As many of you know, Cheryl left us the other day for the always outstanding LGM, and I would be remiss if I did not thank her for all the wonderful and informative posts. And while she is not really going anywhere, it’s still sad to see her go.
Next year, this site will have been around for twenty years, and it’s just been a weird journey. My own political changes, my lifestyle changes, my interests changing, all mapped out for several decades with a bunch of people following along is weird, but more surprising to me is all the relationships we have formed along the way. There are so many people from earlier years who I still am in touch with via facebook and twitter who newer members of the current community wouldn’t know if the names were mentioned- Redkitten, Justsomefuckhead, ABL, Minna, etc. And not to give you a lethal dose of egocentrism, I’m just talking about my personal experiences. All of you have formed your own relationships and like any community, some of you like some of you more than others, etc.
Reading the LGM thread, I saw a lot of old names of I had not seen in a while- Aimai, Linnaeus, and many more, and so on. A lot of complaints about the commenting system. And it makes me wonder, do people hate the comment section design that much? Or is that just what they are saying now? Maybe they left because they no longer felt the website compelling and the blaming the comment features is just an easier way to put things. I dunno.
It’s hard keeping communities together, because people change and interests change and the community itself changes. I see it in my online gaming communities- people lose interest in a game and before you know it, a core member of your team is but a distant memory. Do we focus too much on pets and gardening and cooking? I don’t know. I can only write about what interests me. Every day there are tons of things that hit the news and I just don’t have the energy to fucking deal with the same idiots again- right now I am thinking about the execrable David Brooks who wrote another tedious piece on the Bobos, managing to blame everyone in his elite caste except… himself. I sat down to react, typed out a few sentences, and just stopped and all I could think was “THIS FUCKING GUY AGAIN.”
That has happened a lot the last couple of years for me, not just on the blog, but in real life. My youngest sister, who never paid attention to politics until a couple years ago, started posting shit on facebook. And she was always unintentionally posting right wing memes thinking they were reasonable, and I would just unload on her. She’d get hurt, and ask me why I was so mad when she was just asking a question. And I finally had to explain to her that she was not asking a question, she was advancing right wing frames, and the reason I didn’t want to argue with her about it is because I HAVE BEEN HAVING THE SAME FUCKING ARGUMENTS WITH BAD ACTORS FOR TWO DECADES.
At any rate, this got rambly, as my posts often do. Go read the LGM thread. Read the comments. Are we as a community failing others? How can we grow? Are we too insular? Are the commenting features in need of a complete overhaul? I want this site to be around for another 20 years. I want it to keep going after I am dead.
And back to the point of the post in the first place- thanks, Cheryl, and best of luck to you and LGM!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Speaking just for me, I enjoy the commenting format and think of this as my primary commenting space. I’m enough of a gadfly to recognize that some stuff goes ver well and some doesn’t, and am OK with that without the addition of some eating or voting system.
Plus, even in long comment strings, I have no problem following the different discussions – it’s like going to an interesting cocktail party and finding different convos between the drinks table, the snacks table, the kitchen, living room and hot tub.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
John, I think you should just do you. I love the pets, gardening, and unthreaded comments. It makes this site more of a community & less of the mosh pit that is LG&M. I read both, but the mix of comments here makes this site more fun.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’ll add this – AL’s aggregation of COVID stories is invaluable.
JPL
John, you built a community that cares about people, and that is saying something. Several of us shed a tear when General Stuck and Alain died. Green not Green shared details of her journey that showed amazing courage and strength. Cheryl’s posts have always been informative, and she’ll be missed for sure, but someone else will come along.
Just make sure to rant everyone once and awhile. Your rants brighten my
guachi
Threaded comments are the devil. I hate them.
I wouldn’t say BJ is too insular. I’ve been involved in online discussions since Usenet in 1992 and basically every forum ever has the commenters that do 90% of the commenting and then everyone else is a lurker. The primary difference is only front pagers can start topics but it’s basically the same.
There are really two areas to look at: Is the front page content good, topical, and varied?
My answer, yes.
Are the commenters acting like decent people? For the most part, yes. It’d be nice if there would be some way for moderation to occur but I’m not sure that’s really possible.
JPL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Apparently the darn virus is going to make sure, that she continues. I imagine when she first started, she assumed it would be over in a few months, that might have been with better leadership at the top.
Anne, if you reading this, don’t let Cheryl give you any ideas.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Me too.
And usually I’m a Get Your Own Fucking Blog guy when it comes to complaints, but… since you kind of asked: I think there are way too many restricted/niche threads. There’s a tag, rarely used but it exists, something like “If you sully this thread, I’ll cut you”. And they tend to get stacked one on top of the other. The old vibe of “every thread is an open thread” seems to have taken a hit, and the conversations have suffered for it. YMMV.
WereBear
As someone who loves pets, is learning to cook, and enjoys the virtual gardening; rock on, John Cole.
Another Scott
It was an interesting thread over there, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously. People there, and here, like to grouch – or pretend to.
I do wonder though. Change is hard and scary, but life is change.
As you mention, one of the legacies of this place is the 20 years of comments. But how much of that history is actually used day-to-day? Does it make sense to think about a ground-up redo of this site the next time around, so that 1/1/2022 and onward is in a new commenting system? The old stuff could still be available via a static database that people could search if interested. It might give the future coders more flexibility as well as putting much less stress on the hardware. That is, if (virtually) nobody is actually looking at threads more than a week old, why have it online?
I continue to think that readers should be able to arrange the way they view comments the way they want (threaded, flat, chronological, etc.) without affecting any other’s view of the site. One could do that 30 years ago with USENET readers so it’s not impossible, it’s just that the existing web-based commenting systems don’t seem to care enough to re-implement it well. Maybe you’d have more choices if you didn’t have to drag that legacy dB around in WordPress. Dunno.
My $0.02. Thanks very much for keeping the lights on and trying to make us happy.
Cheers,
Scott.
Victor Matheson
Hello all. I am a regular reader of both LGM and Balloon Juice and have been for many years. I rarely miss a post on either site. (Therefore Cheryl’s move literally has no effect on me.) As a rule, I think the posts are excellent here, and I wouldn’t change a thing about the writing (other than allowing things to naturally evolve as they normally would.)
That being said, I am frequent commenter on LGM and rarely post comments here. Without a nested commenting system where I can directly see replies to any comments, I can’t really follow much a argument in the comments. I am not clamoring for an overhaul, but that is the reality for me.
Baud
I like the single thread too. The commenting system is glitchy at times and I think others have had worse technical issues than me, and that can get frustrating.
Starfish
John, I am surprised that you are still in touch with justsomef*ckhead. Wouldn’t he piss you off, or was he pissing other commenters off? I am hazy about the details.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, I don’t like the “every thread is an open thread” thing because it allows every thread to evolve into an anti-that-thing-that juicers-hate thread, and every thread turning into a grievance thread sucks.
The “get your own blog” thing doesn’t work because blogging is dying because of other forms of social media. There is not the linking out that used to happen, and there are not as many things to link out to.
If we are complaining, there are not enough Sunday posts for the heathens.
Chief Oshkosh
I think we have narrowed what we consider the spectrum of reasonable/acceptable political thought. Maybe that’s what some mean by “too insular.” OTOH, maybe “too insular” just means “growing up.” I don’t know. Certainly we would hammer someone commenting in the way that John says his sister does. That is, we’d assume bad faith. We probably should lighten up (Francis) on that.
On the other other hand, we discuss pets and gardening and the cosmos and sports and lost mustard and redeemed souls. So,…maybe not so insular in that regard.
Baud
FWIW, I’ve pied everyone but myself.
Starfish
@Victor Matheson: I am the opposite. I never post comments on LGM and always post here. Then I do a Ctrl-F for my nym to see if anyone responded to me.
Mostly, no. No one responded to me because they are discussing pets and how we are trying to get Tamara to get a pet capybara.
rp
The commenting system here works well IMO. I don’t like LGM’s approach.
narya
I love this place. I love your rants and your pet stories. I am glad the gardening and photo posts exist, even when I don’t look at all the pics. I love the expertise of Silverman. I love the Good Work that folks are doing to support organizations and candidates fighting the good fight. It is the only blog I read every single day, multiple times a day. I appreciate everyone, even when someone is being a dick; we all have our moments.
So thank you to John and all of the front pagers, for all that you are doing to build and keep this lovely neighborhood; I’m honored to be your neighbor.
John Cole
@Starfish: I love the guy.
Benno
For my part, I still love it here. I’ve read for a long time but only started posting more the past couple of years. I like the comment set up the way they are and agree with those who have said threaded discussions are the devil. Talk about rabbit holes. I’m not always into the cooking or gardening threads, though I do both, so I don’t read them. Same thing I do with NYT or David Brooks. I’ve enjoyed how the site has developed. I’m just bummed I have to start keeping better track of LGM now. Like I don’t have enough to do!
Baud
Re: content, I think too many people want to recapture the dynamism of blogging that happened during the Bush and early Obama years. Too much has changed since then, both in terms of social media tech and in terms of the underlying political landscape.
Cervantes
It would be good to be able to edit comments.
bluefoot
I will miss Cheryl’s post here, but glad she will be on LG&M.
As for comments, I’m pretty agnostic about threaded via unthreaded comments, but I hate disqus and especially hate any system that makes me log in via social media.
Personally, I love the pets, food and gardening posts/threads. Besides being interested in those topics, they give a break from the madness in the world and reminds me how many great people there are out there.
Plus, John, this is your space, so you do what interests you.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I started reading posts here in 2006 or 2007? Not sure. I read most days. The fact that this site isn’t exclusively focused on politics, but includes things like healthcare, pets, and gardening is one of its best features. Threaded posts would be easier to follow, but I don’t have strong opinions there. Another thing I like about this place is that it isn’t just moaning about the state of the world. We also encourage action. I will miss Cheryl’s posts, but I wouldn’t want to drastically shake up the community here.
Lyrebird
@guachi: ditto to all of it except without as much usenet experience.
LGM feels way more insular to me than here.
I think some moderation would help bc official rules don’t distinguish well between friends sh-t talking back and forth and people being mean on purpose.
I love the action campaigns we’re doing! But I also feel at the margins. Don’t think there are any perfect answers.
swiftfox
I believe the number of posts on gardening and cooking has dropped quite a bit since the pandemic started. I also remember one of the FPers at LGM saluted Cole for getting Rofer/Levenson/Silverman.
Nicole
I love the commenting format; I think threaded comments are the tool of the devil (your milage may vary).
It’s normal for things to evolve and for people to come and go. I’ve been reading this site for a good 15 years, at least (I don’t remember exactly when I started I just remember finding out about this site was the only good thing I ever got out of reading Andrew Sullivan’s old blog), and I don’t comment that often, mostly because by the time I get to the bottom of the comments I can’t think of anything new to contribute to the conversation (although that doesn’t always stop me). But I really enjoy reading people’s comments and I like the diverse subjects. If one isn’t my thing, I don’t read it. There will always be another post. And plenty of subjects I didn’t think would interest me (like your progress on restoring your house) I actually ended up really enjoying, and I learned a lot of stuff. So keep on keeping on would be my suggestion. You’ve built a good site and a welcoming community where people can come and go. And the commenters through the years, though the individual people have changed, have consistently been both funny and smart and that’s great, too.
I’m going to miss Cheryl here, too, but I like LGM so that provides me a reason to remember to go check it out from time to time to see what’s up.
Duckpond
I read both BJ and LGM religiously as a long-time lurker (since circa 2008), but I prefer the welcoming vibe of this place. For the record, I’m a millennial and have never found this place to be unwelcome to folks of my age cohort, despite what some LGM commenters mentioned yesterday in Cheryl’s new thread.
That being said, the comment systems at both blogs are very difficult to follow in their own way. YMMV, but:
Lyrebird
Ditto to that too.
Baud
Both LGM and reddit have threaded comments. I think they allow for larger communities, but make it harder on the reader to follow what’s going on.
Kay
I noticed a lot of people were missing- no longer commenting- but I didn’t know they had gone to LGM until I read the thread just now. BJ does seems smaller and more insular to me, honestly. It could just be a natural change and maybe it doesn’t need to be “addressed” or “fixed” in any way- but it does seem different than it did before. For me the change is a kind of fear of disagreeing- like if we disagree or fight we’ll break and I just don’t think that’s true. I think the blog is more resilient than that and we’ll all survive if we battle- we don’t need to be so careful.
I’d like to talk about the Turner primary in Ohio for example, as a real thing that is happening in the Democratic Party but I get tired just thinking about how it’s immediately going to turn into how I’m secretly a Bernie supporter and an enemy of the Democrats. I don’t even feel like I can talk about the Tim Ryan race without THAT turning into some meta discussion of the white working class and how Ryan was a jerk to Pelosi. I just think we have beat that line of thought to death.
Baud
I like to think it is they who have failed us.
zhena gogolia
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
I agree. I don’t know how it would go on without John, because it’s his personality that infuses everything, even when he’s not here. I like the mix of people here. I particularly like the perspective of veterans.
SFBayAreaGal
@Baud: ???
Hmmm, if you pied everyone, it’s open season on Baud. ?
zhena gogolia
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yes. Someone made some snide comment on that thread about posts that were just buckets of tweets. Sorry, that’s where news breaks these days. I find it informative.
Rugosa
I don’t comment often because I don’t usually have much to add to the conversation, but I like the community here. The mix of pets, gardening, food, politics, etc., is great. I was just thinking the other day it could use more pets. It would be great if we could choose how to arrange comments, as Another Scott said. On LGM, my other go-to blog, if a thread is going off somewhere I’m not interested, I can minimize it and go on to something else.
CaseyL
I was actually kind of surprised by what people said over at LGM, as I think BJ is darn near perfect. We talk about everything under the sun, we do effective activism, we have wonderful FPers who post timely, well-researched, important factual stuff….and I, too, hate threaded comments.
However, BJ definitely has an insular vibe. Newcomers can be harshly treated if they say something outside a rather narrow comfort zone. It’s very similar to a newcomer trying to enter a long-established in-person social group: they have to navigate years or even decades of in-group “code,” and that can be very difficult. I’m not sure what to do about that.
But don’t change anything else!
TaMara (HFG)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Um…that’s my tag line and as far as I know, I’m the only one who uses it and it was in response to folks who wanted somewhere to be that wasn’t going to devolve into the latest crisis. And I only use it for respite thread.
But, whatever… ?
realbtl
John- I’ve been around since the R days of Stormy, BIRDZILLA and the rest of that strange crew. This has become my daily stop for mostly lurking. I find everything perfect as it is. If I’m no interested in the current thread I certainly have other places to go. Thanks for this place.
dr. bloor
@Baud:
Baud!/Pie 2024 is a winning ticket if there ever was one.
I don’t think the blog is too insular, although the commenting community has evolved to the point where it’s a finite list of nyms you see every day in almost every thread, plus a group of others popping up from time to time. I don’t think anyone is being snubbed, but it doesn’t seem a particularly easy task for a new face to feel like they’re talking to anyone but themselves.
cope
More posts like this one would be nice…a post on a topic written with embedded links one is free to follow or not.
As for the comments format, it works for me because if I am interested in the topic of a thread, I am usually willing to read , or at least skim, all the previous replies before replying myself. It’s obvious, though, that some commenters aren’t as patient (or fast a reader) as I and for them, I suspect it doesn’t work as well.
My political/ current events blogs of choice are, in random order: Daily Kos, Charles Pierce, Raw Story, Pharyngula, Three Quarks Daily, LGM, No More Mr. Nice Blog, The Rude Pundit, Shower Cap’s Blog and Ironic Times on Mondays.
The total number of comments I have made here in BJ is probably ten times or more the total number of comments I have made on all those others combined. I’m not sure what that means so parse it as you wish.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Baud can never fail, we can only fail Baud. All Hail Baud! also Hail Fredonia!
Kay
I wll say I was amused in that LGM thread when “Lance Thruster” told them he was unwelcome here and in like 5 minutes they said “you’re not going to last here either”
Guffaw.
Benw
I don’t read OR comment here!
Mo MacArbie
As said above, there’s the comment format (I think its fine), the implementation of the comment format (can be buggy but works great for lurking), and the comments themselves (mostly fine, but jeez, some of you grudgebots need to give your grudges a freaking rest). Complaints about the comments are probably distributed among these possibilities.
TaMara (HFG)
@Starfish: Do NOT give me any ideas. The house is too big and cavernous and sad these days. I’m sure one would fit right in… and soak up all the empty without a problem. ?
JPL
Wow.. Cuomo is getting charged with sexual harrassment.. not sure of all the charges yet though
TaMara (HFG)
@TaMara (HFG): …and I see my resolve to be kinder and not so bitchy has collapsed at (let’s see, oh, yes, 9:13 am MDT) so I’m off the Intertubes for the rest of the day. Enjoy.
Kay
I don’t mind the garden or food or pets threads at all and I didn’t mind the sports threads, although the only thing I care about in any of those things is gardens. You really can skip what you don’t like.
JPL
So who will run for governor?
TaMara (HFG)
@John Cole: One of my favorite people, too.
Baud
@dr. bloor:
I have had situations where I’ve posted comment after comment with no reply, and I wonder what’s up.
I’ve noticed that sometimes comments aren’t visible to others right away. I’ll find new comments upthread which I know weren’t there before.
JPL
@John Cole: Have you heard from laura? I used to love fuckhead and laura banter back and forth. It was quite amusing.
WaitingForMountainLife
I’m a long time reader (from when John was a Republican) but I almost never comment and don’t read the comments much. I will say that one thing I miss is John. I get why he doesn’t post as much – I talk to friends who are just now discovering politics and I feel like saying “where have you been?” But I still miss his posts. Though it is pretty weird to feel you know someone for 20 years who has no idea you exist.
Baud
@Kay:
Some people love toying with trolls. I’ve always hated them. They interrupt the conversation IMHO. If being insular means fewer trolls, I’m all for it.
stinger
Don’t know how I’d have survived November 2016 if not for Balloon Juice. These days, with the vaccine positivity (stickers! so clever) and the fund raising for candidates, for organizing, and for the occasional critter or human in dire straits — I can’t believe there’s any other place on the internet like it. I love the gardening, OTR, creative, etc. posts as well as the politics and the steady provision of the latest and most accurate in COVID reporting. People come and go, make friends and enemies, be themselves. I see advantages and disadvantages to both styles of comment presentation; don’t care all that much either way. Thank you, John Cole.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I agree, but how many times has the the garden thread, for example, been the only new thread on a Sunday for six hours at a time– political things happen on Sundays in this country. The laws of blog physics almost always mean politics is going to seep into the garden (cooking, books, movie) thread in those circumstances.
CaseyL
@TaMara (HFG): Capybaras are famous for getting along well with other animals. Just sayin’.
Not worth the bother
This.
BJ is very aggressively neo-liberal. Absolute hatred for the actual liberals and leftists. I mean, I read lots of blogs but I have never encountered one that was so obsessed with Bernie hatred that many commenters actually resort to a nick-name (Wilmer?) because their insipid paranoia leads them to believe that Bernie has people monitoring threads looking for references to him.
I used to comment under the name Amaranthine RBG because I pointed out years ago that RJG egotism and selfishness were going to royally fuck liberals because she was going to get a conservative installed in her seat. But, woah … can’t be talkin’ bad about RBG – she’s to a posse yo. So I got banned. And guess what happened ???? RBG’s legacy is ACB. A conservative sitting on the court for the next forty fucking years. Congratulations Balloon Juice front-pagers !!!!
