This environment is founded on two main pillars: the comment rating mechanism and the usual technical side of the posts. Folk interested on populist, subjective issues are automatically cast aside, they may have a dash or two in disturbing the waters but eventually will see themselves prevented from doing so and move on; the sane environment is preserved. I'm not aware of a similar blogging environment, among the many I frequent or frequented and is in strike contrast to that at TheOilDrum for instance.
But this creates a problem: ET become an elitist space. Sad but true, most folk on the streets couldn't care less about the issues discussed here: the latest football results or the latest socialite gossip are much more attractive to them. We end up preaching the sermon to the converts (unless of course you write about Climate).
To move easily out of the box, ET would require something easily recognizable to promote, a product, an idea, that at this stage doesn't exist. ET is a forum, a friendly discussion space, that with its plurality and eclecticism isn't something you can promote by itself. But it is my belief that at least on the idea-space something could be brought about - it all depends on how ambitious it aims to be.
Bringing my architect side to it, I think it is perhaps best to first define what objective a future-ET should aim for, and then maybe the how could become more clear. I see at least four main targets for a future-ET:
Some of these overlap, but simply distinguishing clearly between the first two objectives can already be an important step towards the future. Vencit omnia veritas.
I will say that the site itself, as a forum, can remain "elitist" and still achieve the stated goal of branching out.
The way this occurs is to preserve ET as it is, trying to increase readership but maintain the same decorum whilst encouraging the individual members in their efforts outside of ET and encouraging them to bring that back to the site.
Never confuse an online forum with a real place. The impact of ET will be in what the individuals who are a part of it contribute rather than some kind of collective and branded action of the site. That would inherently require homogenization of ideas and cause more of the friction that is being described. Who speaks for ET? and other questions will consume all of the time formerly devoted to intelligent, free discussion.
I would advise focusing on recruitment more and more, the number of users who understand the current motion of this site can and will increase with effort and that will produce its own fruit. Essentially I say believe that what you have done thus far has been effective and maybe you should continue doing things in the same manner. Fresh blood is needed and welcome, but not for its own sake, rather for what it contributes. How those contributions are measured has already been defined by ET and that which does not fit in has been deemed lacking in its contribution. May they lurk for all eternity!
The big unknown is how to get that public recognition. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I use this site more as a reader than a writer and am always blown away by the quality of commentary and analysis. That does not mean I agree with any of the people who write here - but it is distinctive - as is the ambition of having a working trans-european blog in the 'style' of DKOS.
If you want to get better known and become visible - ask your contributors to each invite 5 of the best bloggers in their territories, and ten of their online contacts - who they imagine would appreciate being invited - to contribute.
Bitter virtual scraps are part and parcel of any attempt at an ideal agora. I come from an indymedia background - a place which pioneered citizens media and know far too much about them for my own good.
What they taught me is that an agora to survive - needs to be controlled by the community - in as dispersed way as possible - if it is to become an agora - rather than become someone elses public house where you can have a smoke and drink if you pay and have to hold your tongue.
You do a fantastic job - you are a very acute writer - you write across the atlantic in an almost unprecedented way. You should trust the community you built and stop taking all the stress of normal problems on yourself. If there werew 20 people in control you could do 1/20th of the worrying.
As we used to say in Indymedia Ireland - "All Power To The Commenteers!"
You do a fantastic job - you are a very acute writer - you write across the atlantic in an almost unprecedented way.
acute is right. ambassadorial in the highest possible sense. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
There is a fair amount of economic expertise already here. Get together, decide on a particular agenda, research the hell out of it, and post, post, post. Become the place to come to for political/economic news and commentary for EU and trans-Atlantic issues.
"Let us be frank. Provoking military-political instability and upper regional conflicts is also a convenient way of deflecting people's attention from mounting social and economic problems. Regrettably, further attempts of this kind cannot be ruled out." Foreign policy Implications of the Global Economic Crisis, quoted by Niall Ferguson in testimony given to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 11 Feb, 2009, Last accessed 18 Feb 2009.
Foreign policy Implications of the Global Economic Crisis, quoted by Niall Ferguson in testimony given to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 11 Feb, 2009, Last accessed 18 Feb 2009.
You don't have to tell me how much work that can be, but some can be delegated, and the core effort can be streamlined. If you decide to go down this road, don't try to go it alone, you don't need to.
