Earlier this year, I was delighted to find that TOL had started a blog about the unresolved post-Soviet conflicts (sometimes called "frozen conflicts"), called Steady State. It's a topic of great interest to me and one that I've considered starting a blog or web-portal about; but they sort of saved me the trouble.
Now TOL has filled another niche which I'd have loved to fill, given infinite time (I even set this up some time ago), with a new blog about Moldova - more precisely, according to them, "about political, economic, and social issues facing Moldova." There's a lot of original content there, including a post about Russia's "wine war" with Moldova (my phrase, not theirs) and it all looks pretty interesting. They still need to add something to their "about" page, but the topics covered so far - a series about the difficulties facing the disabled in Moldova, migration issues (naturally), etc. - look promising. My unsolicited recommendation to blogmaster Ecaterina Sanalatii is to come up with a title for the blog, something more compelling than "TOL Moldova," and my further (still unsolicited) recommendation would be to call it "Moldova Matters" - I guess I like the not-so-subtle double meaning.
7 comments:
Dear Scraps of Moscow, we were delighted to find you delighted by our new blog! You may have noticed that we have followed both your suggestion AND your further suggestion. So thank you very much.
It's slightly out of your Slavonic field of interest but you might be similarly pleased to find our new blog about Hungary and one about Romania too (blogs.tol.org/hungary, blogs.tol.org/romania). And keep your eyes peeled for further new blogs...
All the best,
Katie (TOL)
p.s. I like your graffiti blog very much, especially the bold link saying "why am i doing this"... indeed...
Katie, I'm glad you liked my suggestion. I did see the Romania blog and will be watching for more topical blogs at TOL. And I'm glad you noticed the graf blog! I am going to post a couple of things there today, I think - it is sort of the neglected poor stepchild to Scraps (which is itself the often-neglected poor stepchild to my family, study and work obligations, as it should be, I suppose...).
Lyndon, I think the TOL Moldova blog is very week -- I'm surprised by the fact that TOL (a well-established publication) accepts such low quality content. It may be OK for a undergraduate student, but it still doesn't belong under the TOL brand.
Alexandrer
There's a definite politcal slant as well. "Jigs" (hope I've got it right) is especially weak and sub-undergraduate.
Alex, your point is well taken and perhaps I should have tempered my enthusiasm. I agree with you on the level of quality, but on the whole I think it's better than nothing - there are few enough English-language blogs about Moldova that one more, even if its content is not stellar (as some of your comments there have shown) is, in my opinion, a good thing on balance. At least it provides an open forum which allows you and others to comment and provide constructive criticism, and as long as they steer clear of hard social sciences maybe they'll do OK.
As far as I can tell, it's written principally by someone who is maybe a freshman in university and is probably not paid for their work. Hopefully they will attract other contributors. Maybe you could cross-post some items from your blog, which would make them accessible to people who don't know Romanian? (I know you don't need my help with it, but I'd be happy to help with translation if it's an issue of time, though you may have other, better reasons for not wanting to post your content on other sites).
I guess the quality is just a function of it being hard to find people who will submit original content on Moldova for free - anyway, hopefully it will get better over time, and I'm not going to be so quick to criticize it, since I don't have time to try to create a better English-language blog on Moldova.
Mike, you're talking about a different TOL blog, but I'll humor you. While you may disagree with things posted at Steady State (I think "jibs" is the username of the contributor you're referring to, although that blog has other contributors), I don't think there's any other English-language blog dealing with all of the unresolved post-Soviet conflicts. So it's the best of its kind, though that's sort of faint praise, as it's also the only one of its kind.
Aside from Steady State being unique, I happen to think the quality of the writing there is quite readable and hardly "sub-undergraduate," especially considering that the contributors are probably not native English-speakers. You are certainly entitled to think whatever you like about the quality of the content there, although I suspect your opinion has less to do with the quality of the writing than with the views expressed. And although I don't agree with your take on "slant," you are certainly also entitled to believe the TOL blogs are more slanted than, for instance, your beloved Tiraspol Times website - but you can't deny that at least there is transparency as far as who pays for the TOL blogs.
Lyndon
TTT is far more objective than that "Jibs" person.
I prefer accurate analysis with some balance over inaccurate views which are very slanted.
As I said, you are of course entitled to believe - and prefer - whatever you like.
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