Balloon Juice isn’t nearly as bad as Shakesville, but it’s on the same path. Rigidly enforcing groupthink is not a sign of strength.
This
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think AL has started putting up a non-garden thread on Sundays.
JPL
So will Jared, Ivanka, Don Jr. or Sr run for governor of New York ,now that Cuomo is going down?
Barry
I would urge both comment threading and both ‘collapse thread’ ‘mute user’ buttons (see Cheryl’s new home). I makes following things much easier, and makes it harder for scheissposters to scheisspost.
WhatsMyNym
@Kay: Kay, I’d like to read more about what’s going on in various states. We really need a ongoing guest post just for that.
(I would never have guessed you were a secret Bernie supporter) /s
JPL
@Not worth the bother: Except that he helped get trump elected, I love the guy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: ??? is there news?
dr. bloor
@Baud:
Cole is obviously shadow banning you. Seems like you should be able to monetize this somehow on GoFundMe.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know who else is covering but CNN has the official news conference and it looks to me like he is fucked.
JPL
Kay
@Baud:
I admit I like arguing politics. Not with him, but I do. I like a little choatic rabble feel :)
And now I’m going to stop because my least-favorite BJ thread is “reflections on BJ” – oh, God not this again – too doomey, not doomey enough? It reminds me of the whole “enthusiasm” discussion in voting. It’s endless. Remember they used to poll that? What a bunch of bullshit.
Emma from Miami
I love it here. Over the years I’ve cut down my blog reading to three or four, and this is the only one I’ve kept up daily. I like the politics, the pets, the cooking, the gardens, the photos. I even like about 95% of the commenters. You always have excellent front pagers, attract a crowd of commenters with skills and experiences they are willing to share, first-class sarcasm, and impressive kvetching skills. Don’t mess with a winning formula.
JPL
This is a live feed to the Letitia James news conference link
Bodacious
Okay, till death do us part….I’m in.
And I never refer to this as Balloon Juice – ever. It’s The Dog Blog, as far as spouse knows.
signed, forever a partial lurker…..
HeleninEire
I like it here. I literally have no complaints. And I like the friends I’ve made here. In fact I am going to meet one IRL next month when I visit my niece in Boston.
I’ve been absent from commenting lately but not because there’s anything wrong with the blog. I do lurk and read most of the posts. I’ve just been busier than usual with dad and the new (well not so new anymore) job. But never fear. I’m headed to see my Dublin friends for my birthday in September and you can rest assured that I am so excited about my trip that as the time grows near I will not STFU about it.
Feathers
I used to comment a good bit over at LGM, but now only check there sometimes. I like to read everything and the threads just got too long. Good info, but the signal to noise ratio was too high. I prefer the talk to the thread comments that you have here.
There are some people with hobby horses who would be better served by posting about how they feel about the issue to the thread instead of just replying with nastiness implying bad faith to comments in the thread. But that is just the internet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HeleninEire:
I have a (refundable) transatlantic plane ticket for October. Haven’t booked any hotels yet. Fingers crossed for both of us.
cope
@zhena gogolia: I’m not sure it was a comment of mine but I’ll take credit for it. To clarify, I am not saying don’t make those posts, I am just pointing out that personally, it’s not a format I find easy to read and, ipso facto, the reason I am not on Twitter. In other words, I am glad to exercise my BJ-given right to be an irascible old curmudgeon.
WhatsMyNym
@Not worth the bother:
and yet you’re here : (
Baud
@Kay:
I agree. And I’m a little tired of the notion that there’s something wrong with us that we have to fix in order to provide a safe space that will attract an apparently more desirable class of commenters.
If BJ wants to establish uniform norms of civility that everyone has to follow, I’ll do my best to follow and enforce them. Otherwise, let jackals be jackals.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can’t believe you’re taking away my ONE hobby. Jesus.
Baud
@HeleninEire: Hey you. Hope you are well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Huh?
schrodingers_cat
@Not worth the bother: Define neoliberal.
Old School
I find this community much more supportive than LGM. I also find the BJ comment thread to be easier to view as a whole than threaded comments.
In short, I’m glad all of you that are reading this are here.
otmar
Don’t. Size is an important factor in communities. Bigger is not better.
I don’t manage to really read the comments as it is.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It was a joke.
raven
Some of you know I was never a fan of Dr Rofer. I simply stayed away from her threads and that worked fine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat:
Fuckers who wants to wins elections and effect the kind of incremental changes that actually improves people’s lives instead of righteously losings! I hates ’em!
ETA:
@Kay: I kind of figured… just couldn’t make out what your hobby was: Gardening or blowing up gardening threads with quotes from teh Sunday Shows.
FTR, I love the garden threads, they make me jealous of those of you who don’t kill plants.
glory b
@CaseyL: Sounds like a reality show of the “Real Housewives of…” genre.
But, if people disagree, “Be resilient, take a hit, you won’t die!”, as my parents used to tell us.
Betty Cracker
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think that’s a fair comment. This comment someone left at Cheryl’s post at LGM made me think too:
I’ve asked myself why the borderline obsession here (IMO) with Sanders and anyone associated with him bothers me since I’m not a Sanders fan either. It might have something to do with being the parent of an earnest, lefty young adult who can frequently be self-righteous and impractical about how politics works.
Believe me, I totally get the impatience with the Sanders people! But I also know it comes from a good place in a lot of the party’s younger cohort, so the dismissiveness, condescension and negative assumptions about motives I see expressed here sometimes bug me.
On the other hand, I see that former commenter “Lance Thruster” has taken up residence at LGM, so maybe insularity is the way to go? Or at least has its upsides?
I don’t have any answers, nor a desire to impose standards nor even an opinion on nested vs. unnested commenting formats. Just thinking out loud — and grateful to have a place to do so.
Kim Walker
Since the Bush debacle, I’ve read lots of different blogs (Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, Americablog, Wonkette, Talking Points Memo, The Rude Pundit, LGM) and still dip into some of them. This one feels like home. Thanks to everyone.
Quiltingfool
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I agree re various conversations. It is like being at a party with different topics discussed in small groups. When I read comments, if a group of folks are discussing a topic I know little about, I just scroll on by. Not everything discussed here has to be about my interests!
I read the LGM comments about Balloon Juice – how insular it was, how some folks won’t comment here because no one pays attention to them, and so on. Well, I read LGM comments most every day, and you know what? The same could be said of LGM – a little bit of projection, I think. Is that bad? Nope.
I enjoy reading comments by many of the folks here – Kay, Sab, Betty Cracker, Soprano2, Frankensteinbeck, Martin, Ozark Hillbilly, Baud, Ken, Rickyrah, Thin Black Man, oh, I am probably leaving some awesome people out, but I appreciate the wealth of knowledge, wisdom and humor that is here. Plus, the front pagers are wonderful. There is nothing wrong with having threads about pets or gardening or birds or travel – there is more to life than politics.
I’m thankful for this site!
lee
I’ve gone to LGM a few times in the past and have always enjoyed the posts. I’ll probably head there more often now that Cheryl is there as I’ve always found her posts informative.
As for here:
Yeah it is somewhat insular. I think that comes with being around for 20 years. I love the wide variety of content that BJ offers.
As for commenting here: In general, I prefer threaded comments. I find threaded comments much easier to follow or ignore as needed. That being said, only 1 of the 3 sites that I regularly frequent has threaded comments.
FredW
I first started reading here back when Cole was one of the non-crazy Republicans. I don’t remember the exact date but it was well before the 2004 election. It was fun to watch metamorphosis…
I hope to be reading this blog for the next 20 years as well. My father, grandfather and great grandfather all died in their 79th year so if the family curse holds I won’t make it — but they were all named Elvis (I kid you not) and I am not so that gives me hope :)
HeleninEire
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: To you too. ANYTHING can happen in the next 6 weeks. But I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Starfish
@Not worth the bother:
Is Balloon Juice neo-liberal? I am not seeing a huge pro-business bend to Balloon Juice. Words have meanings.
“Actual liberals” and “leftists” are obnoxious. Who died and put y’all in charge of liberalism? A lot of leftists have a misogyny and racism problem that they refuse to address.
The RBG thing absolutely did happen, and you have a point. The thing where all of RBG’s clerks went to DC for her funeral, and she had hardly any Black clerks because her racism was known, was really something.
The leftist nonsense going on in the Shontel Brown v. Nina Turner thing is obnoxious and exhausting. Calling Brown supporters racist when both candidates are Black women is really something.
I thought the Cory Bush thing where she stayed in DC to address the expiration of the eviction moratorium was interesting. Some people disagree. I think Pelosi felt it when she made excuses for going to recess while a lot of people are going to be homeless soon.
NorthLeft12
John, BJ is the first blog I read every morning. I really enjoy the posts and use the featured tweets to discover more interesting/disturbing stuff.
I really dislike this commenting system. I do not comment very often, and don’t usually read the comments for any post. I find it impossible to follow a conversation. I very much prefer the LGM commenting format. BTW. LGM is the second blog I read every day.
West of the Rockies
I looked in on LGM yesterday, too. I saw a fair bit of “We’re so cool, BJ sucks” stuff. Felt junior highish to me. No, we aren’t the crazy cat ladies and men of the net. And sorry, but Bernie kinda sucks. Don’t like gardening? Skip that thread. One guy was pissed because no one responded to his comments here. That happens to me 87% of the time. Get over it.
HeleninEire
Starfish
@West of the Rockies: We are totally crazy cat ladies and men of the net. That should be one of the rotating tag lines.
Hildebrand
I’ve been around since 2006ish. Back then I read a wide range of blogs – and all of them have been pruned from my reading list except this one, because of the community. There is a level of care, concern, and empathy here that just doesn’t exist in the same way on other sites (from my perspective).
I have always appreciated the wide range of topics, the fact that the Front Pagers are not shy about telling someone that they are being a wanker, and yes, the commenting format (I detest threaded comments).
I don’t post a great deal, and rarely interact with the Front Pagers outside of the comments, but I have found that John and the rest of those who have been posting here to be excellent hosts who have done an admirable job of providing one of the best places on the net.
JustRuss
Same. I prefer LGM’s comment system, but I also like the fact that BJ is different. It works for a lot of people, and that’s fine. And honestly, I think the lack of nesting reduces the incidence of arguments going off the rails. Sure, it happens, but I notice it more at LGM.
I’ve been reading and commenting here for at least a dozen years. It’s not perfect, but it’s a nice place to hang out for a while. Here’s to another 20 years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Starfish: Here’s how Jackie Speier addressed it. Less interesting but probably more effective
also:
“We have to really just call a spade a spade,” she said. “We cannot in good faith blame the Republican Party when House Democrats have a majority.” She, and others, are calling for the House to return to pass an extension.
and that’s from an article headlines “How the Democrats Royally Screwed Up the Eviction Crisis”
Omnes Omnibus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As much as I hate to agree with you on anything, I agree with you.
And to the extent that this is becoming a straw poll on threaded comments, I think the blog would lose as many people as it gained by changing formats. One of my favorite things about this place is the unstructured comment format.
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I second this:
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Only Dems have agency.
Another Scott
@Baud: I read just about every comment on every thread here (with a few pies). I know JC doesn’t like ? and ? (for some sensible reasons), but sometimes it’s useful as an acknowledgment to let the commenter know that the comment was appreciated. I throw in a +1 sometimes for that reason. (If every reader did that then every thread would hit a TBogg every time. Hmm… ;-)
It’s hard to have conversations here unless one is willing to spend hours at a time, because it’s pretty-much real-time. Unless one is willing to memorize/note which comment one last read, coming back a few hours later means wasting some time getting back up to speed. That’s another problem that USENET readers solved long ago (via “mark read”), of course. ;-) Here, Ctrl-F my-nym is essential, and mostly works, but means that threads have a short shelf-life because everyone else has pretty-much moved on to the next thread.
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@Another Scott: Also this:
Baud
@Another Scott:
I did not know that. I use that emoji all the time.
geg6
I love it here in every way. I wouldn’t join that bunch at LGM for all the money in the world. I think the commenters there are extremely full of themselves and full of in-jokes that are never explained or, if they deign to, explained in the most condescending way possible. And the front pagers are, mostly, Eeyores who love them some Bernie in the worst way possible. I go there for Loomis’ grave series and read almost nothing else.
Can’t say the same for BJ. We cover a variety of topics, not just political ones. We take political and social action and encourage everyone to join in. We explain our in-jokes to newbies. If people leave BJ, it may just be that they like what LGM provides. Which means I don’t miss them. But that’s me. I am most definitely NOT an LGM fan. At all.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Not worth the bother: Balloon Juicers had control over whether or not RGB retired? I had no idea we were that powerful. LOL
Fleeting Expletive
I definitely like this place, have felt good about it. Back when GWB was thrashing around folks here were cheering on his plummeting popularity, including me, and I loved that BJ was a fine and energetic haven for that particular shaudenfreude. Thanks for letting me hang with you guys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
more boring actions on behalf of those facing eviction, from a reply to the Speier thread
JimV
The reasons I might comment are 1) to disagree with something in the post, probably a minor point or specific fact; 2) to add some more evidence; and 3) to thank the author for another interesting post.
I don’t do it to have a conversation with a bunch of people I don’t know, or exchange one-liners. Not that there is anything wrong with that! (As Seinfeld would say.)
So I rarely look at the comment section and don’t much care how it works, as far as threading or anything. I will say when I do look it doesn’t drive me away, as some unmoderated comment sections have on other blogs.
Things I like: 1) most of the posts; 2) having recommendations on whom to donate to (the “thermometers). I want to donate more but I am not sure whom to trust or where it will do the most good, i.e., laziness.
Earl
Been reading since Bush. I had to go look at some old posts to make some guesses — I probably found Balloon Juice late 2005 / early 2006.
Particularly as the right has transitioned to fighting for a herrenvolk democracy and a full abandonment of norms in favor of power while the democrats have retained their reluctance to exercise power, it feels like many of the politics discussions could have been written 10 years ago. iow, kind of a natural transition.
FWIW, Balloon Juice is still one of my 4 daily reads. I’m a pretty rare commenter; my 10 or so about hit my quota for 2021!
Chacal Charles Caltrop
@Baud:
@lollipopguild: Also, LG&M does not have Baud.
Baud
@Chacal Charles Caltrop:
I don’t know if that’s intended as a point for LGM or against it.
satby
@Baud: That’s what I miss the most, we used to have more of a conversational style in threads (and I don’t like threaded comments either). But some of that is the change in characters commenting, I think. We used to know something about each other; for some commenters we still do but that’s mostly faded.
cleek
all comment ‘communities’ become insular. the front-pagers attract a group of people who become regulars. and then the regulars support the other regulars in arguments, and that becomes the ‘vibe’. people with differing opinions drop in and then feel unwelcome when half a dozen regulars jump on them. that’s simply how communities work.
that said, i find LGM to be far more hostile to differing opinions, and more group-thinky, than BG.
which is why i don’t hang out there any more.
Spanish Moss
Love the blog and the community, I visit many times a day. I especially like the eclectic subject matter! Though I am a political junkie, all politics would be too depressing, sometimes I need some pets to brighten my day. I also like the mix of open threads with posts on specific topics. I have a mild preference for the flat comment style, but if the system let us choose threaded vs. flat as a personal preference that would be great. Thanks for making this blog such a special place!
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I for one never minded other topics in the garden thread, or the natural evolution into other topics in any thread as the discussion progressed. But somewhere along the line people got the idea that was unwanted.
SFBayAreaGal
A poster on Daily Kos and the name Balloon Juice led me here, and has they say I found my pack of jackals.
I don’t find this community to be insular. For me the variety of topics offered by the front pagers is just right, and the John Cole rants is the cherry on top.
I do get frustrated at times with the comment format.
I hope more lurkers will post. I love seeing new nyms.
guachi
@Not worth the bother: There really were people in 2016 who would come into Sanders posts and support Sanders who never seemed to comment on any other posts.
Calling him Wilmer was a way around that. Now is just an in-joke that seems to be fading in usage.
And I certainly don’t consider BJ neoliberal. I look at it as mainstream activist liberal.
While there is some “groupthink” much of it had to do, imo, with most of us being on the same page in the first place. For example, the shift to “Biden’s actually doing a darn good job” among basically everyone here isn’t because of groupthink so much as it being the place most of us would have been regardless of what anyone on BJ posted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cleek: true– I think there are a couple other Eschaton refugees like me who got tired of being jumped on for saying Obama was a Democrat//
Betty
I personally prefer this commenting approach. I agree with Kay that more progressive positions seem to offend many here if it is critical of elected Democrats. Otherwise, I enjoy the variety of posts and commenters.
SFBayAreaGal
@stinger: Dang, you said everything I wish I could have said. It’s hard for me to put into words what I think and feel. You said everything I wanted to say. Thank you.
frosty
@Baud:
Dammit, I don’t know how you do it, but I literally (waves to Steve in the WTF) laugh aloud a couple of times a day from your comments. This was one of them.
Fair Economist
Unthreaded comments BJ style are much better for an ongoing conversation. If I’m active on a post and I want to see what’s been said in the past twenty minutes, I just hit refresh. If I’m active on a LGM post, I have to scan the entire thread, including multiple hit on “show more comments”, which starts malfunctioning when the thread gets big so …
Threaded is better for a “one and done” approach to a post, but I don’t often do that. I like to participate.
The current commenting system has some bugs, but I really notice one thing I DON’T see three times per post – FYWP. That used to be everywhere. I wonder how many of the departees have participated here since the fix. OTOH, at LGM I comment under a different name because THEIR comment system ate my FairEconomist nym years ago and I can’t get it to work.
We are too prone to attacking dissenters as trolls. Some are, sure, but most aren’t. I view a troll as an opportunity to put out a nice strong but polite refutation of the trolls claims and that has the benefit of working whether or not they are actually a troll, and being better at convincing the peanut gallery, which is probably the main way this blog produces real influence.
BRyan
@narya: Yes! This!
SFBayAreaGal
@HeleninEire: I am so glad to see your post. One of these days I would love to go to Ireland. Maybe we can get a group of us to go visit the Emerald Isle.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
I don’t comment that often, but Balloon Juice is still my first check-in in the morning, and my last check-in at night. I feel like I get coverage of things that interest me, from politics to gardening, food, and pets. ;-) For instance, when I passed through the kitchen and heard that Gov Cuomo had been found to have harassed multiple women and retaliated against one, I knew I could find out more at BJ. Sure enough, there was a post from Four Seasons Total Landscaping Mister Mix right there on the front page.
I do like LGM, and I’m glad that if Cheryl felt she needed a new home she picked them, but I absolutely HATE their commenting system! There are times I’d like to comment over there, or read comments, but it’s just not worth it. Blech!
Suzanne
Honestly, I think the LGM commenters are right about the Sanders bashing here being a turnoff. I am by no means his biggest fan, but it was excessive here. I think that narrowed this community a bit, by ideology and by age. Which is okay, if that’s the desired result. It’s not my blog.
glory b
@Starfish: I said the same thing about RBG and didn’t get banned. I remember saying that we already did this with Marshall getting replaced by Thomas and let’s not make that mistake again.
