I was a little shocked to find out tonight that Philadelphia Will Do by Dan McQuade appears to have ended. The blog was operated on the Philadelphia Weekly website. There on the main page is McQuade’s final post.

And that’ll do it for the PW version of this blog. Thanks to the people who gave me this (relatively ridiculous) chance and to everyone who checked in over the past three-plus years. Special thanks to the people who did some writing for me on the blog: Shannon McLaughlin, Mike Benner, Christina Palsky. Sorry if I forgot anyone.

I hope I succeeded in my original goal: Lowering the productivity of the American office worker, at least a little. Yeah, I think that’s what my original goal was.

McQuade, a 25 year old blogger, does say “the PW version” is done. So that could mean that his blog could re-emerge somewhere else.

I met McQuade for the first time on Tuesday when we both appeared on a panel titled “Philly’s Most Influential Bloggers” sponsored by the Philadelphia Public Relations Association. All seemed well with him at the Warwick Hotel luncheon. Two other panelists wrote about the event.  You can read their stories here and here. I’ve sent an email to McQuade hoping for more information about what happened.

He once took aim at It’s Our City after we published a photo of a sign we called “mean spirited” that was brought to one of Mayor Michael Nutter’s townhall meetings.

The other blog that closed this week was Ed Goppelt’s Hallwatch.org. It was a local government watchdog website that went offline last night at 11:59 p.m. He gave us some warning when he posted this on his site last month.

Hallwatch to cease operations” on Feb 26 @ 11:59pm.

Ed used the power of his website to demand more accountability from Philadelphia government and also took up the cause of fighting against the two planned casinos slated for the city.

We will miss the blogs and wish Dan and Ed the best. We’d like to know your thoughts on all this. Have you ever read the blogs? Do you trust blogs?