+1000

But I would like to tie together not just communities internally, but community to community. For example, the company that's causing all the problems with landfills up here exists in 20+ other communities, and it's the same company with the same business practices, so I assume that the problems are the same. I can't help but think/believe/hope that connecting those 20 communities together could be a good thing, though we can't know in advance what those issues are.

I bet the same thing goes for food, too.

And probably other issues -- heating and air conditioning, maybe.

Plus, it's a way to get away from the toxic discourse (at least for me; anyone who wants to keep posting on national affairs is more than welcome to do so).

And yes, this is why the Book Reviews are excellent.

Sarah, thoughts?

I wonder if the business model could include paying the author's community, somehow, instead of the author. A "gift economy."

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

not just for the "big" things, but for the little, everyday, routine, ordinary stuff -- "mundane" is a word some use for it.

Like letters to the editor.

Or wedding announcements -- or heck, wedding writeups.

Where the road construction is this week -- or if the county can afford to fix a busted culvert or not.

These are things people care about and need to know, and "news" isn't covering it anymore. "News" is all about spin and shiny stuff the commentators like, instead of reality.

I don't know what the solution is. I've just barely started to really see that people are recognizing the problem.

As a for instance: The NFL is all over the teebee and the papers, but if you want to know how the high school up the road did in its Friday night game if you had to be out of town for work, where do you turn if you don't have a kid on the team?

PB1 spun out PB2 when (as far as I've been able to understand it) PB1 blogsite owners' original utopian dreams were proved unrealistic
- sigh - blogcitizens did not speak in a unified progressive voice.

PB1 was not prepared for the radical diversity of opinion encountered, apparently many blogowners were hoping for less opposition and more agreement among citizens-against-the-corporate-status-quo, ultimately...

PB2 began to radically censor speech:
not just setting house rules on how free speech might be exercised, but actual excommunications/ banishments,
and...

meanwhile, embattled on its own turf,
PB1 was seduced by power and power's perks:
The power to set the agenda, gain top rankings, have money flowing in (through the front & back doors?), the power to gain celebrity status and MSM-like fame...

and then...
PB1 lost sight of what "progressive" might mean.

How can PB2 avoid the same fate?

It seems to me that rethinking the meaning of "Freedom of Speech" should be a first priority.

Can blogcitizens learn to use free speech productively? Here is a short list of "Freedom of Speech" questions I ponder:

1 what kind of statements would make a clear, simple, and generative set of blogrules?
2 while supporting civilized conversations, what to do about the repressive effect of anti name-calling PC?
3 should disagreement be encouraged, or just tolerated?
4 how to encourage sense of strong community that without rejecting outsiders?
5 can PB2 bloggers stay on progressive course without an explicit set of political goals?
6 if some blogcitizens learned basic principles of negotiation and started to use them at blogs, could their conversations online create a higher standard for political discourse "on the ground"?

the weddings, e.g., represent other issues beyond a connection between localities / families.

What if there's a question of bigamy involved, for example?

And Lambert, that "big issues with tone" comment almost made my head explode.

I chose the NFL/HS football issue because I thought it would offer common ground -- "how the high school up the road did" might include anything from winning the ball game to having one of the kids injured who you know because the kid's in your Scout troop or youth group or the class you teach, although you're not a student's parent or guardian, at the school.

What I'm trying to illustrate is connectedness, and how it's not linear.

Does that help with the tone issue?

Wonder if maybe, though, we should consider that we can do the wedding coverage (and the football coverage) and reserve the right to express our opinions forthrightly and in simple, clear, understandable words as well, SO LONG AS we don't conflate our wedding coverage with our op-ed pieces?

Which is not to say we couldn't write op-ed pieces on the weddings if the need arose. For example, remembering some of the wedding party costume descriptions from my days in the '80s, I could do a discourse on who the fuck thought lime organza, tea-length dresses, and some women's complexion, hair color and general demeanor was a good combination.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

works home to their own area/issue/community.

to handle for themselves what content they want and will be willing to do more than idly consume, but contribute to.

How, though?

And (as my ignorance blooms into the public sphere) can it be done with the existing structure the blogosphere / internet uses? Or must there be advances in that as well before it will work as desired?

Sarah, want to tag this in too to pb 2.0 please? Thanks so much for doing this.
Thanks contributors.

I responded to some of the thoughts here on connectedness and local communities by asking for feedback on a few questions over at the book reviews. Please answer some of those questions--or feel free to say why they are or are not in the right direction. Thanks.

Lambert ... could install a clearing-house upstairs, maybe next to the bar?

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

Tufte's primary point, in all his writings:
Content arises from structural relationships.

So, with that point in mind, here are 3 kinds of content a website can have:

1_the content
the bits of text and images
2_the structure
the format prepared for holding the content, including, on an ordinary website:
- number of columns
- sidebar widgets
- how archives are accessed etc.

and finally,
3_the Tufte content
that is, the content that arises from structure...

an example: FireDogLake v Corrente

1 FDL has a "designer" appearance,
Corrente has a "off the shelf" look

2 FDL has full width button array for senior fellows blogs, and when accessed each of these blogs have a distinctive and persistent banner and color scheme, a single blog column wide enough to hold thumbnails and diggs;
Corrente has a small list of the senior fellows, a constantly changing banner image,
a single byline, "view from the side-by-side deck chairs of the mighty Corrente building",
and one narrow blog column sans extra features.

3 FDL has banner/box separated widget boxes,
Corrente has a single column widget lineup.

What content differences do these structural features provide?

Personally, I like the simplicity and shared-conversation mode that Corrente offers, but...dear readers, please don't think I'm making an either/or value judgment here. In offering these observations I am simply trying to suggest the potential content-consequence of tweaking Corrente's structure.

appearance and substance -- and one of my pet peeves is the cultural "better to look good than be good" prejudice inherent in much of American life today.

I wasn't thinking so much of what I'll call the look, or the "bells and whistles," as I was of what goes on under the hood -- the management for folks like admin_lambert, and how the tools to make that less burdensome are / need to be available.

Savvy?

I have no web design experience, but did some database design in the past. If the back end (structure) isn't set up properly, you won't be able to get the user interface (appearance) to do certain things. But the other trick was that before you design the structure of any db, you must know what the necessary output and appearance need to be. It's not an either/or, it's a dependency.

One was an overview of expenses, revenues, and profits. The other suggests three models on which to base a money factor for splitting revenues among PB2.0 bloggers.

As I said in my email, I wouldn't post anything about this until I heard from you.

So, do you have any response to either?

After critique and gathering numbers on which to project expenses and revenues, the next step is to write a business plan. I suggest creating a hybrid plan (based on sample for-profit and non-profit plans) to address how the business will cover the issues outlined in many PB2.0 discussions.