Did people disagree? Sure, but that’s okay, I don’t expect anyone to move in lockstep with me.
I’ll say this too, the disrespect that white millennials show to those senior to them is off-putting. Respecting ones elders is still drilled into us, along with a bit of distrust in white people, even if they are on our side. Lots of us are brought up to believe that “we are all we’ve got,” and so we may disagree but never wish for the demise of the older population (like I’ve seen some younger white lefties do).
Wish for grandma and grandpa to die? Never!
And I also love the commenting system here, along with the pets and the food (not enough of them if you ask me) and the gardening.
John Cole
@Starfish:
We’re not neoliberal. Well maybe some of you are. But none of the front pagers and the majority of the commenters aren’t. Neoliberal just means “won’t walk over hot coals for Bernie.”
This is what drives me nuts about the few but loud Bernie Uber Alles stans. The utter inability to separate fact from reality. My beef with Bernie is he was doing the same shit in 2016 that Hillary did in June of 2008 when it was clear it was over. Go see what I said about Hillary in 2008. I even had to create a new category about not being able to rationally talk about her campaign anymore.
I just have no tolerance for bullshit anymore. Stop lying to me. I’m smarter than you or at least smarter than you think I am.
Technocrat
Speaking for myself, BJ feels like a large family reunion, and LGM feels like a symposium. I read some really interesting takes over there, but reading here typically just makes my day a little better. I’m very happy BJ is what BJ is.
Times change and people move on. I tell you what, Frank leaving American Pickers is much more of a ::mind blown:: moment than any changes here.
Josie
Late to the thread, as usual, but just wanted to say I love everything about this blog – the topics, the front pagers, the commenters, the comment thread organization, and the feeling of community. I feel like I have found my tribe here, thanks to you, John Cole.
Fair Economist
@satby: I think it’s good to have restricted threads, but the problem is that there is sometimes no active open thread, especially on Sunday morning. I think it would help to make sure there’s always one going, and that it’s not buried by too much “above the fold” on restricted threads.
Chief Oshkosh
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That is something I think we should each of us guard against (me especially). We get into some arguments about something as though, if we could just unite the minds of BJers, something would change in the real world. The only thing we do here as a group (sort of) that will change the world is the various outreach/action and funding initiatives that some of us have started. The rest of it is, well, just balloon juice. :)
Gin & Tonic
I’ve been around longer than some, not as long as others, but this is the only place other than some very specialized fora where I actually comment. I like the fact that even though many (most?) of my comments interest few people, nobody ever says STFU. And I hate Disqus with the heat of a thousand suns. So leave it as close as you can to the way it is, please.
There go two miscreants
I have been reading here at least since the 2nd Shrub admin, but only recently decided to comment (and that infrequently). I also read LGM but less often, and I never comment there. BJ is the only blog I definitely read every day. I really value the political points of view and insights into other states, as well as the encouragement with respect to where to donate. During the pandemic, Anne Laurie’s covid roundup posts have been very valuable! (I get the Stat news and Nature summaries, but the range of sources in AL’s posts is quite useful.)
OzarkHillbilly
Are we as a community failing others?
Without a doubt. People slip thru the cracks, always have always will.
How can we grow?
Question: Should we? And if so, into what?
Are we too insular?
Sometimes, maybe even many times. Newbies come and go for a variety of reasons. I think a lot of them get intimidated.
Are the commenting features in need of a complete overhaul? No. Do they suit me to a ‘T’? No, nothing ever does. C’est la vie.
Another Scott
@guachi: Yup.
We’ve had disagreements here (I recall disagreeing with Kay about TPP), so there isn’t a group-think prohibition on arguments.
But there’s not much tolerance for bad-faith arguments that looks like trolling. Especially when it’s drive-by.
“The Boomers are ruining everything” and the like is tiresome. (Lots and lots of the monsters weren’t Boomers. Lots and lots of the good people are Boomers.)
“RBG is a monster because she didn’t retire” and the like is tiresome. (She didn’t control who replaced her; McConnell could have thrown a fit to steal her seat too.)
I like hearing different opinions, especially when they’re reasonably well supported. People who want to talk about things should be willing to take a little heat to support their opinions (I’m not condoning unfair responses) – it’s worth the effort.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Suzanne:
It didn’t stay just Sanders bashing. It became an entire theme where that whole section of the Democratic Party couldn’t be discussed because it had all become one big multi-layered political theory.
I just don’t think voters think in those terms. They don’t have that elaborate context. Nina Turner’s campaign in Ohio isn’t bad because it’s Lefty. It’s bad because it’s deceptive, and deliberately so. She is running two campaigns- one for hyper-engaged Lefties and one for the great mass of lightly engaged Ohio Democrats where she’s a standard Democrat. The Cleveland paper actually endorsed her for her bipartisanship because the old Nina Turner leaned Right in some areas. That’s what’s actually going on here. It’s not “meta”. It’s specific.
kindness
LG&M is a daily read for me but I almost never comment there. Seems to me whenever I do I get outed as not being pure enough. Meh. I’ve done my time trying to prove my liberalness. Not gonna go there any more for folks who have issues.
Emma from Miami
@Suzanne: I think it was an overreaction to the bunch of drive-by Bernie Is The Messiah commenters we were getting. May not have been our finest moment but sometimes one gets fed up.
schrodingers_cat
This is only political blog I read on a daily basis and definitely the only one where I comment. The commenting system is fine. I felt right at home here with my fellow jackals when I started posting here during the Obama era. My first comment was one of Tunch posts. I loved that kitteh.
That said the Orange Clown years showed me how differently I viewed things from the average BJ poster. His election literally upended my life. And BS helped make that happen. And he and his assorted clown car in the Congress now will never be forgiven for that. Ever.
Suzanne
@Kay:
It felt so disproportionate to me. I remember some commenter saying, “Bernie is as bad as Trump!” and a bunch of agreement. I was like, “WTF?!”. I felt like the plot was lost, bigtime.
JanieM
@FredW: Clicked on your nym and enjoyed your pictures for a while, but mainly wanted to give a shout-out to someone who is working with “Pick.” !! I didn’t even know it was still in existence. One of my early programming jobs was with an outfit that had bought some business software that ran on a Pick operating system — this was in the early eighties, these people thought I was going to come in with my screwdriver to make things happen. Fun memories!
PS in general: BJ is great just the way it is. Not always perfect, sometimes not sweetness and light, but fine. Threaded comments are the work of the devil. Specialized threads can just be … ignored. Sheesh.
gvg
@Not worth the bother: You have an offensive style that gets you pied. It’s not because you are a leftist, it’s because you are you. I am a liberal and so are many others. I also said RBG was wrong, more than once, and didn’t get piled on.
Bernie loyalist did actually monitor this blog, and presumably others. We had tedious proof in actions. The random nickname thing worked. The trolls for Bernie could actually have been antiBernies because they made us mad and much more antiBernie. I sometimes wonder about that, and not just for his “supporters” but for any popular person on the web that also had a high negative faction.
AndoChronic
This site is way cooler than LGM.
narya
Also: LOVED the virtual meet-ups over Thanksgiving! I was home alone, which I didn’t particularly mind, but also loved being able to hear and see you all. It was really delightful.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: Not all of us have the privilege of looking at BS as a kindly harmless crank.
John Cole
And for the record no one has ever been banned for being a Bernie supporter. And the stuff coming out of Bernie’s committee in the Senate while Biden is President is going to make life better for so many people.
dc
I read and enjoy both blogs. I rarely comment on either, but I have commented more here because I always to search my login and password for disqus to comment over there and here I can just comment, no fuss, no muss.
Revrick
The comments section of this website often has a ‘right church, wrong pew’ vibe, but then that’s also true of LGM and Dailykos. The fact is, there are regulars who seem to dwell on the respective sites, who develop a familiar intercourse and their own special lingo with one another. Occasional commenters, such as myself, usually get ignored. The result is that the desire, on their part, to comment gets extinguished.
I realize that this is normal human behavior. We naturally gravitate to the people we know and consider our friends. Other than recruiting a team of official greeters, whose job would be to pay attention to and respond to oddballs, such as myself, tweaks of the comment section won’t change the dynamics.
HeleninEire
@SFBayAreaGal:
I’m in!
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty: I think that the “more progressive” positions tend to frustrate people here. We tend to be pragmatic and look for achievable goals. If I could make US a more inclusive Denmark tomorrow, I would. But that is not possible. Whatever one thinks of Manchin and Sinema, for example, the are a part of our political landscape, and any plans need to recognize that.
narya
@Revrick: i’ve actually stopped going to other blogs in the past because of that, but I’ve found that here it feels less exclusionary, more just that the thread is moving quickly. Also, folks really DO respond when someone is struggling, which really warms my heart. Knowing that complete strangers are sharing good thoughts sometimes is enough to make things a little better.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: YMMV, of course, but I see no reason to believe that Bernie Sanders would have performed as poorly in the presidency as TFFG did. I don’t see that as a privilege statement, I see that as an indictment of the crazy man.
Again, this is not a defense. This is my assertion that the tenor of this blog lost some perspective/nuance and probably that drove some people away….. which was directly noted in that thread.
glc
The blog’s fine, with a lot of outstanding material. It doesn’t have a broad spectrum of opinion, but it does have considerable expertise and variety of content, and is well worth following.
And I’m always happy to see John’s comments (maybe sometimes distressed at the same time, depending).
I suppose it’s aging. I know I am. But it’s vigorous.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: So that explains the Plain Dealer plaudits for “bipartisanship.” Thank you — I was mystified!
Suzanne
@John Cole: I don’t think anyone was banned for being a Bernie supporter. I think the tenor of the conversation around the time of the 2016 election became really hostile in tone and probably led some people to leave of their own volition.
MisterForkbeard
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Gotta agree with this. In general I like the commenting system quite a bit here and it’s my primary space (not that I do it very often).
The LGM system does make it easier to just dive in, but Discus is kind of a mess and I love this community here.
StringOnAStick
I tried LGM for a while because a lot of Roy Edroso’s commenters went there. Then one day the post was the cover of Ann Coulter’s latest “book”, and it was being savaged as expected. The cover was Ann in her usual tight dress and provocative pose to excite her usual buyers and I commented that she sells her books using her cup size, and was promptly strongly excoriated by at least 10 angry men for my making such a horrible, sexist comment. To me, Coulter is the one being sexist to sell books, the covers are all exactly the same: very tight, very short dress, high heels and that sneer, posed for best cleavage. The really angry reaction was super odd and super personal; projection much? I lurked a little while longer then mostly stayed here because this is a community with a lot less performative outrage plus better humor.
I should spend less time in the internet in general; I have a problem with needing to “read everything posted” . I came here to follow Betty Cracker from the Rumproast blog, which was super small and very much a community, and I’m glad I did. I like it here, the news, the political actions, the pet care, the gardens, the photos and mainly the sense that there are other people out there who share a lot of my values.
gvg
I like BJ just fine, but since you are soliciting improvements….I learned to like blogs on a sports fan site with threaded comments and do find them easier to understand. An option where people chose for themselves would probably be perfect.
That first site had an option where you could get an email if anyone replied to a comment of yours, which was nice for actually being aware of what was going on.
Another thing it did was change the commenters name to a different color after you read it. I used to read the last comment in a thread just so I could tell if there were new posts up. That wouldn’t quite work here as the posts are not rolled up the same way, but if there was some way where the system said there are 86 posts and you stopped at 42, to help me remember….I don’t know anything about how it could be done.
I love the pie filter. That didn’t exist anywhere before this. Yes I can scroll past, but too often I didn’t and it just ruined my mood too often. I have noticed that people pied a lot tend to wander off, which is really nice.
MisterForkbeard
@Starfish: A RBG didn’t really get banned for being mean about RBG. IIRC, they were a huge consistent troll where Democrats were always bad, the far left was always correct, and the real villains were Balloon Juice commenters and Democrats in general for actually trying to have practical solutions or not worshipping whoever the current far left idol was.
@John Cole: Can we ban ARBG again? He’s been back for 10 whole minutes and already stinking up the joint.
I sympathize with the larger point. I mostly ended a friendship with a long-term Bernie supporter in 2020 when they were pulling the exact same stuff they did with Hillary against Biden, in September. Talking about how great Bernie was, how Biden was a conservative, pushing “senility” and “hair sniffing” and then demanded we laud him for making the sacrifice of voting for Biden while very noisily trying to drive people away from voting Democrat.
Dude called me a neoliberal too, which is about when I ended it. no patience for this shit any more.
Starfish
@John Cole: With you changing political parties over the course of Balloon Juice, I think that a lot of Balloon Juice is fairly centrist-y democrats. That is true for my state. When I went to the meet ups here, my feeling was “Oh, these folks are a little to a lot older than me and slightly to the right of me.”
In hindsight, I feel like Bernie stacked his campaigns with a lot of people who wanted to fight. After four years of Trump, a lot of people were tired of constant fighting and drama. That is part of why so many people dropped out and endorsed Biden at the same time. I am hoping that the way that the current Republican Party wants to run on drama instead of issues serves them very badly.
Fighting and drama is not actual policy work. Some people forget that.
Urza
I’ve been mostly a lurker since Terry Schiavo when Atrios pointed out your conversion. With the inclusion of subject matter experts this has become a great place to find detailed, trustworthy news. I recommend it to anyone looking for good sources, though some people can’t get past the name for some reason. Commenters are usually pretty accurate to.
I look forward to another 20 years.
MazeDancer
Community builds loyalty. One can post one’s political opinions anywhere.
It is the pets, gardening, and group activities that create community. Without those BJ would be long gone. And not filled with 13 or 14 year veterans like myself.
Twitter is eating blogs. Even John enjoys the wider reach and instant interaction there.
Without Anne Laurie, there would be no BJ. Yet, some of you complain if she takes a few hours off? She is working for free. FREE! Miraculously.
Watergirl has donated tens of thousands, if not 100K, of free time. Spearheaded voting rights action.
The fundraising here at BJ is astonishing. Yay Doug and WaterGirl!
Fundraising not happening at LGM. And it is the connections created by pets, gardening, and cooking that undergird the fund-raising.
Want to emphasize that without Anne Laurie and WaterGirl, there would be no BJ. Women often do the real work. Hope John sends them constant thanks and flowers.
Do I wish comments were somehow more interactive? Yes. That’s why I spend time at Twitter. But John’s House, John’s Rules.
p.s. LGM pays their Front-Pagers:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/05/behind-the-blogging
p.p.s And if you think BJ bashes Bernie, clearly you follow no Black Women on Twitter. Documented and justifiable white-hot Bernie hate. With which I completely agree.
MisterForkbeard
@Starfish: I don’t think we’re particularly centrist. Though I do believe that my very left friends would describe us that way.
We’re pretty left. We’re also fairly practical. There were a large number of people here who really didn’t like Bernie’s campaign and his followers but liked many of his policy solutions. Some others (like SC) are vehemently anti-Bernie, and that’s okay. When the primaries were going on, the two favorite candidates were Harris and (to a much larger degree) Warren, so you’ve got some good evidence of leftyism right there.
Bard the Grim
I very rarely post, but check here multiple times a day, more than anywhere else. Don’t change a thing.
Starfish
@MisterForkbeard: A lot of the Bernie supporters from 2016 that I knew were Warren supporters in 2020. The people who stuck with Bernie and no one else were a strange bunch. The “I will take my ball and go home if you do not vote for my candidate” was very out of touch Susan Sarandon nonsense. I see some people threatening sitting out the next election, and “Who I trust to deal with the pandemic responsibility and run FEMA when we have an increasing number of climate change disasters?”
Ruckus
John, just getting to the blog this morning. Your point about the commenting system does strike me as a very valid point, I have a long list of political blogs that I started reading about 15 yrs ago. Or more. This being one of them. I’ve pared down from something like 20 regular blogs checked often to one, this one. Part of that is the other commenters, part is you, part is the blog itself. Replies/comments here can range from a couple of words to my long screeds, and yes I know some are long. I don’t think everything can be reduced to 280 characters. For sure not all need 28000 characters either…. But LGM’s system really does put a dent in commenting, not because of any specific limitation but it effectively makes commenting more like twitter than BJ does. And yes I am on twitter, not as much as here, and much of it is limiting, always looking for the very pithy comment, where some subjects just take more. But while the threading makes an answer/comment need to really be connected to the subject, sometimes wandering is better. And that’s what we get here. Very often the end of comments has very little to do with the start or the original post. IOW we have actual communications, sometimes even actual thoughts. The sum total of humanity is not just the original author of something, it is the thoughts of any of us, how we fit in the whole, or don’t, how we can agree or disagree. It’s how change/progress is made, especially in a democracy, the sum, not the single vision. You have assembled a wide range of characters here, varied in views, subjects of interest, strengths, weaknesses. It is the differences that should make us think, that open us to the world. Not the narrowness of thought, action, words. Humanity is wonderful, horrible, open, selfish, tolerant, intolerant, and we all need to belong to it somewhere, because it’s all we are.
arrieve
Late to the thread, but want to add my appreciation. I don’t make that many comments here, but it’s the only place I comment any more, and it’s the only blog that I read daily. I like the mix of topics — if I’m not interested in a thread I can skip it. But what I love about this place is the sense of community — how everyone chipped in to get an apartment for Claire’s family or to find a new home for Walter. I have actually met some jackals IRL at meetups, and that’s something I hope to be able to do again sometime, but if not, I’m happy to have the community here online.
And I really appreciate the FP’ers who scan Twitter and other online sources and curate the most interesting posts. It’s like a concierge version of the Internet!
PTO
The Unrestricted Free Agency market in Blogland is getting out of hand. You should have agreed to salary arbitration…..
debbie
I like the variety of topics. I don’t have pets or a yard, so I get to experience without having to clean up poop or weeds! I also like the variety of posters. Some knowledgeable, some like me, some kind, some not. It’s like life. But I do not get the point of nested comments; they seem exclusionary, but they wouldn’t set me off whinging.
bluefoot
One more comment about why I love BJ: We don’t just talk (or complain or snark) about things, we are actually trying to make a difference. Whether it’s fundraising, signal boosting for candidates and causes, rescuing animals or highlighting artists, etc, we actively try to make things better. This is HUGE for me. Any other annoyances pale in comparison to this. It’s the only place I know of that discusses AND is materially constructive.
All a way to say, you all are awesome.
Suzanne
@MisterForkbeard: I would say that most of the commenters here are more institutionally loyal to the Democratic Party than anything else. I think that’s sometimes mistaken for centrism, when it’s probably a functional of generational perspective more than ideology.
But John’s question was essentially asking if the blog had a narrow or self-reinforcing viewpoint. I do think it got narrower. Again, if that’s the community John wants to build, that’s fine. It’s just a thing to be aware of.
satby
@arrieve: Funny you should mention a meetup! The one we had the time NotMax and I both happened to be in NYC the same week just popped up in my Amazon photo memories a few days ago. Good times.
cleek
one of the biggest fallacies in political chatter is that there are only two ways to be on-the-left: progressive or centrist.
Tony Jay
I’ve been here for years and have no problem at all negotiating the comment system. It’s only improved (I may be using that word wrongly) by the decision to let me rant at some ridiculous and unnecessary length about the awfulness of British politics on occasion.
