I went to a Giants game and missed the brouhaha…oi vey! (and yes, the Giants lost)
Forgive me booman, but I’m NOT going to crosspost this anywhere else for obvious reasons…dKos needs no Meta from me tonight, lol.
But I would like to share a couple thoughts / questions.
What defines the Booman community?
I have some ideas about that, and, speaking for myself, I am glad this website exists, and that this community exists in the evolving form it does….and that has nothing to do with dKos, just intrinsically…BMT as BMT. (susanhu first of all, internationalism, human rights, jerome, booman, environmentalism, and, I think…a freedom to talk about feminism, gay rights and environmentalism in community…ie. collaboratively..specifically, with women’s and gay voices, and voices of color included as an intrinsic start point ie. without having to entertain challenges to those stand points every time we have a discussion.)
I would guess, irrespective of one’s own answer(s) to the above question, one simple answer is Booman himself. The choices he’s made in building this website, how that’s affected community. And what drove him to do this in the first place….making something that at first looked like dkos with a different color scheme into something distinct.
When he realized that he needed to innovate revenue, the community responded. That’s healthy, and a sign that people cared. And while I would warn him with the same warnings I’ve given Markos, that the line between blog “owner” and “community facilitator” is very fine…I get the impression that when folks give Booman feedback…he listens. And that he’s not asking any of us to let him speak for us, or assuming that he can. In fact, just the opposite.
The most important question in my mind is what drives us, the readers, diarists and comment makers…to work here, and share our opinions here, and build community here. The answer to that question certainly is something that can stand on its own, and it should, and it is in the process of being ever more honed as time passes and community builds.
In my view, the proper response to this dustup, and that’s what it is…is to make this site a destination in and of itself…for those intrinsic qualities you find essential here, and to innovate around the idea that BMT has something distinct to offer…to nurture that.
As a solo blogger now, I KNOW how hard so many writers work and toil in obscurity….I’ve tried to make my blog a network that points to some of these folks..someplace where you can always find a fresh voice….someplace decentered…
I would argue, that working on a new model of “decentering”..an independent definition of what makes BMT distinct and unique would serve to make the various points about dKos I’ve read today far more eloquently than simply building a culture of strict and ritualistic clannish opposition.
Perhaps, in defining itself simply for what it is…BMT will be free to become something new and, perhaps, win an even broader audience?