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Moon Future
There are a lot of emotions in the Thanks And Fare Well! thread – yours and mine. Some want to keep the site, some are happy to say good-bye.
I’ve been around and ran online communities since 1993, tiny and huge ones. This is the site I cherish most so far. But it is missing a future. To be a valid, stable community the threshold for an MoA like venture is about some 80 comments and some 1.000 visitors a day. More will change the site, but for the better. Some of the comments can be those very valuable link-drops, but there is a real need for those substantial comments offered by some.
Such comments can only be induced with equally substantial, or at least provocative, offerings on the main-page. As acknowledged, that is hard to do on a continuous schedule and I, for now, lack the power and time to do so.
To those who offered to do some of those writings, please do so. For now, send your pieces to MoonofA _at _ aol.com and please allow for a 24h turnover. I will try to find some usable multi-poster software to make that process less clumsy. (Just one editorial tip: keep it short. I usually shrink my pieces by some 40% before posting and they do benefit from it.).
Also please send some pictures of your art or what ever visual you think should be shared. There is really no need for another "Friday cat blogging" site. Anna missed and beq have contributed tremendously.
For folks who don’t want the frontpage, please, please comment. Every one of you regular lurkers has ideas on the issues discussed here. You don´t need to have something "superior" in mind. Just to know there are confirming, opposite or variant takes is helpful to everybody. So please take the minute to scribble your thoughts here. There are some 15 first-time commentators on that thread. That was really devastating to me.
Thanks to Juannie Jeanne for the supportive email and to annie for that physical-mediation inducing picture :-).
Concluding: If you, personally, propagate and contribute to this site, it will live.
Bernhard,
I’m glad to hear that you are pondering the subject of the future of this blog and discussing it with us.
Since the role of strong critic seems to have fallen to me, let me again first reiterate just how grateful I am for all the work you have done with this blog. Keeping this community alive has quite literally saved my spirit over the course of this past year. And I am in awe of the quality (and quantity) of your posts. You are a rare and amazing individual who I would feel graced to meet. I hope you had a nice birthday. I have many sweet memories of the time I spent in your town, in a gracious old house perched on a hill overlooking the Elbe, and full of musically inclined Theosophical teachers; all of us discussing life all night long, until the wan light of winter filtered through the tall windows and embroidered curtains. Then there was the time that I was almost arrested by the Police for jumping out of a rapidly accelerating train departing the rail station, but that is another (very humorous) story.
You state:
But it is missing a future. To be a valid, stable community the threshold for an MoA like venture is about some 80 comments and some 1.000 visitors a day.
Is this some law of thermodynamics like “moving bodies tend to keep moving” or perhaps some empirical observation like Moore’s Law, which I haven’t heard about?
I especially don’t like that word “valid”: It stinks of officious sanctimony, like having the Queen’s imprimateur on a tin of tea. Perhaps you mean “worth your effort.”
To which I would reply by thanking Owl for reiterating my comparison with “Today In Iraq,” and remind you that it doesn’t need to take that much of your effort.
Perhaps you believe that those numbers represent some sort of minimum level of sustainability.
Let me respond to that by bringing up the example of one of my favorite blogs, Left I On The News, which I have been reading, and mostly lurking on, for about three years. You could probably have tallied up the entire first year’s comments on your fingers alone. In the past six months, traffic has exploded! Posts are now receiving an average of six whole comments. Yes, there is less sense of community, but it doesn’t vitiate the value of the site to me.
Assuming some sort of empirical validity to the numbers which you quote above, I still do not see the need for them to have to be reached instantly; that, as I have stated before, would be “to throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Maybe we could set a goal like, “We would like to be there within six months, invite people who you think might enjoy and benefit from the site.”
There is the equal danger of too many posts. I, for one, do not want to slog through 300 posts a day. That would take hours every night, or, alternatively, I would have to pick and choose which to read and which not; this would diminish the sense of community to me. I can easily roll off a good twenty five people who I have learned from and enjoy on this site. Twenty more would be great. Six hundred would be awful.