And for the record I’m waaaaaay to the left of most people here but I’ve hardly ever been made to feel anything less than fabulous for it.
smedley the uncertain
@JPL: My useless ass grabbing congress critter, Tom Reed, is planning to take a shot…
arrieve
@satby: That was so much fun. May we get to do it again sometime!
JanieM
@MazeDancer: great comment, especially about Anne Laurie and WaterGirl. Someone complained about posts full of tweets, but i get a lot of my awareness of what’s going on from collections of tweets here, from which I can pursue more info if I want, and that’s partly because I trust the filtering the front-pagers are doing for me here, especially AL.
Not to mention that AL’s COVID posts have been a miracle.
lowtechcyclist
On the whole, this is a pretty good place. No community is perfect, but speaking from the perspective of someone who kinda flits around the edges, this one strikes me as way better than average. And it’s got a great bunch of front-pagers – how the fuck did a misanthrope like Cole pull them all in? I’m amazed by that.
A number of people have mentioned that this place is a bit insular. I’ll confess that it seems to me that a fair number of commentators here have a case of what I’ve long thought of as Lieberman’s Disease, that is to say, the belief that one occupies the leftmost edge of acceptable liberal thought, and anyone further left than them is Loony Left or whatever. But that’s still far from a universal sentiment here, which is good.
Anyhow, that’s my two cents.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chief Oshkosh: It was the outreach and fundraising I was talking about.
Low Key Swagger
Probably a dead thread…but someone upstairs said something about “official greeters”. Not the worst idea but completely unworkable. The thing I hate is the pie filter. I’ve seen people come here, make an argument that is no sync with the loudest/longest of this group, and then told they were pied, right off the bat. There is way too much rudeness (Jackals is a cool name for the group but doesn’t have to be how we behave) I too have been around for a long time, and on various blogs/online forums and if I learned anything, it’s that yes a core group will emerge, but if that group is the only one having the conversation, it gets boring pretty fast. Can’t do much about that, but perhaps easing back a little on the snarling when someone has a contrary position is a good first step. We can also learn and have our positions evolve…but first they must be challenged. Echo chambers offer nothing.
Death Panel Truck
I’ve been semi-lurking here since Terri Schiavo, so that goes back many years. In that time I’ve seen a thousand nyms come and go. I enjoy Cole’s rants and pet pictures more than anything else here. Keep it the way it is, and don’t change the fucking comment system. Disqus sucks ass.
piratedan
in reliving the “Bernie Campaign Wars” I was more annoyed with Senator Sanders surrogates than himself and it struck me that the passionate zeal that came from those folks came far too close to the themes struck by their supposed political opposites on the Evangelical Right. The collective refusal to address those issues I found to be a total turnoff on what looked to be more of a personality cult looking for a vehicle than any kind of cohesive movement, which explains why I gravitated to Warren, who also wasn’t perfect, but she had at least shown her work, which is something that Sanders refused to do.
As for our bloggish self reflection, I don’t mind it, but I am a firm believer that there is no absolute right way and we all have our comfort zones as to where we fit and choose to spend time. While many find our community to be insular, I find other commentariats to be the same and I still learn something no matter which blog I visit, be it here, LGM, Wonkette, TPM or Little Green Footballs. There’s room for all of these voices and I don’t consider those who have preferences for other blogs to be the enemy, its just a matter of having a preferred place to hang out… kinda like that feeling in the show Cheers, where everyone knows your name… it just takes a while to be known and accepted as a regular (and a desire to be seen as one).
La Nonna
Love it here, even though the time difference means I am always a step or two behind, and don’t often comment. I do check the blog daily, one of a very few I read. Ciao!
satby
Oh, that’s a huge pet peeve of mine, especially on some front pagers’ posts. A lot of people use mobile devices, and it’s so annoying to try to get past all that stuff to see what other posts and topics there are. Inconsiderate too. I usually skip any threads that do that.
Starfish
@Suzanne: You are right. There is a loyalty to the Democratic Party here.
I think some people want to run away from the term centrist because lefties have made it a dirty word.
I don’t think it is a dirty word. Upon deeper reflection, it might not be serving us well in a world where the options are a) eating tire rims and anthrax or b) a vaccine for the pandemic. The attempt to find “the middle” between those two things is a fruitless task, and that is why so many people have rejected the stupidity of both-siderism lately.
Tony Jay
@JanieM:
Yeah. Complaining about people going to the effort of collating tons of useful information in usefully linked format and presenting it for speedy reading smacks a little too much of affected snobbery for me.
What? She should transcribe it all into a prose poem or it’s not ‘art’? Get tae fook y’featherarsed goit. :-)
Ivan X
This is the only political blog I read at all any more, and I usually read it daily.
The comments as they are far preferable to a threaded model, for me.
LGM’s color scheme and general self-righteousness and nothing ever being good in the world turn me off. I’ve tried a few times and I always give it up.
I think the anti-Bernie sentiment that flares up here sometimes is because humans are gonna be tribal and we need our punching bags. There might be legitimate reasons, but we also can’t help ourselves. Same with the NYTDS so prevalent here. Neither of these things bother me (have always disliked Bernie, used to like the NYT but don’t much anymore), because it’s just what I expect people to do. We need our enemies. I don’t pile on and usually find it annoying, but I also just don’t care. I think we do worse here sometimes.
As far as holding it together and the blog being around another 20 years — I don’t think it’s about the content mix. It gives the blog a special flavor, even if I personally skip most of the pet, food, and garden posts. I think the collection of front pagers has always been consistently high quality and the current lineup is top notch. I do, think, however, that this is a place whose feel and tone do flow downstream from its leader, and JC, you used to post a lot more, and the community formed around you. You bring a unique mix of heart, wit, insight, and invective that few others can match. I realize that you just don’t have the organic motivation to do so anymore — how many different ways can you say that Republicans are corrupt and awful, after all — so I’m not saying you need to do anything different other than be true to you, but I do think the community feels stronger when you chime in more, and your participation is probably necessary glue for the community here, no matter how good your FP’ers are.
Fair Economist
Most posters on this blog are pretty hard left. But we are also aware of political realities, and the US is a two party system. We have seen over and over again the accepting the Republican via left protest votes or sitting out brings catastrophe – in 1980, in 2000, and in 2016. And I do mean catastrophe, quite literally. 1980 is the main reason wealth is so concentrated in this country. 2000 got us Iraq War 2 and voter suppression. 2016 killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and doomed Roe v Wade. Total catastrophe, each time.
In America a new party can succeed ONLY when there is only one remaining effective party. If our two parties were the Democrats and some DSA party, I’d be supporting the DSA. But outside a very few leftist cities like Seattle, that’s not the case, and every time the Democrats lose, the socialists lose too. Eliminate the Republican party and THEN we can split off as socialists. But not before.
On top of that, because we have electoral primaries, we can push our preferences by changing the Democratic party. It’s not like parliamentary systems where you have to take what the party leadership wants.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne:
@Tony Jay: Oddly, these two comments made me think about the period that I was in school in London in 1984. My Congress and Commons class visited the HQs of the then four major parties. The one where I felt most at home was the SDP. But I knew that if I were British, I would come from a Labour family, and I would not easily walk away from that.
Hob
I’ve been a regular reader here for a long time. I almost never comment, and tend not to read a lot of the comments, just because I can’t deal with a non-threaded comment system in any very busy forum—at least, one that doesn’t have any way to get notifications about comments on a particular page, or replies. I realize everyone is different and lots of people don’t like threaded comments; all I can say is that for me, at least in a busy space, I can’t get any sense of having a conversation here because the only people who are likely to ever notice a new comment, or to know when someone’s replied to them, are people who are staying up all night refreshing the page a million times. And new posts come often enough that if I get interested in a discussion and want to follow it, I’m unlikely to be able to find the post the next day unless I specifically bookmarked it.
It’s not like there are a ton of great comment systems out there, or even one really good one—Disqus has tons of problems. But still this is the main reason I’m way more likely to post or read comments on LGM (for instance) than here, even though there are a lot of commenters here I like. It just feels like trying to jump on and off of a moving train.
Just One More Canuck
@Suzanne: I think it’s a matter of being pragmatic, which is how I see the commentariat here. The only way to enact your agenda is to win elections, and if that means settling for a more moderate D than you would like, that’s the way it is. AOC is great, but could she be elected in Conor Lamb’s district?
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Exactly! For people of color, the last election was an existential crisis, whereas some of the white commenters seemed to feel like it was about free college, etc. I felt like we couldn’t get them to understand how hair-on-fire we felt.
Like I said before, a lot of POCs feel like we can’t afford the luxury of indulging in petulance over something that is less than that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I find the single thread here good for chatting and socializing, and I learn serious things too. But I can see how someone trying to have a deep conversation about a specific subject would find it frustrating.
I started commenting here during 2012 campaign. No one shunned me or gave me grief, nor did they give me hugs and welcome. I had to get used to the way some people enjoyed arguing, and really still don’t enjoy that myself, but I can skim past the various fuck-you-no-fuck-you posts
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
I don’t really agree with you on this. I feel like if you are engaging in good faith policy arguments, you may have people disagree with you, but it isn’t this massive pile on. The things that really set people off are:
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Different strokes for different folks, really. As long as people of the left and centre are unified in opposition the right, I’m more than willing to accommodate negotiated compromises, and that’s how long term incremental change works.
I’m pretty sure that membership of this community has made me comfortable with that model of politics. Talk about a victory over the proletariat!
Ruckus
@dr. bloor:
I think what happens is the regulars get used to who they see most often. A new person shows up or even a long time lurker posts and people get protective. That’s humanity, it can be recognized and minimized but new things take effort to accept, we get to really liking something or at least we get really used to something – it feels like home, like we belong, and we resent intrusion. I think sometimes we all need to take a step back and look at what this place is. A place for discussion, for Hi how are you doing, let me tell you about my shitty day, oh that’s horrible, how can we help? This is a club, it’s membership is open, anyone can join in, it’s not a closed circle. Most of us are protective of our space, but the web has made our space the entire world, not just our immediate neighbors. This is a very, very good thing, but it’s different than most history of the world. That history has traditionally been very protective of our corner of it. But the modern world, while it hasn’t gotten any smaller, it has gotten a lot closer, a lot more accessible. I think we should embrace that.
This blog is one of the ways we make the world more accessible.
I think that is one of it’s greatest benefits.
eldorado
was never a frequent commentor, and now almost never, but still read daily-ish. i burned out on the comments not being a big enough tent here, honestly
Lottirose
@TaMara (HFG):
As we used to say in olden days, John Cole is all of it . We used to rag on people who thought they were, but John is the real thing.
glory b
@MazeDancer: Yes, so many Black women HATE Bernie Sanders!! And remember, we’re never wrong.
westyny
@Betty Cracker:
I remember cornering the egregious “LanceThruster” into allowing that he was a Stein voter. So Bernie was a front for him. He was a disingenuous troll and is better off gone. I rarely post, mostly read, but every so often I feel like returning like a grizzly bear to maul that particular camper.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: Being slightly better than the Orange Clown is not an adequate qualification for being President.
I have followed BS and his anti-immigrant voting record since the Bush years. Regarding immigration he would have been just as bad as the clown show of the last administration. He has voted against the most minor relief to immigrants like recapturing the unused green card numbers.
Those of us who are not sold on BS have good reasons for it, even if you may not immediately see them, there is no need to dismiss them out of hand.
And without the Vt senator’s scorched earth primary campaign against HRC, the Orange Clown would never have become President.
I had to cancel a trip to India for my cousin’s wedding in 2017 because of the utter chaos produced by the Muslim ban even though I had a GC and am not a Muslim.
schrodingers_cat
@glory b: Yep their feels are more important than our lives. Reminds me of the other end of the horseshoe.
Soprano2
Speaking only for myself, I have never been able to forgive him and his supporters for how they treated Hillary after she won the nomination, and how they fucked with the Democratic convention in 2016. Just a completely classless shitshow as far as I was concerned, one that probably helped elect Trump. It made me not want to even listen to anything they have to say. I believe the all-or-nothing brand of politics is a bad one, and that’s the brand they practice. Of course, YMMV.
Major Major Major Major
Whatever you do, don’t replace the commenting system with Disqus, it’s the reason I don’t comment there.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Starfish: The thing is I kind of agree with not worth the trouble on the RGB issue. I don’t want to get into an argument about it at present and I am entirely willing to accept that she did plenty to advance human and civil rights and should be on the list of great Americans. She had cancer early in Obama’s first term and was pretty old at that point was my chief motivation for thinking she should retire when she was sure of being replaced by another liberal.
That said I didn’t let that issue drive me away from this blog. People can disagree, and even be disagreeable about it if we all have thick enough skin to take some lumps and the understanding that there are some people you are never going to convince so why hijack entire threads arguing with them? Apply a filter and just accept that you can read stuff you don’t agree with without responding every single time.
I love it here. I read TPM daily and Steve Benen (Maddowblog) pretty much every day, but this is the blog I check and read most regularly, and the only one I comment on. I’m not a super commenter here but I feel welcome and it’s just a great place to be, for me at least.
It is a little insular, I guess, but then look who founded the blog. What, did you expect a hermit to create an online community that was miles wide? I get how some newcomers might feel ostracized but you just have to roll with the punches a little and people will eventually realize you’re not just here to troll. I’m not sure what I would change about the place except maybe to allow images/pictures in comments.
Cathie from Canada
I would enjoy participating more in Comment threads. But the problem once it gets to more than 50, its just not possible anymore to read and respond. And too often, by the time I check out a post, there are already too many comments and then I think that likely I’m would just be repeating what someone else already said, and so I wouldn’t really be participating in a conversation, and then I just feel like Winnie The Pooh — “Oh, bother!”
But sometimes, when I happen to be an Early Responder, participating is lots of fun because I mostly like all the BJ commenters.
So yes, keep on keeping on, John.
pajaro
@Technocrat:
I’m very late to the thread. I read you every day, but have rarely posted. I like your politics stuff, particularly in the way you are always focusing on what can be done, rather than just complaining (correctly) about what is wrong. The pandemic thread in the morning is essential reading. Adam is a unique resource. Your non political posts are welcome distractions. I do hope I will have all of you around for a long while, even if you don’t often hear from me. Keep it up, please.
rikyrah
She has been so informative.
Good luck ?
Tenar Arha
I like it here, pretty much as is. This is where I do my primary blog reading and commenting now, especially post TNC blogging at the Atlantic.
I use this place differently depending on mood & personal busyness. Like I mostly read just the posts when I’m really busy, but I do like to read all the comments sometimes. I don’t comment much, but I also prefer doing that here. It’s just much easier for me to do that if it’s unthreaded.
Like I rarely read all the comments at LGM bc there’s always that one thread that gets upvoted & makes it hard to scroll past & down into another thread. I think I like the unthreaded comments here bc they give me a sense of what the “whole” community is thinking plus personal news I wouldn’t see or notice otherwise bc I was focused more on a particular comment thread using Disqus.
And @John Cole I like that we can talk pets, & food, & activism, & current politics all together. I like that we do it sometimes now without doing what the NYT & WaPo do & ignoring that some of their columnists are still recycling arguments staler than bread from 20 years ago. And sometimes we have to point out that that “someone is wrong on the internet,” but we can shorthand things & not do it on every post &/ every thread. No one has good rules of thumb for blogging for almost 20 (more than 20?) years, because it’s never been done before.
randy khan
This is one of the three blog-like sites I frequent, along with LGM and Daring Fireball (for those who don’t know it, a Mac-centric site with a side of James Bond and, unfortunately, the Yankees, although the site owner is fairly discreet about that terrible character flaw).
While I’m not a huge fan of the commenting system, I’m also not that excited by the threaded comment system at LGM. As I said in the original goodbye Cheryl thread, they both have flaws and I don’t think I’ve ever found a commenting system that was a good facsimile of a regular conversation, possibly because that’s not possible when you have many people in on the discussion. Anyway, I don’t think the commenting system really drives people to or from a site.
Anyway, LGM and BJ both make me think about things, with different focuses because the people at the two sites have different interests. I don’t really read the music posts at LGM, but I rarely miss an American Graves post. I don’t read Medium Cool here, but will read anything about the Adventures of Cole or by Betty Cracker. (And while I don’t often comment on David Anderson’s posts, I think they are pretty interesting.) The short version is that I don’t think either site (or any site) is for everybody, and I don’t think that blog owners should worry that much about that, so long as they stay true to what they see as the purpose of their sites.
Wolvesvalley
@guachi:
This.
Also, I find the frequent need to “load more comments” when reading the comments at LGM very annoying. Which means I seldom read the comments there, although I have the blog bookmarked.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The only thing that sometimes has me wishing for threaded comments is the unpredictable back button. I’ll read a comment and wonder what they’re replying to and get sent to never-neverland and have to find my way back to the original comment to continue reading.
I don’t really think we’re all that insular, if a new person(or someone that doesn’t post comments often) makes a comment about now we’re all assholes and doing it ALL WRONG. They’re going to get pushback.
cope
@Tony Jay: I feel my disdain for Twitter and posts that are a string of Twitter comments has been misinterpreted. My issue with Twitter and such posts is that, while they may contain tons of useful information, I PERSONALLY don’t appreciate the format. I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist. I’m not saying that nobody should go to what I expect is considerable effort to collate them into a single location. I’m not saying they have no value. They are just not my cup of tea. That is all.
It’s about the format for me. I find it confusing to keep track of who’s who on Twitter based on comments and replies to comments and Twitter handles. I’m not looking for prose poems or even art. I don’t want quick, short bursts of info, I prefer reads that are more leisurely, yes, yes I do, thanks. That’s why I always enjoy reading your comments and make a point of reading them word by word.
Finally, based on your use of a particular ending emoticon, I’ll assume that you were just taking the mick out on me like the folks I clipped sheep with up in Sutherland back so many years ago. Ta.
MisterForkbeard
@Starfish: I agree with all of this. I think we’re centrist within the Democratic Party and we’re loyal to the Party in general, some of us deeply so.
But with regards to ‘centrism’, we’re central in the Democratic Party. That makes us pretty Left, for America. There are large amounts of people to the right and left of us in the Party, and we have a number of them commenting on this blog.
But we’re absolutely not “centrists” in the way that the media or the Left mean it. We’re not interested in splitting the middle between Dems and Reps. We think achievable Democratic programs are good and don’t freak out when minor concessions are made, and we get upset when there are failures.
germy
I have an LGM question:
Does anyone know what happened to the commenter over there named Nobdy?
He/She (?) always had useful things to say, but I haven’t seen the nym in a long time.
Aimai
Dear John Cole! I was super touched to be name checked on the blog front page as I experience myself as rather anonymous. I have never stopped reading at balloon juice and considering it my blog home but some years ago the site stopped remembering my info and long comments that I wrote would vanish after I wrote them. I got out of the habit of commenting although I stayed a faithful reader. Also, as you may know, I went back to school, became a clinical social worker, and ended up working through the better part of my blog reading days. I think the comment threads here were not conducive to starting and maintaining a discussion discontinuously over several hours. You were either batting stuff back and forth with the day crew or the night crew or you were too late to contribute. I love the BJ style, the front pagers, and the political activism. It remains an important source of information and strength to me.
Kattails
I’m perfectly happy with all of it, only sorry that I have been insanely overloaded
lately and can barely manage to check in, and have to be very selective of what thread I start reading because there are usually more interesting ones than I can manage. The variety of interests is a big plus as is the shared breadth of experience and political chops.
