We’re certainly getting started off on the right foot, aren’t we?

It has come to my attention via Twitter that my Rappin’ It Up post from earlier this morning was poorly received by the gents over at Raptors Republic.

The gist of the beef is that they felt the format of Rappin’ It Up was too similar to both their daily Morning Coffee links posts, and the classic links posts from the AltRaps blog.

Now, I’d first like to make it clear that I am a big fan of Raptors Republic and all of their writers.  I visit the site multiple times daily, I comment frequently, and they were the first people I e-mailed upon starting up this blog.  I enjoy a great number of Raptors sites all around the blogosphere, and Raptors Republic happens to be the one that I am most active on.

Now, as for the post itself, I had no idea that it would cause any problems.  The main point of the post is the links, and a links post was (and is) something that I was under the impression basically every blog does daily.  I have never received any poor feedback on my Linkin’ Navigating posts over at Trueball, so I did not anticipate that a links post would be poorly received on this site either.  Countless other blogs provide daily links, but perhaps I was incorrect in assuming that multiple links posts related to the same team could co-exist.  So, if the problem is indeed the fact that the crew over at Raptors Republic would rather be the ones providing Raptors links for the blogosphere, I’m fine with that.  Consider the post scrapped.  That’s why I clearly stated at the beginning of the post that it was a work in progress.

It is possible that the beef is related to another part of the post, as I know that Raptors Republic does provide a “Random Raptor of the Day” type thing on their sidebar.  Perhaps it was the video, picture, or quote.  I don’t know, and I’m currently in the process of trying to figure out exactly what it was that upset them.

Regardless though, the moral of this post is that I had no intentions of upsetting anyone, nor did I purposely “pirate” or steal any material from Raptors Republic.  So, if you happened upon any of this afternoon’s tweets calling me a “pirate”, saying I was “stealing their style”, or telling me to “get off their jock” (which were disappointingly posted before anyone reached out to me or any of the other Rators Rapture writers to get our side of the story) , please let me assure you that I am not a pirate, have my own style which was formed long before I had ever heard of Raptors Republic, and have never been on anyone’s jock.

That said, I have tremendous respect for all of the writers over there, and all I’m trying to do here is provide a forum where Raptors fans can read some news and analysis while keeping everything lighthearted and fun.  Beefing with (in my opinion) the premier Raptors blog on the net is far from lighthearted and fun, so it looks like I’m going to change my approach here.

The infringing post will be removed immediately, and further attempts at a daily post will be suspended until I can figure out exactly what went wrong here and fix it.  To all of the Raptors fans and bloggers out there, I apologize for this accident, and in the future will be more diligent in seeking out approval for new projects from those who could potentially be offended.

But please, let me reiterate, the post was in no way meant to be anything like the Raptors Republic posts except for the fact that it provided links.  Any similarities were totally accidental, and will be avoided in the future.

I hope we can move on amicably from this, because accidentally pissing off a bunch of writers you respect tremendously is a pretty shitty start for a blog, and a pretty shitty feeling in general.  Hopefully it’s all love in Raptorville once this all gets sorted out.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.