Further, I see no need for the community to remain completely “stable”, as you put it. Why not let it evolve, as it has since the days of Billmon’s first post? Blogs were new then, and people were just beginning to find uses for them. Virtual communities are still relatively new, and judging from how many regulars here have spoken with or met others, this is not purely a virtual community.
I would suggest that if you and others feel that this place is “missing a future,” as you put it, that you try to define, and put into words, what kind of future you would like to see. In my work with progressive groups, I find that frequently when they seem lost or caught in excessive bickering or non-productivity, it is precisely because they have no common vision for what they want to achieve. Further, if they refuse to define their vision, usually justified by the excuse that “they don’t have the time” for such luxuries, I find a high chance that they will soon disband in a welter of recriminations. As Kwame Ture said to me in St. Croix, and many times elsewhere, “Organize, organize, organize.”
And that doesn’t mean that the vision is not allowed to change or evolve. Just that the effort must be made to make this change explicit with the group when it becomes apparent.
You state “Just one editorial tip: keep it short.” While I too endorse the value of editing, as well as clear, cogent writing, I must beg to differ with you here. This blog was originally set up as a place to discuss the postings of Billmon. Lately Billmon has tended towards the witty, telling and often coruscating, but brief, counterpositioning of different quotes delivered ad hoc by the powerful. This is great shorthand for revealing their self-serving lies and aggrandizements. But it is not how Billmon developed his cult-like status and following. That was principally garnered through his extended pieces, often quite long but absolutely brillliant, of political analysis or economic thinking. That is how he made his name, and that, I believe, is what drew so many bright and talented people together to muse and comment. To expect the same level of discourse to be developed through less thought provoking shorter pieces is, I believe, unrealistic, and therefore, ultimately destructive.
I’m happy to submit a short piece or two a week, though I don’t think that is my forte; I would be nowhere as good at that as you. But my longer pieces take several hours to research and write–and, even, to type. They are not things that I know, but rather represent things that I am thinking about and thinking out on “paper.” I post them here when they are relevant to the discussion at hand and when I want the thoughtful kind of examination and criticism that I know I can expect here. I’m happy to have my ideas challenged and improved upon because often they are new for me. But it is not worth my time to spend several hours on a piece and then have to submit it to a single “editor” to decide whether it has merit to be published. I feel the repect that I have garnered for my past posts is enough to merit something being posted. Obviously, if no one is interested in what I have to say, then it should not be published.
What I am getting at here, is that for this to evolve into a group blog, in addition to defining a purpose, however general that purpose might be, is that there is a need to develop a group editorial policy regarding new posters, and posts. One that makes it worthwhile for people to expend the energy needed, but that also prevents the general flow of dialogue from being sidetracked or stymied.
Obviously, much more could be written about this, but it is not necessary right now.
I’m glad you are not into “Friday cat-blogging,” for I would drive the whole community away with my posts on that topic. However, I would be happy with more posts from the many creative people in this community. Anna missed’s artwork was exceptional (as are his comments lately), but I would also be happy with the occasional creative piece from anyone, like annie’s pottery, for instance.
I also want to mention that the many people who have commented that they feel intimidated or unworthy, or just post short affirmations, actually contribute far more than they realize, both in the quality of their ideas, and to the general flow of the blog and the community. I had never posted to a blog before “Whiskey Bar,” and then, later, here. And I mainly started as therapy because a medical condition had left me temporarily unable to read or write.
@r’giap: What’s wrong with rage? It is far preferable to the alternative, depression.
@jdp: Local tie-ins would be very interesting, especially as we come from such a diverse set of geographical regions.
I’ll close with another poem:
Langston Hughes’ “Harlem: A Dream Deferred”
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 21 2006 4:37 utc | 7
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