The commenting layout is fine, I can skim.
IT’S FINE.
germy
@Aimai:
You’re one of my favorite commenters over at LGM. I don’t comment there but your contributions are great.
MisterForkbeard
The ONE problem I have with commenting here is that it’s really hard to tell when someone is talking to you. Unless you re-load the thread and are checking for your name, it’s hard to carry on a conversation, especially if you comment while working and come back to the thread every 30 minutes or so.
Something like an opt-in notification when someone @s you would be really useful, or a way to view comments that reference your name. You could avoid the threading problem that way while getting it’s best aspect, which is facilitating conversation within a larger commenting apparatus.
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Exactly!!
Tony Jay
@cope:
Sorry, I got the impression from the context that the ‘Twitter-dump’ comment had been made by some unknown dude or dudette on LGM, not a fellow Juicer. You are, of course, fully entitled to hold that opinion.
Thanks for explaining.
lee
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I work around that by right-clicking on the link to the comment and then opening the link in a new window.
It’s a pain but you don’t lose your place in the thread.
KrackenJack
As always, I’m late to the party. That’s due to limited time exacerbated by an unnecessary level of diligence in reading the thread before commenting.
It’s good to see these types of postings since they draw in a lot of lurkers. They don’t need to be blog-father therapy, just welcoming and soliciting feedback. Converting lurkers into commenters and commenters into front pagers is the only way to survive long term.
I appreciate the level of expertise in the LGM commentariat. However, it feels more like a college dorm whereas BJ is much more of a community.
Although I like threading, in practice, it is hard to follow at LGM because of the amount of nesting and length of the subthreads. There is too much personal vitriol and troll feeding there as well.
Here at home, a snippet of quotation to provide context would go a long way to make up for the lack of threading. Too often, a poster will reply to someone who has a half dozen comments and it is not clear which one they are referring to. While that is an individual choice, it can be encouraged by the community.
Two features I’d like to see are:
1) A count of BJ posts next to the user name. Some people are long-time posters, but infrequent.
2) A thumbs up option. No need for a thumbs down. If you disagree, post a reply and explain why.
Suzanne
Jesus Hussein Christ. This is what I’m talking about. Everything is freaking binary on this topic. It’s ludicrous.
NO, Bernie Sanders is not the best person in America to be the President, and that was literally never said on this blog that I ever read. I am not a member of his cult of personality. HOWEVER, Trump is and was absolutely the worst person in America to have in the presidency. Literally the worst person in public life. Some people here cannot differentiate.
Plenty of people align with “democratic socialism”, yet don’t feel any alignment with Bernie Sanders, and they are an important part of the Democratic coalition. However, in 2016, this blog started having this hair-trigger reaction to anything even tangentially associated with Sanders or his agenda in this really reactionary way. Everything became “BERNIEBROZ!!!” and “WILMER!!!” and “ZOMG FREE COLLEGE!!!” as a way of dismissing a lot of the concerns of progressives. As someone who probably will not be able to send her kids to college, that is an issue that matters to me, and I don’t give even half a shit about Bernie Sanders.
Again: that is fine to drive people away, if that is the goal. But don’t be surprised when people leave, because that discussion became simple and unintelligent.
xjmuellerlurks
I’ve been hanging around here since late 2008. Not the ground floor, but a fairly long time. I have to admit, one reason I come here is for your posts. I’ve been here for naked mopping injuries, pet stories, family and pet health problems, flying suburus, sobriety, and your house. I think what draws me here is your honesty. You don’t hold back what you really think. Plus, you have a sense of humor.
Variety of topics is fine. I don’t read some of them, because they don’t interest me, but they obviously appeal to many in the community. Having contributers as diverse as Tom Levenson, Betty Cracker, Anne Laurie, Tamara, David Anderson, and Adam Silverman is a real strength. You’re willing to bring in a wide variety of voices on a multitude of topics. You’ve also promote commenters to front pagers, which isn’t something I’ve seen everywhere. I do miss some of the front pagers who have left or greatly reduced posting.
Comments need to be threaded as stated in comment #10. I often can’t follow a thread because there are so many other comments in between the ones I’m interested in. The comment section often gets littered with folks have sidebars and comments straying off topic. I don’t usually read through the comments because after the first few, things get a bit chaotic.
Are we in a bubble? I think we are, although it’s not a bad as it might sound. We come here because we share social and political views. These get reinforced through the site. Duh! Fortunately, we can all look at other media if we want to. Of course there are some hobby horses ridden here, but you probably won’t find any other site where that doesn’t happen.
stinger
@SFBayAreaGal: Thank you very much!
kindness
It’s funny that the dividing line for so many seems to be Bernie’s repeated runs at the Presidency. Well, I like Bernie and some of his ideas but Bernie’s supporters drove me nuts. Especially in 2016 when far too many of my own friends went out of their way to lie about Hillary’s positions and then actually voted for Jill Stein like that helped anything (other than their own purity troll egos). Bernie was much better in 2020 about tamping that one down and trying to get his congregation to vote for Biden. Yea 2016 pissed me off. It wasn’t Bernie so much as his supporters who really seemed to not like anyone who didn’t view things exactly how they did. Curiously I found LG&M to be worse about it than the people here at BJ. Which is probably why I hardly ever comment over there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lee: Yeah, you can also click on the timestamp and it usually brings you back to the original comment.
jame
You’ve never failed me since you came over to the Light, John Cole.
I read Balloon Juice and Lawyers Guns & Money every day.
Y’all have something going for you that LGM doesn’t, and that’s ducks.
LGM has Loomis, LeMieux, and Farley, which is strong fu, but it’s not ducks.
And I still miss Scott Eric Kaufman
germy
@jame:
We just need to send Cole to a few graveyards, and then have him skim the wikipedia entries of the notable dead.
That’d be a good conversation prompt !
Nukular Biskits
John, I am by no means an expert on what should or should not be on this site to attract and maintain interest/traffic.
I can only tell you that Balloon Juice has been part of my daily routine for … damfino how many years.
I come here to read up and see pix on pets, gardening. I’ve enjoyed the longer pieces by Adam, Cheryl (sad to see her go), David, et al. And I thoroughly enjoy the quirky offerings of you, Betty and DougJ. And this is by no means a complete list.
In fact, there are are few things I have read over the years that have stuck with me, things like:
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/01/24/al-gore-is-fat-4/
Or this one:
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/03/24/or-else-it-gets-the-hose-again-open-thread
And especially, given the nihilists that control the Republican Party, this prediction from 2009:
https://balloon-juice.com/2009/02/05/youll-never-get-this-21-minutes-of-your-life-back/
I, the occasional commenter and full-time lurker, can’t speak for anyone else here but I think what you’re doing is the right thing: Maintaining and informing (and entertaining) a community, making tweaks/updates to keep things interesting.
v/r
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: I don’t disagree; the 2016 convention shit-show was inexcusable. I was as angry about it at the time as anyone else, and I am convinced it contributed to Trump’s win. But that was five years ago! Sometimes it feels like attitudes hardened around that primary schism, then carried over into 2020. And now it’s continuing in 2021 in a way that I personally find pointless and counterproductive and potentially as harmful to our prospects as a party as the antics of the ninnies at the 2016 DNC.
Omnes Omnibus
@xjmuellerlurks: It very obvious that different minds work in different ways. I have little difficulty following the various discussions that go on in most threads. I even find it entertaining to cross the streams once in a while. OTOH, I think I have a higher tolerance for disorder and ambiguity than many people do. Having every discussion segregated into separate, neat sub-threads and then sub-sub-threads makes me lose track of everything else that is going on and what if that discussion over there is more interesting than this one oh no it isn’t where was I? No, thank you. My brain likes to jump around and this format lets it.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: The combination of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders became far too much of a dividing line. It sucked. Really bad. There became no room for discussion about their agendas, it devolved into being on one of their teams. The position that they were both deeply flawed candidates who each had some strengths and weaknesses in their agendas…. no room for that. It was idiotic. It is still idiotic, as we need all of those voters if we ever want to win anything ever again.
Nukular Biskits
@Nukular Biskits:
All, I apologize for the failed blockquoting.
cope
@Tony Jay: Glad I was able to have my say, thanks for understanding.
different-church-lady
Brooks:
See if you can spot the asymmetry. I’ve helpfully put it in bold, just in case you’re David Brooks and too stupid to see it in your own writing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Trump’s election changed some people at a very fundamental level. A number of those people see Sanders and his supporters actions as a key to what happened. They will not forgive and forget soon. They are akin to the Jewish people who would not buy German cars well into the 1990s. I don’t necessarily share their vehemence but I can understand where they are coming from. I still liked my GTI.
FelonyGovt
I love this place and read here daily, even if I don’t comment all that often. I started in 2016, ironically drawn here because I had a lot of Sanders-supporting friends and acquaintances who were absolutely vicious about my preference for Hillary Clinton. This place was a life saver during the entire Trump disaster. I think now that we don’t have that common existential daily terror, maybe some people have gone off to other things.
I really like the personalities and the mix of subjects here. I have tried reading LGM and other political blogs but I don’t stick with them.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: There are lots of people who can’t tell who the real enemy is. Normally, that’s fine, but again….. progressives are important to the Democratic coalition. We only win things narrowly these days. We need to keep the whole team together if we intend to maintain or expand power. Forget about Sanders, who cares about his ass? Some of the commentariat here got pretty dismissive, and I think that was a big mistake. I think it narrowed the range of the blog and contributed to a fairly crappy dynamic.
WaterGirl
@Nukular Biskits: I did a little bit of cleanup for you.
stinger
@arrieve:
What a great way to put it! I can go for weeks without watching TV news, except for local weather, because I know if it’s important, I’ll read about it on Balloon Juice and without the right-wing framing. (I used to look to Steve Benen for that, but after he moved to MSNBC, he’d post on things that I’d already read about here one or two days prior.)
Jess
I’ve been coming here and occasionally commenting since 2005, back when Cole was still a Republican. I liked the diversity of viewpoints. I’ve been returning less frequently and commenting more rarely because it has gotten a bit too cliquey for me, and people have been too quick to flame and attack even the most moderate dissenting views. I don’t think it’s the fault of the blog; it seems clear that this is just the political climate of the times.
One change that would make a positive difference for me was if there were “like” buttons and the option to see nested replies. I think TPM is set up that way. It’s easier to have an actual convo, and it’s nice knowing people read and appreciated your input even if they didn’t reply.
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
Thanks!
Elizabelle
I am grateful to Balloon Juice for:
(1). unthreaded comments. I love skimming through, and pick up so much information I was not even looking for that way.
(2). the excellent links commenters and frontpagers put up. I come here because there are a lot of people, way smarter than me, in numerous and sometimes esoteric fields, and I love hearing what they have to say. I save a lot of links. Commenters: please indicate source of the link, especially if it’s from a publication that is paywalled. Hovering over the link sometimes brings up the source info, but not when the link is truncated or it’s from youtube. I hate blind links.
(3). I love the pie filter. Love, love, love it. Try not to deploy it too much, but life is too short for trolls and bad faith commenters. Also to cut down on sheer negativity. (The toggle feature is really helpful in giving the “pied” a second chance.) I really like Avalune’s wonderful cupcake drawings.
(4). Now: for a suggestion (and there have been a lot of good ones upthread): this blog sometimes suffers from neglect during the mid-day hours. If there has been no fresh post for, say, four hours, could a front pager put up an open thread? I read the blog on my laptop, and really feel for those trying to follow some of the majorly long threads on a phone or pad. It must be about impossible, and take forever to load. Never mind trying to participate.
(5). I don’t think this blog can be or should be everything to everybody.
(6). For those struggling to follow topics through long threads: maybe use a search term and the “find” function to scan for what interests you? I also scan long threads for favorite commenters, and people likely to have interesting ideas to share.
Now to catch up on the other comments upthread.
Thank you to John for creating this blog, and being wise enough to realize you could not (or might not want to) carry it alone. That has kept the blog alive. It has felt a bit stale in recent months; will see if other commenters touched on that above.
Thank you to Anne Laurie for her phenomenal Covid posts — amazing job, and a real treasure of an archive for future research. We are lucky to have all our front pagers. (Another shout out to Ms. Cracker. I think we need an archive for Betty Crackerese too. Burn!)
I think you should “promote” another commenter or two to put up posts in the mid-day hours. If there is a dearth of posts because “the front pagers have lives”, that kind of tells you you might need to relieve the load, no?
May I nominate the Thin Black Duke? I like his common sense. For brevity, as well!
Kay’s really busy, but no complaints if someone guilts her into posting occasionally on Covid and its effect on schoolkids and communities. The view from a red state … reminds me why I will never live in one, given the choice. I love Kay’s observations.
John Cole
@Aimai: this was nice to read!
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I fully agree that we need everyone in the party going forward and complaints about AOC’s 95 % record of voting with the party is a dumb line of attack, but, at the same time, her decision to blame Democrats for the end of the eviction moratorium was counterproductive at best.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I would like to talk about, say, the eviction moratorium and how it was done, rather than AOC, you know? AOC is not the end-all-be-all of progressive politics, and talking about these things like we have to be on Team Aniston or Team Jolie is just…. dumb.
stinger
@La Nonna: I love seeing your comments!
Jess
@Elizabelle: I agree with so many of your points! I’m afraid I focused more on the negatives that have made me frequent less often, but you frame the positives very nicely. I especially love Betty Cracker as well.
I think things have slacked off recently b/c of disaster burnout. I’m taking a break from politics this summer to mourn all we’ve lost, which for me includes my beloved dog, who recently died at 12 of cancer. However, I would like to recommend to everybody to read Richard Rorty’s book “Achieving Our Country.” It’s written at the end of the 20th century, and it’s a wake-up call to the pro-democracy left to stop being nihilistic spectators, and get idealistic, hopeful and engaged again. Good stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: If you want to talk about it, then talk about it. I was just trying to differentiate between two types of criticisms of someone on the left edge of the party. One of which I think is reasonable and the other simply kneejerk dislike.
piratedan
@Jess: it’s that Fox News effect I fear, where before there could be nuance, room for discussion, maybe even compromise.
Our movement and “hardening” into the People’s Front of Judea and not the Judean’s People Front (splitters!) is a response to that change in our political landscape and the ever growing realization that the other side wants to be in charge so desperately that they’ll shit on any principle they previously held in order to not only attain it, but never relinquish it again.
Would I prefer the idea that nuance exists in our political discourse once again, certainly… Then again, the other side have devolved into being a bunch of hypocritical racist fascists who believe that you and I are elitists and would just as soon take our daughters to serve as their sex toys and put us into the fields so they can enjoy the success of a drive thru combo meal for less than 8 dollars and fuck everything else that needed to be done just to make that happen, tyvm.
so these are hard times to be inclusive to those who wish to tell our collective commentariat how to be about our business politically, you want to be positive, uplifting and it would be helpful show your work. I really believe that this place is special in that we’re trying to put regular folks like you and me in touch with people who do have those game plans, who will gratefully accept either our elbow grease and boots on the ground as readily as our cash.
So while, we can be insular as a community, I also humbly feel a small connection to trying to make a change for the better, which is something few other communities do.
Jess
@piratedan: Yes–the opportunities to take action are great! I avail myself of them regularly. Thanks for the reply!
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Thank you! Always have something a lurker or commenter can grab onto, an open thread or general topic. Along with the more narrowly focused blogposts.
And, re above the fold: Adam truly needs to put a lot of his stuff below the fold. It is just too much to scroll past on an iPhone. I think the world of Adam but — enough!
Also: we seem to amplify bad actor stuff a lot. I would love if we made an effort to amplify good reporting as well. (Jane Mayer has a big story in the New Yorker about those funding the Big Lie re the 2020 election.)
Especially from up and coming reporters and sites, that may not have a paywall. Thinking of Vice, and you have all had a lot of other good sites.
Get the important information out there, especially the reporting that is ahead of the pack. Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan and especially the vomitous Bobert and Greene of Georgia: enough. They probably love the attention. Deprive them of it. Inform briefly, but do not wallow.
Elizabelle
@Jess: My condolences on your pup. Agree with you about burnout, and taking a breath. We have survived a lot, and continue to do so. Have to marshall our strength.
We should do a book thread on the Rorty book.
I’ve sometimes thought we should do a “My Book Report” thread, in which the commenter summarizes the main points and pulls out especially good passages, for those who haven’t read the book, or don’t have the time (yet).
Fight back against the twittering of America!
zhena gogolia
@Nicole:
Great comment.
SFBayAreaGal
@MazeDancer:
“p.p.s And if you think BJ bashes Bernie, clearly you follow no Black Women on Twitter. Documented and justifiable white-hot Bernie hate. With which I completely agree”
I follow some black women on Facebook and Instagram. Same justifiable white-hot Bernie hate. Which I completely agree also.
JCNZ
“Are the commenting features in need of a complete overhaul?”
No – except for the absence of some sort of acknowledgement feature.
I know you hate the Zuckerbergian “like” with the heat of a thousand suns – but it’s just a way of letting people know they’re not alone in this world. Add an emoji or something, if “like”s are too FB.
Whatever, BJ is a great, great site.
SFBayAreaGal
@Ruckus: Beautifully said. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: I really like the idea of making sure that we promote good reporting (even if its bad news) but we also have to be on the lookout for those in the 4th estate who are shining examples of bad faith reporting and changing the headline to say something that the reporting isn’t.
I almost need a byline hall of shame, so when we can pretty much ignore whatever the hell it is that they’re bloviating about… and while we all know the prominent ones (Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, Chris Cilliza) we need to make sure that we keep tabs on those that continually misinform (a national pie filter) so we understand that when these people publish, we understand from the start that its very likely to be a misrepresentation or a case of them using terms out of context deliberately to mislead. We can do upkeep when we get three instances of bad faith, up on the roll they go.
JCNZ
@Jess:
“One change that would make a positive difference for me was if there were “like” buttons and the option to see nested replies. I think TPM is set up that way. It’s easier to have an actual convo, and it’s nice knowing people read and appreciated your input even if they didn’t reply.”
1000%!
zhena gogolia
@cope:
Fair enough. I guess I read it as a snipe at AL, who does such great work here.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I’m going to probably be a little outside the norm here, but I felt Cheryl’s final post to be a bit hostile. I would have liked to thank her for her work here, which I have learned a lot from, but I didn’t like the tone of her farewell. YMMV as they say.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Hahaha
Elizabelle
@piratedan: All for the byline hall of shame. So many bad faith reporters and columnists out there. Clickbait crap.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it was a mistake to give the money to the tenants and not directly to landlords. That said, I think lifting the moratorium before the pandemic is solidly behind us was a big mistake.
I am reading that many small landlords are going to sell now, because they spent so long not collecting any rent, which probably is going to fuck with the housing market even further for a while. I would like to see data on this.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
I am actually rather far left, as US politics go and yet I am very pragmatic about change because I realize that I am one view point, among millions. I think a lot of us here fall under that general description. A lot of the vocal far left seems to want to burn it all down and start over, which seems to me to be just as destructive as the far right, which seems to want all of the left in front of a firing squad. I also believe that a lot of people fall into the squishy middle, and think that the far left and the far right are lunatics. And I’m not sure that they aren’t right.
zhena gogolia
@glory b:
I love your comments.
