In attempt to restore sanity to the endorsements thread, I'm taking my response to the comments about comments over here.
Cam's comment was posted around 7pm and the first time I saw it was around 11am the next day, at which point I took it down and responded to Fred's comment. I am just not as obsessive about reading the site as some folks are, and that's OK with me. I don't plan to do much more responding to him because I just don't have the time and it doesn't seem productive in any way.
I still don't understand why some people who claim to have such problems with this web site spend so much time here. For example, as of this moment Fred has posted 305 comments on OP in the past year, more than any other user of the site.
While I'm on the subject, I've been thinking of some features to improve the experience here on OP, but I planned to hold off on discussing them until after the election. I would really like to do more to level the playing field between the usual suspects and the lurkers and potential commenters. If you have ideas, go ahead and share them.
Issues:
Comments
Hey Ruby
Speaking of meta-discussions, after we emailed while you were away, I discovered the key to getting the new content emails out is running the cron.php job. Since I hadn't heard back from you, I took the liberty of adding OPs cron.php to the list of Drupal sites I run, so it is running basically every 2 hours during the day now, assuming the server I have it on is up. I will certainly turn it off when you let me know you've fixed on your end.
Thanks for the cron
I had been wondering why the e-mail notices stopped and saw that they just started working again revently. I still know what the problem is, but running cron once in a while sure can't hurt. Thank you, James!
Fine Ruby,
I respond here to many posts because I dislike the falsehoods that I read so often, and especially to respond to the divisive personal attacks and word games some play. Who else other than Terri responds to the so-called OP "conventional wisdom?"How about showing the financial contributions to OP over the years?PS: Nov 1 is Day 305 so I'm on schedule for the year, thanks to being stuck at home pretty much for the last 3 months recovering from my wrist injury! ;-)
Donations
Actually tons of people have taken on the task of challenging me here on OP (often the majority of commenters, it seems), but you and Terri are the only ones who seem to have made a hobby out of it.
I'm not sure how donations relate to the conversation. You have been a reliable annual contibutor to OP, Fred, which I appreciate. I'm working on putting together a page of all the donors in the past 6 years - I try to be as transparent as possible. (Although sometimes life intervenes.)
Not the case
Believe me, you are not a hobby for me Ruby, and I won't speak for Terri. I just want you to be fair and consistent. You have taken delight on a couple of occasions when you admitted that you agreed with me on something, as if doing so was something terrible. Thus I can conclude that it is personal with you. Another example was that on the N&O blog you wrote about what kind of husband I was (in response to a report from a meeting where Mark Schultz related a story that I told that we never thought you grasped), causing my wife to post on a blog for the first time in her life. Of course you had been married less than a year and we for 39 years. So yes, you have made it personal."Life intervenes," of course it does, but don't forget that many of us have done what you are doing and understand the challenges. Donations relate to the conversation because as a faithful contributor year after year, I feel I have a right to post as often as I want as long as I follow your rules. Change the rules and I will follow them, but there should not be criticism for posting by your rules. How many of the top twenty posters are also contributors?So if pointing out that Cam's post was directly against the rules that you said you would enforce but didn't remove very quickly is "challenging you," I must disagree. You stated the rule and exercised it twice, one quickly and one not so quickly. Yes, conclusions were drawn, but I will accept that it might be a coincidence. So how else do I challenge you, other than telling you when you are wrong - remember venture capitalist?
It's personal
Fred, I had no idea that you felt so angry at me personally. And I sure didn't realize that my comment in response to your joke on OrangeChat was such a big deal to you and Sylvia. Now that you explain this, it seems that many of your comments are directed more at fighting me and my perceived "agenda" than at serving the public good as you make them seem.When you point out that no one else will keep me/OP in line if you and Terri don't do it, I have to remind you that you have invented this responsibility. This site is about sharing informed progressive perspectives on local issues, and always has been. I think I've been pretty broad in interpreting what "progressive" means, but I'm not trying to represent the entire County, and never claimed to do so. I also think I'm very open by letting anyone with an e-mail address comment and even publish blog entries here. I try to leave a lot of room for respectful, productive debate here but it's not the main purpose of the site.I don't spend time on conservative blogs telling them all the ways that I think they are wrong, but I do have friends who used to do that kind of thing for entertainment. ("Whee, let's go pester the freepers!") Personally, I consider them to be trolling when they do that, but also all that arguing just doesn't interest me much (anymore - I was all about it in my 20's).Anyhoo, I didn't question your "right to post," just my obligation to care what you say or to act on it.
idea
I think it would be helpful to OP overall if there was more of a community ownership feel to the entire enterprise. Not saying that Ruby shouldn't be the main driver, but perhaps if there was a way to have others help in some of her tasks or even decisions, it wouldn't feel so one sided. I don't know that we want to go as far as wikipedia, but certainly that community has a more coherent feel (even with disagreements) than OP sometimes does. Of course, we also have the option to restart the real-life meetings -- enjoying an evening over a beer certainly would take the edge off some of the conversations here. Maybe we could even meet those who hide behind aliases.
Happy hour
I agree on both fronts. Let's have another get-together soon! Anyone want to organize? I think a Thursday would be good...