we are pretty lucky to have received as much information for free as we have. It’s just frustrating to deal with this amount of change of all at once.
When I was new to 180, it was very difficult to figure out where to start, so I definitely think it’s important for that to be addressed. It was pretty unclear where to find the right, most current information, and equally unclear that most of the older blog posts were meant to be disregarded.
So, I do get it. I guess I just wish the changes could have been carried out in a different fashion. However, it isn’t my blog/website, so I don’t get to decide and it seems like a TON of work to make this place function, so I really don’t want that job. :D
I hope you all can figure out the best way to bring the most information to as many people as possible. And I hope you get rid of the video. :P Because it seems kind of scammy or spammy or something just not quite right. And it’s confusing. And it’s LONG. Like, really long for an intro video.
But I *do* get what you’re trying to do and I can respect that.
I don’t mean to be hyper-critical. I’ve just benefited so much from all that 180 has to offer that it’s hard to see such a big chunk of it go away. But such is life, I guess.
Thanks for replying and doing so much explaining, Rob!
@Crinkly. Each person who subscribes gets the same articles in the same order with the same spacing starting from the beginning. The series looks like it will be 70-parts long and last for an entire year. For free of course. So each subscriber gets a year of 180 School.
The newsletter will be great. Much better than the blog posts.
All new books will be released for free.
AS far as the video vs. text, we’ll be testing lots of things. Videos traditionally work better, especially long videos, which is why they are used so often. A person has to have a pretty compelling reason to give away their email address, and that’s hard to create in a few paragraphs and even harder to create in a 2-minute video.
Obviously we want as many people to get the information as possible, and get it in a way that is more effective. Most will not subscribe. But currently the site has had millions of visitors and the loyal followership is small. While the blog was certainly cool, it was an abysmal failure in terms of its ability to deliver information to its visitors, particularly new visitors that couldn’t see the build-up to what eventually became totally reasonable conclusions (that seem extreme and fraudulent to those with other nutritional conditioning from other philosophies).
Anyway, I appreciate everyone’s love for the blog. But it’s not like things have died. They have just shifted, and shifted for the better. I learned many things in the last 7 years of blogging. One is that blogging is a very inefficient means of communication.
And you’ve still got the forum to do all the chatting and socializing and posting that you desire.
thanks for the reply Matt, I was only messing with you. I will give the new system a whirl
cheers, crinkly
“Obviously we want as many people to get the information as possible, and get it in a way that is more effective. Most will not subscribe. But currently the site has had millions of visitors and the loyal followership is small. While the blog was certainly cool, it was an abysmal failure in terms of its ability to deliver information to its visitors, particularly new visitors that couldn’t see the build-up to what eventually became totally reasonable conclusions (that seem extreme and fraudulent to those with other nutritional conditioning from other philosophies).”
Hmm. Yeah, honestly I wondered if that was happening. I think this new orientation school will be awesome. I’m excited to see it unfold!
I’ll admit that I was sad to loose the blog archive in some ways (I loved some of those new articles by Julia–and of course, there were many classic ones by Matt), but it makes complete sense that it was too confusing for the reader who happens across a random article by chance.
I really think this is going to be great, and I wish you the best of luck with it. :)
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