Elizabelle
May I remind us all that today is the day that — I hope — the execrable Nina Turner gets pantsed in Ohio. To see.
zhena gogolia
@Tony Jay:
You are fabulous!
Baud
@zhena gogolia: I read it as terse, which I think reflects her personality. But who knows?
@Elizabelle: Oh, I didn’t realize that was today. At least it’ll be over, although how ever it comes out, it’s sure to make some group of people unhappy.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2:
Exactly.
Scout211
Late to this thread, but I wanted to say I really enjoy these kinds of threads every once in a while. It’s so nice to hear from so many lurkers that rarely post, but feel connected to Balloon Juice just as much as the regular and frequent commenters. :waves to all the lurkers:
Like many posters in this thread, I started out many years ago reading (way too) many political blogs because they were so new and shiny and we didn’t have to rely on the nightly news to tell us what was happening in Washington. But now I read only a handful and only this blog every day.
I like the format, I like the visuals, I like the front pagers. Please, keep things the way they are. I don’t even understand how to use threaded comments and they are very confusing to me.
The only thing I wish BJ would do better is adding links to comments. Lately, there have been many “I just read” and “I heard” and “All I have ever read” and then the statement. I tend to look that stuff up (especially during the past year of the pandemic) and occasionally discover that what the commenter posted wasn’t actually an accurate memory of what they had read.
Opinions, obviously, are fine and don’t need links. But a few more clicks and adding the link to facts, events and the information being discussed might help the commenting section. That used to be standard a few years ago here, but I think we have lost a little bit of that. Or maybe during TFG’s reign of terror, facts and events and information was a fluid concept from his administration. Who knows.
Otherwise, thank you to all who write, contribute and comment. This place is fine the way it is.
Nora Lenderbee
@stinger:
You said it for me, too.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
My husband still won’t buy a German car. And he’s not Jewish.
4D*hiker
Since you are specifically asking for input from your readers today, my impression of the commenting section is that it’s like walking into a huge room where people comment one by one with little interaction between them (albeit interesting people with interesting comments). It’s no wonder, however, that some folks think that it has all been said by the time the comments reach 50 or more. What’s missing are the lively dynamics of true back and forth discussion BETWEEN folks, as seen in nested or threaded convos. Yes, the dynamics can get messy and irritating in that format, but they are rarely boring. And if you don’t like the thread, you can skip over it.
With that said, thanks for all you do, John Cole and your fellow posters.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I had to laugh at the insular comment because that’s what LGM has always seemed to me. I do read it regularly but have never had an inclination to join because it’s a place that I don’t think I would fit into, like I do here. Threaded comments suck, I like the layout of a single thread. Threaded comments make me feel like I keep leaving the main conversation. LGF’s comment system is pretty good too. I’ve been hanging out here since late 2005 and while the place has changed over the years, it’s still the place that John runs and it has that very feel to it. It’s like a guy wandering down the road to his life and the people that he comes across in his ventures, all in one place.
Can’t fix it if it ain’t broke… :)
Tony Jay
@zhena gogolia:
I know! Isn’t it great? I can also tap-dance and braid the tails of shy zebras.
I wish my therapist understood this. :-)
RoonieRoo
I still read here everyday but rarely comment. The commentariat has gotten more insular than it was back in the Shiavo days but that isn’t specifically a bad thing. I think it’s just the natural evolution of groups of people. I don’t comment very often because by the time I read the post the conversation has nothing to do with the post and is more of the “inside group conversation”.
Ohio Mom
I was off-line until half an hour ago (busy in my alter-ego as Ohio Son’s caseworker) and skimming 254 comments takes time. But here I am with my contribution to this important discussion.
I don’t know the answer to this question, Is LGM having a soul-searching thread like we are here? I’d bet against it.
Someone up thread said it better than I will, in different words: LGM does not value kindness. They are into sounding smart. Some of them ARE smart and extremely well-read but not all of them. And they can be way too Eyore-like for me. Josh Marshall once wrote about choosing an ethic of optimism and that rang so true to me.
What I value about BJ is that we are a decent people. Yes, sometimes we are cliquey and not welcoming enough to newbies (we do need to watch that).
But generally, we treat one another how we would like to be treated. Even the cliqueyness is mostly affectionate banter, not directed at snubbing others as much as reinforcing our bonds.
We value (I hate this word but what could I use instead?) diversity. I know everyone at LGM is not a white, academic male but it sure reads that way. Not here, and that is because of decisions Cole made early on and stuck to.
I used to lurk a lot at LGM but dropped away. For some reasons that are trivial and idiosyncratic: I hate reading big blocks of italics and I am firmly in the hate nesting comments camp. Maybe there is a secret to using them? How do you come back to a discussion after a time away (real life intervenes) and find where you left off? How do you find new comments in separate nests?
I didn’t mean for this comment to turn into “what I don’t like about LGM.” It is really using LGM as a foil for what I value most about BJ. As I said yesterday, we are a community, they are a blog.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Sometimes she’ll post a fairly complex, technical essay or set of references in the middle of the day, and then when commenters betray the fact that they haven’t read every single word of whatever she posted, she gets offended. (I’m usually lurking in those threads because I can’t take the time out in the middle of most days to do the homework.) It has always seemed a little ungracious and unrealistic to me, and I wonder if that’s why she left.
RoonieRoo
Oh and I love that BJ doesn’t have threaded comments. I personally find it much easier to know where the conversation is here. Hate threaded comments with a white hot fire.
Ben Cisco
Love the blog. Don’t get to comment (or even read) as much as I used to; real life intervened in a good but very time-consuming way (today I not only got to take a lunch but was actually able to sit still for it and check the blog); I will always be grateful for the support of this community.
I do miss the music threads – can always count on Steep to make it interesting.
Heading here from the (ORIGINAL!) Great Orange Satan was one of my better decisions.
Back to work!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
If so, I’m not sure how much better LGM will be for her.
Tony Jay
I did like that idea in an earlier Gazing Into The Navel thread of a ‘Lurker’s Lounge’ weekly post where veteran Jackals were expected to be friendly, welcoming and mostly silent, giving the beautiful wallflowers time and space to blossom in the gentle moonlight.
There are, after all, more of them than there are of us, and I for one would like to hear from them.
Fair Economist
Given that some people hate threaded comments and some hate unthreaded, it is super reasonable to have one of the top liberal blogs threaded and one unthreaded. In that respect, we should stay with the status quo, although I’d be fine with a user option.
Major Major Major Major
@Not worth the bother:
lmao. ok.
Weird! I said the same things and didn’t get banned. Wonder if the problem was your sparkling wit.
Ohio Mom
@germy:
LOL — I think Loomis does a bit more than skim Wikipedia, he has a huge store of historical knowledge to draw upon. But sometimes those posts of his do read like Wikipedia. I’ve often thought he needs an editor.
Omnes Omnibus:
Also LOL. A highschool classmate came home from college one summer with her new Volkswagen Bug and her father (a big macher in his synagogue) went apoplectic. It was the talk of the neighborhood for weeks (this was in the mid 1970s).
cleek
@Not worth the bother:
that dissonance is lovely
raven
@Baud: It made me happy,
Elizabelle
@cleek: A cleek sighting. Yea!
cleek
@Elizabelle:
[not so loud, you’ll scare him away]
Major Major Major Major
@John Cole:
I can be a liberal with neoliberal characteristics sometimes, or so I’m told.
Geminid
The “Bernie wars” question interests me, but I will probably put in my two cents another time. I have a hunch the topic will come up again.
Speaking more generally, I am a relative newcomer to this forum and I take it as I find it. But I like what I find.
cope
@zhena gogolia: Yes, thanks for reconsidering. AL does an incredible amount of work for this place and I certainly appreciate all she does. In fact, if I can aggregate my effluent, I have a new Garden Chat set of pics to send her.
SFBayAreaGal
I forgot to add thank you John, thank you Annie, thank you Betty, thank you Schrodingers Cat, thank you David, thank you Tom, thank you Adam, thank you Mistermix, thank you Tamara, thank you Watergirl and thank you to all the other front pagers I missed.
I also thank all the commentators. I love this community and I hope it will continue another 20 years or more.
Elizabelle
@cleek: That occurred to me right after I posted. Oh no.
Why some of us are substandard birders and photographers …
It has been like greatest hits day, though. Tells us people care to check in, which is cool.
raven
@SFBayAreaGal:
Schrodingers Cat is really cool but she’s not a front pager.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne: I value your insightful comments on the blog, but I think you might be missing the point wrt sc’s comments. Immigrants and POC were much more at risk and affected by TFG’s election, hence the greater animus against Bernie. Justifiably, IMO, since his scorched earth campaign against HRC contributed to her loss. He’s a mixed bag: huge gun supporter, lousy record on immigration, tone-deaf on racism and misogyny (I’m being kind in my phrasing here), AND offers some useful economic policy proposals. I’d love to see discussions of the policy proposals and move on from the ad hominem conversations that can’t really help us move forward. :)
Betty Cracker
@Nukular Biskits: OMG, that picture of my sweet Daisy in your second link! She’s a very frail old lady now, and every morning when I wake up, I half expect her to not wake up. So seeing her in her prime — all pissed off about a bath and with colors other than white on her head — just makes me smile and tear up at the same time. Thank you.
Major Major Major Major
I do think we need to be more like, open to new ideas and people. If a long-time commenter shows up saying something slightly unorthodox, newcomers who don’t recognize them can jump down their throats calling them a troll etc.
stinger
@Nora Lenderbee: Thank you!
cleek
@Elizabelle:
yep. lots of us lurkers out there.
after i dropped LGM from my list, that left just BJ and Obsidian Wings (which hasn’t been much of a political news kind of blog for many years). and i don’t comment here much since i find it hard to keep up with conversations.
good to see pie is still a thing. :)
NotMax
Huh, whuzzat? There’s comments here?
Why did no one tell me?
Poe Larity
Cleek is what Balloon-Juice needs, updated daily.
Betty Cracker
@Aimai: Hope all is going well with you! We do miss you around here. :)
John Revolta
Well it’s late and the thread is old but this is central to my point…………….I come by here to read every day but I don’t comment as much as I did because of the difficulty keeping up with the nonthreaded comments. Once I make a comment it’s basically history after 20 minutes and good luck ever finding a late reply. I love the jackaltariat and the range of subjects (okay, I skip the gardening stuff) but threaded comments work better for keeping a convo going. Just my 2 pfennigs.
Elizabelle
@O. Felix Culpa: Well said.
stinger
@SFBayAreaGal: Cosign, or seconded, as they say across the pond.
kmax
I mostly lurk, as stated before.
I came here about 2006.. used to read many blogs. Enjoyed this place and the commenters are ultimately what kept me here full time. Now I rarely go elsewhere. I try to read all the comments, which is why I rarely comment. I am always a week behind.
This format works for me. Keeping track of multiple conversations in the comment thread is fun for me. And if I forget context I can always follow the replies in reverse.
Many have said it. This is a community. It is home for me.
Thanks JC, you have a good place here.
Oh one other thing.. we have mentioned the many stellar front-pagers. I want to put in a word for that Mayhew guy. Talk about information density.
mvr
@Starfish:
I resonate with that. Sometimes I wish there was just the equivalent of a like button so that I could put in my positive two cents worth of agreement without feeling like I need to check back in case anyone replies, since usually they don’t but I don’t want to be rude.
Suzanne
@O. Felix Culpa:
I get her point. But I think this is memory-holing a lot of the fairly histrionic tenor here around that time. For example, if someone said something anodyne like, “I like Sanders’ position on free college,” that person was attacked for being a sexist “Berniebro”, blamed for HRC’s middling performance, and accused of having privilege, because apparently being concerned about the cost of higher education — not even exclusively concerned! — meant that commenter was some white trust-fund-revolutionary brogressive troll shill. It was bullshit then and it’s still bullshit. I get that tensions were high around that time, and they still are, but there was a fair amount of bad faith around then and it almost certainly narrowed the readership here a bit. This commentariat here probably skews older, which is okay, but it should not be a surprise.
Hopefully now we can all breathe enough to regain some perspective.
cleek
@Poe Larity:
y’all would be sick of me in no time.
i’m deep into my “You’re Stupid And This Is Stupid And Why Is Everything So Stupid?” phase of life. :)
J R in WV
@JPL
Actually, if he actually laid hands on a state trooper, that’s assault of a LEO, and a real crime with jail time associated with it.
I do comment at LGM, not nearly as much as I do here, but still. I like the assortment of topics both places. Farley does international strategy like Silverman (Hi Adam!) does here, though from a different perspective. Other front pagers do their own thing, More music — we used to have a lot of music here in the wee hours from 1-5 am.
One big thing that needs fixed here, is the comment addition tool, which frequently won’t allow me to add a comment with the WYSIWYG tab, I’m required to use the Text (HTML code) tab, which is annoying as all get out, and I know HTML. This very comment I had to use the TEXT Tab!!
The other functional error is the back arrow. If I remember to click on a comment’s date/time stamp, I can mostly be assured I can return to it with the back arrow. Otherwise, not so much. Has never been consistently operational, particularly if I have clicked on lots of comment links, which is how on Balloon-Juice a commenter can follow a group of comments.
IF THE FUQING BACK ARROW WORKED, BJ would be far easier to follow a conversation than LGM is. But the back arrow is 80%+ broken. At least.
Otherwise, I love B-J over all other blogs. I did see an interesting list of blogs in a previous comment, even DKos (which is how I found B-J years and years ago. Many of the others I have visited, but don’t have on my front page links.
And No offense to WaterGirl who is not the site developer. The coders haven’t earned their payday at all.
I’m done for now, but I’ll be back !!!
Pamoya
I mostly lurk both here and at LGM, and have read both sites on a regular basis for as long as I can remember. I think the commenting communities are quite different, which is good. Variety is good! There is more of a friendly/hangout vibe here, and more of a debate/discussion vibe there. No reason to change things up here, imo.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cleek:
Ahh, that’s you over there on that bench! Hi! ;)
Elizabelle
@Kay:
If we don’t have a thread about the Ohio Shontel Brown – Nina Turner primary results tonight, I shall be rioting.
And bring up Tim Ryan then.
To your larger point: yeah, people can be pinheads here. I think one can bring up “incendiary” topics, but care must be taken with how they are framed.
It helps a lot, to be able to defend/explain one’s points, or to re-examine them.
J R in WV
@Old School:
I have never seen LGM host a fundraiser for a member of their community or a political group. That happens pretty often here.
This comment, I have the VIsual Tab available, YAY! So unpredictable!
cleek
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
hey!
karen marie
I love BJ. It’s the only blog I still visit at least once a day (since ~2004), typically checking in two or three times to see what’s up. It’s a lovely community of peeps, for which I credit our Blogfather John Cole.
Please don’t mess with the commenting system, despite its occasional farts. I love Wonkette but their commenting (not allowed anyway) is totes fucked up in that when you go to a different article than where you started, you’re still stuck in the first article’s comment thread. Somehow I am never able to log in to LGM except very, very rarely. But BJ is more homey and friendly anyway, so it’s not something I think about much.
Thank you, John Cole and all the front pagers – past, present and future – for taking time out of your lives to entertain, educate, inspire, and give us a laugh. I appreciate and value you all.
And thank you fellow BJers for your willingness to speak up, argue,mock and laugh.
Special thanks to Water Tiger for the spectacular job you do wrangling comments that go poof.
PS I will miss your posts, Cheryl, but can find your work through twitter. Thank you for everything!
Betsy
For me, “classic” Balloon Juice at its most delectable was when the right-wing crapfan was just hitting all over the wall around 2007 and there, and I came here for the incredibly f’in insightful shade and analysis of right-wing idiocy. La Palin, and Darth Cheny, and the incredible trajectory of Barack H. Obama were all chronicle and dissected with fresh takes and indignant in the best way. I still come here for that vibe. It was fresh and hot and “look what they’re gone and done now and let’s laugh and also plan our attack.” The pets are fun but they are best as an adjunct and sprinkling of relief to the fresh, hot serves.
O. Felix Culpa
I came to BJ from Rumproast, although I might have also connected here via Andrew Sullivan’s [spit] old blog. I liked the combination of informed, good writing on politics and (mostly) informed, (sometimes) funny comments. The community has changed over the years: some people died, some moved on to other blogs, others just left. As others have noted, the word community fits. Sometimes it feels like siblings who squabble, but then rally together when someone is in need. There’s ebb and flow in community and that’s ok.
I find it also helpful to acknowledge that we’re in a difficult transition period, recovering–sort of–from TFG trauma, appreciating the good work done by the Biden administration and other Dems, and anxious about GQP vote-meddling and the upcoming elections. It’s hard living in a liminal space and the stress sometimes affects tolerance levels and how people respond to one another.
Oh, and I prefer the BJ comment system. I’ve read LGM for years, but pretty much only the posts. Maybe OO and I share a comment chaos disorder. :)
J R in WV
@raven:
I didn’t know that. She isn’t a DR, though and never claimed to be one. Just vastly experienced in her field of radioactive chemistry and atomic diplomatic stuff. Plus a great back yard with pix of big cats and a bear!
This comment, I’m stuck with the TEXT Tab… go figure!
NotMax
As for threaded comments being the Devil’s work, the buck stops well beyond him/her. Even the Devil has some standards and arrived at the conclusion that threaded comments are just too atrocious, flagitious a scourge to inflict on humankind. IMHO.
Mary G
Late to the thread as usual, but I haz opinions and must spew them.
I love Balloon Juice the way it is. Threaded comments have confused and bored me the few times I ever read them. They seem to often turn into “You’re wrong,” “No, YOU’RE WRONG” repeated over and over again and there is a lot of trolling and spamming, at least in the few places I’ve looked. Also, new threads start that repeat the same shit in other threads because the people in a thread are only participating in that thread.
I could well be wrong about everything.
I miss people who disappear without explanation, but isn’t that real life? Cheryl’s leaving doesn’t upset me or make me feel something’s wrong with the blog, but I follow her on twitter and will get notices of her posts at LGM so there’s no real change to me.
The anger level is up; no shit, Sherlock. Between climate change, TFG/Republicans, and the pandemic I have usually been see-sawing between white hot rage and OMG we are all going to die tomorrow despair for better than half a decade now. I have deleted more comments and tweets than I publish for years now and feel like I need to skim over some problematic emotional from everyone else all the time.
I am deeply opposed to like buttons. I’ve seen people on Twitter who start out interesting and informative and then get hooked on followers and likes and start spewing click bait and extraneous exclamation points and emojis and I have to cut them off. It’s human nature.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne:
I’m good with that. :) I don’t remember those conversations quite the same way as you, but maybe my memory is to blame. I also think it’s important to reflect on the lasting damage done to POC and immigrants by TFG–the trauma and deaths aren’t undone just because he is now an ex-officeholder. They don’t need anyone’s permission and most certainly not mine, but they’re allowed to feel what they feel about the impact on their lives and communities and who they hold responsible for it.
HeleninEire
@Poe Larity:
Underrated comment!
sab
@geg6: I agree with every word of your comment.
Plus I hate threaded comments. I do read most comments, and I like the way they meander through various subjects.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: I usually get the text tab only when I first arrive at a thread, where it’s a problem is I won’t notice until I’m half way through the thread and have a reply. Hit the reply button and just the text tab, click the refresh text and end up gawd knows where. Find the original comment and reply, pain.