I don't know if dkos actually pays some people to blog, but obviously at least some of the front pagers there are those whom you named "insiders." "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
reach the common folk; reach the politicos; become a politic "party"; perpetuate ET through time;
All valid reasons for the effort and expense of creating and maintaining ET or any blog. The first two reasons are among the reasons why I put in as much time (pretty much all my spare time) as I do.
Which begs the question: what did the founder(s) of ET hope would happen. What did they hope to accomplish? Blogging takes on a variety of forms, which place themselves everywhere on the spectrum of serious to chatty.
As an example, dkos is a brilliant success. I know the kind of resources involved and their expense. Never mind the servers and the bandwidth involved (at my last serious job, we had a T1 line - serious, pro-grade bandwidth - which was running us just under $1000 US per month), dkos has retained an attorney, has a development staff, and at least one (who must be a full time employee) technical administrator. And lots of volunteers who put in lots of time, such as the rescue rangers and the tag librarians. So dkos has substantial backing from someone - my rough guess is that dkos burns through at least ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month. At least. I doubt their ad revenues cover half of that.
Anyone thinking of where he wants ET to go, if anywhere - maybe it has arrived - has lots to think about. Creating a major blog will eat up all the "owner's" time, cost lots of money, and involve many people (dozens? hundreds?) doing quality work together.
Or we could all just be chatty. It's not for me to say. I'm one of Jerome's "outsiders" who contributes infrequently and I don't foot the bills. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
And the annual Netroots Nation convention. A slick, professional effort. Who is behind that? There's no question about it. There's tons of effort in making dkos what it is.
Howard Dean? A consortium of progressive interest groups? George Soros even? It's actually an interesting question. I wonder if kos deals with this in his book. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
2008 was a good election year for us electorally, of course, but it was also a good year for this site. We easily broke $1 million in revenues, which have allowed us to do a bunch of cool new things: Professionalize. For a long time, Jeremy the tech dude was my only paid staff. As of now, Daily Kos has a paid staff of eight. SusanG is Executive Editor, BarbinMD is Associate Editor, Kagro is editor of Congress Matters, I have a business manager (Will), Brownsox will be a key part of a new project we'll be launching soon, Hunter is hard at work with DK4, and me and Jeremy round things off. The executive team (me, Susan, and Will) also share a new part-time assistant. On top of it all, Kos Media employees now get full benefits. That may seem trite or trivial for you guys, but for me, it's a huge accomplishments. Benefits are expensive.
Professionalize. For a long time, Jeremy the tech dude was my only paid staff. As of now, Daily Kos has a paid staff of eight. SusanG is Executive Editor, BarbinMD is Associate Editor, Kagro is editor of Congress Matters, I have a business manager (Will), Brownsox will be a key part of a new project we'll be launching soon, Hunter is hard at work with DK4, and me and Jeremy round things off. The executive team (me, Susan, and Will) also share a new part-time assistant. On top of it all, Kos Media employees now get full benefits. That may seem trite or trivial for you guys, but for me, it's a huge accomplishments. Benefits are expensive.
The figure I gave above didn't include such a big staff, maybe two or three including kos himself, but did contain payments on hardware (consider the archiving requirements!), bandwidth (I have no idea how much a T3 connection costs, lets say $2000 monthly and I'll bet my last dollar that's a really low figure), MySQL licensing (we paid $142,000 yearly for two big Oracle installations and of course they're not using the MySQL community edition), attorney's fees (dkos has been to court once already - kos won), and basic but unavoidable incidentals (like a graphic/web designer's bill).
So the figure I gave was for the old dkos, assuming it was watching it's burn rate closely and went lightly on the organizational frills, not the present dkos with the larger staff and I excluded Congress Matters entirely.
Let us as well consider just one item where ET would differ greatly from dkos: legal fees. Assuming ET is deliberately EU-wide, across countries whose slander and libel laws differ, ET might require some legal expertise that dkos did not. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
There was also an amazing court sentence last year in Modica that ruled blogs are the equivalent of newpapers and are therefore accountable as is a newspaper.It was a very adroit sentence since it did in no way affront what was actually produced on the blog- dossiers and documents alleging corruption and mafia ties- but seized and blacked out the site on purely normative grounds. The site- like all blogs- had not been duly registered as a news source. The case, I hope, should go to Europe.
Off the top of my head, there are a couple cases I've read about:
Verdammte scheisse! It's all too much for a layman! As I said before, operating a blog and contributing to one is worth thinking hard about. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
