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Blog Ownership - Possession Is The Law

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy.

Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred.

This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership.

Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

The ability to designate an "Administrator" solved the problem of nontransferable ownership, but introduced a second problem.

Any administrator could, at her / his discretion again, remove him / herself (or any other administrator) from the administrators list.

Initially, this improvement created two problems.

  1. Some bloggers managed to remove all administrators from the list, creating blogs with no administrators.
  2. Some bloggers, newly made administrator, would inappropriately remove other bloggers (including the original administrator aka "owner") from administrative status.

Blogger fixed the first problem, by adding a safeguard - making the Permissions wizard check for the presence of other administrators in the membership list, before removing administrator permission from any one member. However, there remain two problems, now.

  1. The safeguard works only if you can guarantee that all administrators can perform as administrators.
  2. This policy works only if you can guarantee that all administrators will perform honourably.

If blog membership is to be fully transferrable, all administrators to a blog have to have equal status. If you have an "owner" class of administrator, and a suddenly dead owner, you have a blog with no active owner. Or, you have blogs with non transferrable ownership status.

Right now, anybody who is a blog administrator is a blog owner. If you make someone an administrator, and that person removes you (and any other administrators) from administrator status, that person becomes the blog owner.

If you have an administrator who dies, you do not prune the administrator list, and you are able to remove yourself from administrator status, you may end up with a blog with no live owner.

The administrator(s) / owner - whoever she / he may be - has the right to decide over disposition of comments and posts - and of who to make a member, and to make an administrator. Blogger cannot, legally, "restore" anybody's previous rights.

If the "owner" deleted the blog, it's going to remain deleted. Contributors, and former "owners", have no say in the matter. If deleted content must be recovered, it may be possible to do this on a page by page (post by post) basis - possibly from blog cache or a blog posts newsfeed.

Possession is the law, for Blogger blogs. If you gave up control (voluntarily or even involuntarily), it's not your blog.

Comments

Is there a safety net for a blog owner Administrator who accidentally removed themselves to author?

What happens when there is not another Administrator?
Nitecruzr said…
Imelda,

If there is not another administrator, Permissions does not give you an "X" to remove - or a pulldown list to select "Author".

Short of you actually deleting the Google account that owns the one Blogger administrator account, your blog will always have an administrator. That's your safety net.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2011/10/blog-will-always-have-at-least-one.html
Thank you Chuck for your reply about blogger Administration being restored, much appreciated.

Have sent message to my friend who is also on there as Administrator, am still waiting for a reply.

Just in case I have to move to the next step... would that be then that the blog and Google account must be deleted?

Sure hope not and if so does that mean that a whole new name and profile must be opened and then rebuild the blog?

O'h my... fingers crossed here for Crone to The Bone!

I have been researching the OpenID forms and hope this may make a difference in the solutions?

Sure is great to have your help and suggestions Chuck!

Hello Chuck, well Jeanne has fixed the problem, signed in to blogger and re-instated Administrator profile!!!

Yipee!!!

I must say... you have been terrific and am so glad that I do not have delete my profile and blog in it's entirety.

Thank you so much Chuck for your advice and keeping me company through to a resolve.

~Big Hug to you sir!

~*LOVE ALWAYS*~

Imelda

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