Major Major Major Major
Here’s a very insane idea. I could write a thing that visualizes a comment thread as a branching tree. Not actually terribly difficult, the tricky bit would be making it so you can comment in the same UI…
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne:
If you are accusing me of calling a random commenter a troll because they were concerned about the cost of college education I would like to see proof.
And your comments after I tried to engage with you in good faith show that you don’t get it. At all.
sab
@satby: I think in TFG years a number of people (not me) really felt the need for respite threads just for sanity’s sake. I have always been happy with a respite thread runing parallel to a political thread.
Zelma
Very, very late to this but I want to express my love – literally love – for Balloon Juice. I don’t comment much but I visit at least twice a day and sometimes more. I’ve been here since 2007 and what I appreciate most is the sense of community. Re where BJ stands politically, I think we are ideologically liberal but basically pragmatic. We support any Democrat who we think can win because he/she is bound to be better than any Republican. And we put our money where our mouth is.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
My grandmother refused to even visit Germany whenever they traveled to Europe.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I am agreeing with the both of you !!
I just want the commenting system to work as intended, with a back button to help to follow the history of comments, and a Visual and Text function that both work for those who want one or the other.
karen marie
@HeleninEire: When you’re in Boston, do please go visit one of my all-time fav restaurants – India Quality, in Kenmore Square. Great for a post-Museum of Fine Arts ramble or for a post lunch/dinner stroll through the Fenway Victory Garden (only victory garden in contiguous US in constant use since WWII).
raven
@debbie: I’ll never forget when my old man popped the hood on his Dodge Colt and found out it was a Mitsubishi! “Those bastards were trying to kill me”!!!!
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Many of us have been around for a long, long time and when people hang around something for a long time they can get overprotective.
I think we have to remember that this is a blog, not a private club.
It’s open to anyone on the internet, which is a great strength and can be a liability. We have to remember the first half of this and avoid the second.
The shear number of people who have been following for a very long time and rarely comment tells me that it’s likely that some can/will be too catty (that’s not about the animals – it’s about the attitude some of those animals have) and we all have to watch for that. This concept of world wide commenting, wide open possibilities, and real human emotions/responses likely won’t always line up reasonably. The concept of this is new, in the vein of history, this concept is only seconds old. We all need to use it as a learning experience and learn to do it better, be a bit more tolerant.
Another Scott
Speaking of excellent voices we’re missing, …
(via darth)
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: I pie you during hot election seasons because you often hate my favorite, but otherwise your comments are a big reason I always try to read all comments to all threads. ( I love the pie toggle button so I can cheat and peek.)
sab
@Suzanne: I felt that way too, because locally I have met some lovely Bernie people who were really great in the general election, but on the other hand schrodinger’s cat has a valid point.
Ohio Mom
@John Revolta:
Many of us read old/dead threads. Just because we do not comment on your comment does not mean we did not consider your thoughts.
But maybe you can help me with this? I mentioned this upthread. On LGM, if there is a nest in the comment thread I would like to go back to, how do I find it?
Here, I can “find on page” a keyword or the commentator’s name to follow up. At LGM, do I have to scroll down and open every set of comments to follow-up? Too easy to lose my place.
Maybe nested comments are like Cilantro, you either like it or don’t and there isn’t a half-way point.
Tony Jay
@cleek:
In my culture we call that “Paying attention and questioning the bill”.
O. Felix Culpa
@Another Scott: Oh, I miss ABL. A lot.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I have nothing against Ds who favored BS during the primaries but worked hard to get HRC elected in 2016 and Biden in 2020. There are a few of them in my local Dem committee too.
karen marie
@Technocrat: Whaaaaaat?
Poe Larity
If the comments were threaded I’d feel guilty about not reading through and remaining on topic.
As it is, I don’t have to pay attention to what anyone else says and can assume everyone is stupid like cleek says.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: If that is the case, I must be wrong.
swiftfox
Another point – even in mid-summer, you can’t go 6 hours between posts during the day. The last post was at 11:33 am.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fixt. ;) And have I mentioned your impressive self-awareness?
Omnes Omnibus
@O. Felix Culpa: I am never wrong.
sab
@Low Key Swagger: I pie people, but I do think it is very rude to tell them (except I did tell schrodinger’s cat because I otherwise like her so much when we aren’t in frothing campaign mode.)
sab
@La Nonna: You have been lurking! I remember being really worried about you at least a year ago.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@O. Felix Culpa: Omnes learned it from Baud.
Madeleine
When I read the first batch of messages earlier today, I became worried that this could become a long handwringing self study. But when I returned in the afternoon, and read backward from #272 I found comments from so many people, some I’d never seen , some I hadn’t seen in a long time, some rare commenters, as well as people who are daily commenters. And the comments struck a happy balance of what doesn’t work for someone, what might change (sometimes with a thought about how) , AND ALSO what the commenter likes, appreciates, depends on, cares about, has come here for over years and years. In the end—which I haven’t reached yet—the very opposite of insular in breadth of interests and in the diversity of both front pagers and commentariat. What a great day!
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I learned nothing from Baud. That is Baud’s one redeeming feature.
Suzanne
@sab: I voted for BS in the primary in 2016 because I decided to vote for whomever was behind in the polls in my state at the time. I felt really torn about it…. I thought HRC was certainly more prepared, but I also wanted to put support behind the Democratic soshulist agenda.
@schrodingers_cat: No, I’m not saying you did that. My comments are not about you. In fact, that has been my entire freaking point: what should have been reasonable discussion turned into stupid personal attacks because everyone hated “Wilmer” so much. Mr. Suzanne, in fact, who introduced me to this blog and is a longtime lurker, told me he gave up reading here for a long time because he felt, quite frankly, that it became hostile to progressives. I will note that he has dedicated his career to the education of mostly low-income and immigrant children. I will also note that he and I spent many days of our free time canvassing our swing state, in over 100-degree temperatures, for HRC once she won the primary.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: I’m not John, but I’ll throw my $0.02 in.
Disqus is a bad implementation of threading, etc. It has some nice features (one can instantly see when one’s logged any responses from any Disqus site anywhere), but it’s bad for large threaded comment strings.
Sensible threaded systems keep track of what you’ve already seen (via “mark read” or similar, and time stamps). So, if there’s nothing new in a subthread that you’ve already seen, it isn’t expanded (though you can expand it yourself if you want to). So, if someone responds to a comment you made after you marked the thread read, it would instantly see it when you return.
Computers are really, really good at this stuff. We shouldn’t need to think about what we’ve already seen or haven’t. The software should do it for us and show us the new stuff. The software should be flexible enough so that people can display things however they want (especially with CSS – if I want a blue background and Comic Sans fonts, nobody else should care because they won’t see it.)
I don’t know what web / WordPress / blogging / comment software does this right, if any. All software has compromises. JC has good reasons for not using Disqus that he’s relayed in previous threads over the years. I know the web is different from USENET, USENET was text, etc., etc., but it’s frustrating to some of us old geezers to see the software world reinvent itself every 5-10-20 years and completely forget what was figured out and worked well before. (sigh)
Just my $0.02. HTH a little!
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who was a great fan of Yarn.”)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Cleveland had a (real) neoliberal “reorganization” that was funded by a billionaire and Nina Turner backed it. Okay, that was the first Nina Turner- there were three. There was the Right leaning Democrat, then the mainstream Democrat who ran for statewide office and was completely accepted and welcomed in the Democratic Party, then the current version.
But if all you hear is “Nina Turner!? OMG, Berniecrat!” then none of this is discussed. Now maybe it doesn’t matter, but that’s what’s going on in Ohio with Nina Turner. It’s complicated.
I think what is actually happening matters and if it all gets mushed into this huge narrative a lot is lost, and frankly the part that interests me is lost- the weird twists and turns of it, how people don’t actually fit into these neat categories.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus:
A role model for us all!
Cephalus Max
@Baud: I am delurking to endorse this. The sociology of the medium is almost entirely unrecognizable from those days.
Of course since we are all pied you’ll never see my appreciation.
GregMulka
I didn’t realize there were comments on LGM. I typically don’t make it past the share buttons at the bottom of the posts.
I’ve never not felt welcome on this site and I think I’m a relative latecomer. I’ve always found most of the posts informative and I got my cats here. One of them is laying on my chest as I type this. Fiona has enjoyed me working from home.
I try not to chime in just to chime in. I think there’s a healthy amount of that amongst the people who do comment.
Also never noticed a particular bias against me as an elder millennial.
raven
@Suzanne: I hate that “Wilmer” bullshit.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: What time are election results expected to start coming in?
Suzanne
@raven: I still don’t know where the Wilmer nickname came from.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregMulka: We will try harder in the future. ;)
NotMax
@Suzanne
Bargain bin at Nicknames R Us.
:)
raven
@Suzanne: Something to do with Baltimore?
Bobby Thomson
I miss ABL and justsomefuckhead
cleek
@Another Scott:
heh. i forgot about that stuff. ‘yarn’ has a much different meaning (to programmers) these days. https://yarnpkg.com/
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: JSF still shows up once in a while.
sab
@Suzanne: Landlords are selling because it is an insanely hot housing market. Both of my stepkids who rent just were or are about to be evicted because the landlord wants to cash in. Neither one was ever late on rent. My stepson’s girlfriend has been in that house for more than ten years. It’s her home. She planted a wonderful garden.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Bobby Thomson: Fuckhead stops by on occasion.
bonessy
I’ve been lurking since 2007 or so and this is my first comment. So what keeps this the first (and often the only) blog that I read daily? Partially it’s the variety of interesting and informative topics. Sometimes it’s the humor. Most importantly, it’s the humanity from John, the front pagers, & the commentators. I feel like I’m listening in to a conversation in a good British pub. I’ll talk to you again in 2035 :-)
O. Felix Culpa
@sab: My younger son and his girlfriend bought their condo several years back because they got tired of being turfed out of their apartment whenever the owner decided to sell.
sab
@Elizabelle: Don’t count on it. I am not in her district, but I can see her district from my front yard. It makes me ill that due to gerrymandering I do not have a vote in this election that will have such an impact on my city.
Major Major Major Major
@cleek: so much better than npm!
raven
@O. Felix Culpa: Or tenants (next door) always badger me to sell them the house but there is no way!
sab
@4D*hiker: And dead threads often are not dead. We revive dead threads in BJ at Night all the time. And people comment hours later a lot.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: 2016 was a defining moment just like the rise of Nazis was in the 20th century. Petain is not remembered for his leadership in WWI but for being a Nazi collaborator.
Suzanne
@sab: If they weren’t late on their rent, are they being genuinely evicted for cause or just not having their lease renewed?
Like I said, I want to see data here. Over half of landlords are small, owning four units or fewer, and they likely don’t have a big financial cushion. I would like to see some data on how many of them haven’t gotten their rents during this time period. I have seen lots of anecdotal reports of landlords saying that their tenants haven’t been paying, even if they received aid money or stayed employed. But anecdata is just that. If anyone can point me to data on this, I’d be grateful.
RoonieRoo
@Major Major Major Major: One of the few times I delurked several years ago and apparently wasn’t in the know on what was considered orthodox at the time meant I was denounced as being a Trump troll. Someone corrected them that I was the person who tells Cole his cat is fat, which is accurate description.
sab
@Ohio Mom: Well put.
Elizabelle
@sab:
That’s heartbreaking. Ten years, a garden, and landlord sticking to the 30 days notice. Which is deplorable, in this economy and market. Might be legal, but not necessarily ethical. Especially to a longterm tenant.
I am hearing of that happening a lot in my city, too. Plaintive inquiries on Nextdoor: anyone know of a rental? Because …
sab
@J R in WV: She got a fisherman commenter that raven liked banned. John Cole went along so there were probably good reasons.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: Blame Jim, Foolish Literalist.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: The eviction moratorium ending is about to be a big problem here.
Elizabelle
In addition to “Goodbye to Cheryl”, do we also have “Goodbye to Posting?”
Because it is evening Eastern time, and we never got a single afternoon thread. This and the Cuomo post that went up at 11:33 am. (Which has kind of been an Open Thread, too.)
sab
@Suzanne: Landlord is old, and the housing market is insanely hot. That’s all there is.
Poe Larity
@Another Scott:
How about a WordPress vt100 skin? Preferably in green. Orange for Omnes.
People complaining about formatting bugs would be told to buy a surplus DEC terminal.
Kay
They were really going for it. We need much stronger guardrails. One ot two different people or even one or two additional corrupt authoritarians and it would have crashed.
I think they’re emboldened by how far they got with no repercussions. Shit, I’d try it again if I were them. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Not one of these people has been held accountable in any way for any of this.
Both Rosen and Donoghue knew how bad it was and neither man did anything to alert the public that an attempted coup was underway. I think the lack of reporting by the people who were in these rooms while this was going on means they’re unfit. They simply don’t have the strength of character to hold these jobs. They grabbed the fire extinguisher but they didn’t tell the public their house was burning down. We should have been told. We had a right to know immediately.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: I believe that they’re keeping their collective powder dry for the zoom this afternoon, plus the OH primary returns….
and who knows, we may just T-Bogg this puppy because it has been an informative, if not cathartic, thread.
debbie
@Mary G:
It seems an easy way to indicate agreement without taking up valuable blog real estate to type up agreement with the post.
Elizabelle
@piratedan: I never mind T-Bogg. It reminds me of his wonderful bassets. I hope he still has a few in the house, underfoot. And this thread has been the return of old friends, in many instances.
Another Scott
@Poe Larity: Pull up a chair, masked and 6-feet away, and let me tell you a story….
Cheers,
Scott.
Cephalus Max
Ok, I said I was only delurking to respond to Baud, but I guess I’m feeling my oats, so here goes:
I’ve been a Balloon Juice reader since *very* early on. (I’m pretty sure I originally followed a link from that idiotic wingnut law prof at UTenn, if you can believe that. I’m thankful that he has faded into obscurity and I can’t even recall his name.)
I became a LGM reader not too long thereafter and been an equally devoted reader to them ever since. I’m quite sure that it was a link from here to there that turned me on to them.
I rarely comment at either site because I’m usually dropping in a day or so too late via RSS.
However, I LOVE the FPers and commentariat at both places. I’d characterize the Jackal commentariat and that at LGM as really quite similar: a bunch of clever people who like to shoot the shit with other clever people. Really the only differences to my mind are the (a) threading and (b) my conviction that the commenters at both sites are basically the same people, except here we’ve had a couple more drinks.
(Which amuses me slightly since Cole was my inspiration to quit alcohol shortly after he did. For which, THANK YOU, COLE.)
I do not *at all* get some of the LGM commenters’ complaints about people just shouting at each other here. They argue like family too. Some of their commenters even routinely go after one of their FPers.
And I’m a pet guy, so there’s that.
To echo JGC, I hope both BJ and LGM are still running when I shuffle off this mortal coil.
Gin & Tonic
@sab: I never got the impression she was responsible for that ban, but I may be mis-remembering. I wasn’t a fan of the guy, but by mutual consent we ignored each other. I’m not in favor of bans – heck, I wasn’t in favor of banning BiP.
debbie
@raven:
I know that feeling. When the transmission went out on my Mazda after 30,000 miles, the tech let me know it was a Ford transmission. Say no more!
Another Scott
@Suzanne: Apparently the moratorium has been extended today, in high-covid-transmission areas.
It’s something. Dunno if it will help enough people though.
The states need to get the money out. I don’t know what the holdup there is, either.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@sab:
I think I’m going to sell my house. My oldest son thinks I’m just freaking out because my last kid is leaving and he’s maybe right- but all of a sudden I’m like “I HAVE to get out of here!” :)
The only thing I’ll miss is my garden. I feel like I could sell it furnished, with books on the bookshelf. I’ll take some, but not all of my clothes. I have an entire giant tub of children’s mittens, hats and gloves. Did I think 20 children were going to show up?
Major Major Major Major
@RoonieRoo: hell, people question *my* loyalties and like, I’m probably not a troll guys.
HumboldtBlue
If you fuckers think I’m wading through 400-plus comments featuring the moaning and whinging from left-wing moaners and whingers you’re out of your goddamned minds.
Did anyone bring any fucking beer?
Baud
@Cephalus Max:
I’ve often been called a gateway commenter.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
Same here. Reality has a way of biting back if you ignore it. While I believe in primarying the fuck out of any district where the Dem primary winner is a shoo-in in the general, I think primary challenges in less solidly Dem districts are a terrible idea. And I realize that Manchin and Sinema need to be handled with care rather than excoriated if we’re gonna get anything done in this Congress.
But I see a lot of dissing of AOC over trivial stuff (what, she has a thin legislative record? what second-term Congressperson doesn’t?) or for no reason at all. Fuck that – she will vote the right way when it counts, so I have no problem with her.
And on the flip side, it would be nice if specific criticisms of Nancy Pelosi could be addressed with straightforward rebuttals, rather than being responded to as if I’d just taken a shit on the high altar. The Pelosi-worship around here is cranked up to 11, regardless of whether she’s doing great (this Congress) or not so great (the 2019-2020 Congress).
This is the point where I have to part ways. A lot of a minuscule fraction of the electorate, is what you’re talking about. Who represents the ‘burn it all down’ people in Congress? Nobody. That’s because there just aren’t that many of them, however loud they might be.
While the vocal far right basically has the Republican Party by the balls. We’re not talking about anything like the same thing.
I gather that many commentators here hang out in corners of the Web where the burn-it-all-down folks are well represented. I spend all too much of my time online, and I never run into that crowd, so I’m just not fighting that battle in my head all the time. I think that greatly distorts how they see the world.
Tony Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
Yeah, but it’s inside its fleshy receptacle.
See the little goblin…
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Unless I’m mistaken that isn’t the election today. The election today is the primary to replace Rep. Stivers who dropped out of Congress to run the Chamber of Commerce. There are 11 GQPers and 2 Democrats.
ETA: Dammit, never mind. I’m more interested in Stivers’s seat anyway.
Steeplejack (phone)
Well, I missed this thread completely. It’s huge! I hope you guys didn’t vote to change to threaded comments.
Nukular Biskits
@Betty Cracker:
I know exactly what you mean.
I think in that same timeframe, I’ve lost two or three furbabies.
:>(
sab
@Suzanne: They have been there so long they were on a month to month lease.
If you rent it is not actually your house. One of life’s tough lessons for the working class.
Stepson’s fiance lost her mother to breast cancer when she was sixteen. Her father is not dependable. She has been on her own and supporting herself since age sixteen, and still got through high school. She is amazing and she did not deserve this. Landlord lied to her, said they’d be selling properties but not her place. Then the realtor contacted them. And they have pets. Whole situation sucks.
NotMax
@Poe Larity
Or get their hands on a Wang.
:)
zhena gogolia
@O. Felix Culpa:
Well said.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Hahaha!
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott:
I miss her a lot.
sab
@Steeplejack (phone): Some did, some didn’t. I like the comments as is.
zhena gogolia
@sab:
Me too.
zhena gogolia
@Madeleine:
Yeah, this is an epic thread. I love it.
Suzanne
@sab: That sucks. I hope she finds somewhere to go soon.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
The commenting system here encourages an insular audience as demonstrated by this thread. No, you won’t grow your audience because your regulars are opposed to it. I love the posts but ita always the same commentors and they are not welcoming of others. It won’t stop me from reading the posts.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Yeah, but my brother sent me a video of Elisha Cook Jr so what else am I supposed to call him?
zhena gogolia
@raven:
It was the character played by Elisha Cook Jr in The Maltese Falcon. I could be wrong, but I think Mnemosyne coined it.
zhena gogolia
@bonessy:
Oh, don’t wait that long!
Suzanne
@Another Scott:
Cori Bush did a great job today.
Yeah, that money is not flowing in that program. This is part of why I think it should have gone straight to the landlords. I think it was probably really difficult for renters to navigate it, and it really was just making them the middleman, which causes even more delay. Just pay their damn rent for them.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue:
I’ve got a nice Chardonnay.
sab
@Kay: I want to sell my house. My husband’s back is so bad that stairs are a huge challenge. We want to give the house to stepson with the amazing fiancee, but buying a new house for cash in this market with 2% mortgages would be insane. People buy based on house payment, not on house price.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I wonder if they were concerned about being seen as “bailing out” landlords instead of renters.
Just Another Clown In The Circus
I’ll post this in the black hole that is the end of a thread, but for the record, I’ve been reading BJ for a very long time. The last time I posted (under a different name) was way, way back when you first got Rosie and were having problems with her. My post was a comment that you should put Rosie down, because some dogs are more trouble that they’re worth. Not many agreed with me, and obviously I was wrong, and I think about that wrongness whenever you post about the dogs. But anyway, my point is that I rarely read more than a couple of dozen comments because the lack of threading. It’s really headache-inducing. There is an interesting comment, followed by half-a-dozen unrelated comments, which forces me to read stuff I’m not interested in. And I visit here several times a day. Anyway, that’s a comment from a long-time-reader, never-commenter.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia:
Who?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: People were mad that mortgage bail out money went to banks not homeowners, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I was thinking the same thing, the optics would be horrible.
Elizabelle
@Baud:
Exactly. “Biden is bailing out the slumlords. And rentiers.”
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Elizabelle
Another problem is the investors, sometimes consortiums of them, snapping up all the houses they can. I think that really distorts the housing market.
Other MJS
Nobody comes here anymore; it’s too crowded.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: rental assistance should have been the program from the start—I assume the moratorium started because it was easier to implement. But like, at this point, especially after the scotus ruling, i have a really hard time with the government blocking by fiat some basic private property rights stuff such as having a say in who’s inside it. I’m almost as anti-landlord as they come but this is no way to do things. And what does it have to do with controlling COVID at this point, in a country with vaccines and without a lockdown?
dkinPa
Just wanted to say that I love Balloon Juice and the Front Pagers and the Commenters (most of you, anyway, LOL). It kept me sane during the four long years of the Orange Idiot. I make time every day to check out at least one or two blog posts, and even if I don’t have time to read anything else, it makes me feel that I am Keeping Up With Current Events. Good bye and good luck, Cheryl. Thank you, John!
sab
@Suzanne: We are all scrambling. Something should turn up. But she has us to help on first and last and deposit. Others don’t. And the garden is another problem. How to transplant all that stuff.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
The origin of “Wilmer” (Jim, Foolish Literalist, December 16, 2016).
My stock explainer.
raven
@J R in WV: Well I got raked over the fucking coals for not deferring to her as a Doctor but I see that you are right.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Suzanne:
As has been mentioned by others, I got sick and tired real fast every time somebody said something not positive about Bernie and then there would be a flood of drive by crap posts by leg-humping BernieBros. Bernie’s supporters quickly became insufferable because there was no way to rationally talk about Bernie without them crapping all over the discussion.
Besides that, the Bernie Wars are over and thank Dog for that!
HumboldtBlue
@zhena gogolia:
The party is on then!
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I miss her so much, even though her troll baiting was so annoying.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I think we needed to control Congress before rental assistance became possible. This new order at most buys the maybe a few days before a court strikes it down.
raven
@sab: Well, I did not comment on her announcement when she made it staying with my policy of just staying away from her but I figured there was no harm in noting that I wasn’t sorry that she left when this three came up.
O. Felix Culpa
@sab: LOL. I’d forgotten about her troll-feeding ways. That said, I miss Mnem too.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sab: One of her favorites showed up in this thread.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: yeah Congress really screwed up when they extended it instead or converting it into something that made sense. This is basically their fault.
Elizabelle
I always kind of thought Mnem would be back, even sporadically, by now. I miss her too.
Has anyone seen Subaru Diane lately? Thinking I might have to rustle up her cell phone number, if I still have it.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
Oh, you’re reminding me I haven’t. That is concerning.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Wasn’t she talking about taking a driving vacation sometime in the summer?
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
Keeping the filibuster really hurts out ability to enact emergency legislation now that the GOP feel completely unaccountable.
Raven
@raven: thread
Odie Hugh Manatee
@bonessy:
Shit, I’ll probably be worm food by then! Bummer deal, man… ;)
Ohio Mom
As long as we’re talking about MIAs, what about lamh? She finished her degree, got that new job, moved and…?
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: @debbie:
Subaru’s phone went straight to voicemail. Sent her a text and email as well. Will let you know what I hear.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Congress should spend their upcoming vacation fixing this instead of begging the president to issue short lived unconstitutional orders like they have been. At least cobble together a bill and pass it out of the house!
sab
@Kay: Me and my stuffed animals. I have three stepkids, and six cats and two dogs, but the stuffed animals are dear to me. Husband says because I never had actual kids. Who knows? Could be.
Elizabelle
@Ohio Mom: re lamh: She is well. Although not here much any more at all, hmmm? Am guessing it’s she is super busy, but maybe it’s more than that …
sab
@Ohio Mom: probably working her butt off in new job. She has checked in a couple of times.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
I think my comment stands. I was discussing commenters, not politicians and many of them at the time did seem to want to either get their way 100% or “burn it all down.”
We are a relatively young country, that in theory should be more than it is, than it’s history gives us. But this is humanity in action and not everyone agrees with the far left nor that life should be more fair. Many like their privilege over others and really, really do not want to be equal. We live in a country that I think should be closer to the democracy it claims to be, rather than what it is. FDR started us down that road and the conservative side of the aisle has been pushing back on that since this countries first day. But there is a process and over the last 150 yrs we have slowly been winning. That’s not fast enough for many, myself included. However as I said much earlier I am pragmatic, and I know that often change does not come easy nor fast, especially when dealing with large groups of humans, or beings trying to look human. I don’t want to have everything or nothing because I know that means nothing, every damn time. And that’s what a lot of Bernie fans certainly acted like, all or nothing, give me what I want or we burn it down. All of them? Not even close. But enough of them. Bernie would have made a horrible president. He has some good ideas but not everything in the noggin is good or doable. Would he be better than some others that have applied for the job? Yes, but that’s a low bar. This is a big country, with a lot of viewpoints, it takes tact and understanding to lead it reasonably. He has bluster and ideals, and that’s not enough.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m not opposed to that, but it’ll just sit in the Senate.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Schumer could have a vote. Anyway maybe I’m just a crank who doesn’t like knowingly unconstitutional actions
satby
@Steeplejack: Oh, and Schlemazel a few comments below. ?
Gvg
@raven: something to do with Casa Blanca. Which I can’t explain. I think I have seen the movie but wasn’t that impressed so I didn’t get it. As I understand from someone else’s recollection, someone suggested it for some not very logical reason, and it was accepted by the commenters present that night. The lack of connection to BS and the Wilber name actually made the idea of evading trolls work.
Steeplejack
@satby:
Another valued commenter gone. RIP.
Ohio Mom
Cephalus Max @401:
Congrats on so many years of sobriety, that’s huge. Don’t be stranger, please comment more often.
Just another clown in the circus@431:
I started coming here just before Rosie and Cole found one another. I too thought he should give up on her and I too was wrong, wrong, wrong. I think a humbling experience now and then is good for us.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: It apparently needs 60, (or unanimous consent). I assume Chuck and Team D knew what was happening with the expiration and decided not to waste their time on it right now.
It’ll be interesting if it gets to the SCOTUS and Kavanaugh’s desk and he really does decide to become the villain.
The Biden Administration’s actions buy time and shifts the onus to the monsters to strike it down. It’s a reasonable approach.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gvg
@Ruckus: You know, lately, watching him work on committees, it has occurred to me losing twice made him a better legislator. I think winning would have ruined him. Also the quality of his supporters would have screwed him too. He wasn’t getting the better ones.
I wonder if losing several Presidential campaigns made Biden better? Well, he certainly knows a lot of quality people for jobs…
Steeplejack
@Gvg:
Explained at #442 above.
piratedan
@Gvg: I believe the Wilmer reference is actually tied to The Maltese Falcon, because of the vague feeling with the purity ponies that seemed to guide his media message that Sanders himself was nothing more than a gunsel… or feelings to that effect.
2liberal
This person is a correct thinker.
satby
@Gvg: Actually, Maltese Falcon, talking about the gunsel Wilmer: Edit: for those who don’t know, gunsel was an obscure reference to a catamite (aka the chicken of a chicken hawk) that Hammett used to get past the censors.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott:
I don’t think it’s villainous at all to say that the CDC can’t take unilateral action to do something that bears no relationship to the way we’re trying to control the disease in question, in flagrant violation of a court order they just got. We have a vaccine; we don’t have lockdowns. We don’t want to a mass wave of evictions, sure, but that’s not the CDC’s purview.
My interpretation of this whole mess is that nobody actually wants to do anything about it. There are no good options (other than doing it right, which is harrrrrrd), so it’s just a game of hot potato.
AnthroBabe
I have posted a few times with little engagement (sniffle), but WHATEVER! I love BJ. I cried for Tunch, remember the “tire rims and anthrax” post, and was introduced to the funny and astute AngryBlackLady! John Cole: I lurve your posts of your life in West BY GOD Virginia: home renovation, canning, mustard, nudity, flying Subarus: who could ask for more? Sure, threaded comments would keep us on track better, but who wants that? And if anyone wants to know some kewl human evolution shit, I am here for ALL of you.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
It should be the states, and the blue states have eviction protections in place. But no one in red states holds Republicans accountable, especially when there’s a Democrat to blame.
Suzanne
Oh, and the commenter I miss most? CornerStone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: ::shutters::
Ohio Mom
AnthroBabe:
Welcome out of lurking!
Are you are anthropologist — guessing from your name and comment on human evolution?
I should add that it’s time to clean up the mess in the kitchen right now so if you answer, it may be a while until I respond. But I will be back.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Heh.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: Dunno. The CDC cites various parts of the US Code (19 page .pdf) and seem to me to make a decent case. Congress obviously passed laws to give them the authority in situations like this. They appropriated $45+B to address the problem and that money hasn’t been disbursed. Congress clearly wants the problem to be addressed, and the Administration and CDC are acting.
If Kavanaugh wants to change his mind and vote the other way, he can do so.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@AnthroBabe:
The key to getting “engagement” is to drop some of that shit into a thread where it has some relevance.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey, at least I didn’t say Little Boots.
Gin & Tonic
@AnthroBabe: Lots of my comments get little engagement. I don’t give a shit, I write what I want.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
I miss Corner Stone too.
@Omnes Omnibus:
?
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Reading my mind there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Troll! Suzanne is troll!
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Lack of “engagement” doesn’t mean that people aren’t reading and appreciating what you write. That’s one of the lessons of blog commenting.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Hell, lots of engagement doesn’t mean people are reading and appreciating what you write.
Damned_at_Random
I’m always late – west coast and spouse in the hospital just now. I’ve mostly lurked and commented occasionally – been doing so since before John’s Schiavo awakening, when there were just 2 front pagers. I will continue to lurk and comment (occasionally) because the comments are the best – and snarkiest- anywhere and I appreciate the animal love at this site. Also, who doesn’t love food and flowers?
O. Felix Culpa
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Double heh.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: Lessons? Will there be a quiz?
O. Felix Culpa
@Damned_at_Random: Best wishes for you and for spouse’s recovery.
Fake Irishman
Frequent lurker, occasional commentor here. I arrived in about 2011 and was immediately blown away by the talents of front pagers and sheer variety of what you all do for a living. (From carpenters to artists to writers and scientists and accountants and bureaucrats and restauranteurs and scholars and coders and…..)
Kay put up a request for political help of mine in 2012 and all the Michigander juicers dutifully smashed up the state legislature’s inboxes, for which I am forever grateful. Then that Richard Mayhew guy arrived and helped fill in some gaps in my area of subject expertise, which has helped my own research and career quite a bit, including a scholarly collaboration IRL. I’m also been impressed with how practical you all are about politics and how you are trying to figure out what our collective powers are and how to best use them. (I will never forget the threads in late March 2017 when we all stopped the first attempt of Paul Ryan to repeal the ACA and we all started wrapping our heads around the idea that we really could beat the bad guys) It’s a lot less academic and stuck up than LGM, which I appreciate as well, but gets to be …too much at times.
1. Agnostic on commenting system
2. a front pager definitely needs to get a capybara, preferably a herd.
3. AL’s COVID-19 thread is a must read.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I’m just auditing so it’s cool.
zhena gogolia
@AnthroBabe:
Comment more often!
piratedan
@Gin & Tonic: no but your comments will be brought up during the Blog Review Board comprised of the front pagers to determine if your snark is up to community standards….
zhena gogolia
@Damned_at_Random:
I hope your spouse is doing well.
O. Felix Culpa
@Fake Irishman: A Balloon Juice herd of capybaras would be awesome. Let’s bring it up with The Management.
ETA: I was hoping for #501 [shakes fist kindly at Mrs. Gogol], but #502 will do.
piratedan
@O. Felix Culpa: roaming free on the Wyoming tundra, hopefully handled by relocated Afghani interpreters, who have taken up residence to turn the State BLUE!!!!!!!!!!!
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: That dude was creepy. I have no idea why he was so into you. You’re not that interesting.
;)
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
True. ?
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s more of an open-book test.
O. Felix Culpa
@piratedan: I like the way you think.
Fake Irishman
A slow-burn T-Bogg unit. We truly are aware of all Internet traditions here.
Excellent work everyone!
Elizabelle
T-Bogg! Name his current pets. Sadly, I cannot. But I hope he has them.
Ohio Mom
@Fake Irishman: Thank you!
Elizabelle: Tbogg is on Twitter and has two (newish) beagles, including his first girl dog.
Shantanu Saha
At this point in my busy life, I use Balloon Juice and Lawyers, Guns and Money as my primary sources of news and liberal conversations/gossip. I would not change anything about the front pagers at either site, and the fact that Cheryl Rofer moved from BJ to LGM means that I won’t lose any of her wisdom. That said, I rarely spend a lot of time in the comments here anymore, and post my own comments very rarely. While I’m not a prolific commenter at LGM, the comment system allows me to respond to a conversation, and gives me email heads-ups when people respond to me (although , Disqus being shitty Disqus, it’s starting to screw up the timing, so recently I’m seeing responses from several days ago in my notifications).
I think the comment system here is good for the people who are already comfortable with it, so I’m not advocating any changes. I’m just relating why I don’t comment a lot.
Shantanu Saha
@Shantanu Saha:
I should also add that the way BJ is constructed, I can read posts without going into the comments, but I can’t do the same at LGM. Thus it’s a lot easier to just read this site, while at LGM you have to click on posts to read them, which leads to being able to see the comments and getting lost in the weeds.
lowtechcyclist
@Steeplejack (phone):
I’ve only read a few dozen of the 500+ comments here, but as best as I can tell from that sample, that’s one of the few things we’re largely agreed on: we don’t want threaded comments.
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
Mostly joking, since I thought that was iron blog law.
cintibud
Probably a dead thread but I do need to take the opportunity to thank John for this blog. I too date back to when John was the reasonable republican but rarely comment because, well, threads are usually dead by the time I get to them lol! However I guess I really don’t want much in the way of changes. When I discovered this blog I had a whole list of blogs I was checking out. This is the only place now that I go to regularly and the only place where I regularly read the comments. Thanks for providing a regular stopping place throughout my day
Ruckus
@Gvg:
The zoom call started so I didn’t get to answer you but I think he is showing much more than he ever has before, at least more than I’ve ever seen.
I also do not think Joe Biden was ready for the job when he ran before, and he is now.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
OK, so that was where you jackals pulled the name from! I’ve seen Maltese Falcon a time or six. A classic.
Elizabelle
@Ohio Mom:
Beagles! Very happy for Tbogg. I had two girl beagles, and think of them, and miss, them every single day. The best dogs.
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
No, look at #442 above.
J R in WV
And along with cleek and all the other Jackals, So long, Farewell to Cheryl Rofer, wonder woman of radioactive chemistry.
Stay safe, keep in touch at least a little bit.
J R in WV
Rodger
the answer is yes. Too many odd cat posts, cooking, bad trip pictures etc. it was okay once in a while 10 years ago but these posts have proliferated and the great content is buried.
sorry to be a spoil sport. I rarely comment but I’ve been here for at least 12 years
David Fud
I have been here since Kos pointed me over this way a long time ago during JC’s political evolution. I love the FPers past and present except for Young Connor, and find a lot of useful info and thoughtful and interesting posts here.
I very rarely comment as the few times I had it felt like yelling into the abyss. I remember yelling at Cole once to explain some reference he made and finally just kind of gave up on it for the most part.
That informs this comment: I think that we lose folks because of a lack of coherent interaction. Newbies pass like ships in the night without being able to truly join in the banter between the folks who camp out in the threads. It takes a lot of energy to be a comment reading person here. I have been reading all of the comments for all of this time and this thread sort of made me realize that I need to let go of trying to keep up with the comments, though I will say that there are sometimes important, amazing nuggets in there.
To be clear, I am not comparing it to LGM or another site. I rarely visit other political sites except political twitter. I think there needs to be a better way of conversing, a better way of letting threads live longer, a better way for newbies to have to have chance to actually be noticed and interacted with. Tall order, I know.
In any event, I love the front page and a lot of folks here though I am not on anyone’s radar. I am glad to read and will be continuing.
MMM
I’ll never leave you.
Kdaug
With the absolute certainty that JGC hisself will never see this – go to hell, cudlip.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax:
This is pretty much it.
Richard
@Victor Matheson:
I would agree. Sometimes i am having an argument or a discussion or an appreciation with someone else in this forum . It is too difficult to always be switching around. I forget what i was trying to say.
After about 3 years of visiting this place, i have learned some of your names. I wouldn’t come here if i didn’t like you. I like this conversation.
I am open to changing the format.
John Revolta
@Ohio Mom: Hey! I checked back and found a reply! The system works! Although it’s six hours later so you probably won’t see this :^(
One way to do it is find that commenter somewhere else and click on his name and you can see all his comments that way. Or if you left a comment there, click on your name anywhere else and same thing. (You don’t have to be signed in to do this)
If you want to sign in you don’t have to use disqus. Just sign in with LGM and that way you’ll get notifications whenever someone replies to a comment of yours. This is this most useful feature for me.
Fake Irishman
@Ohio Mom:
Happy to give you all some props. I may be from the other end of the state, but my Mom is a proud Ohio mom too. Love hearing you and Kay and others banter about my native state, even though it’s gone off the rails over the last 25 years….
Hope your kid is doing OK these days.
BeautifulPlumage
I know this thread is dead, but I want to thank Cheryl for her posting and commenting and sharing her life around home as well as her incredibly informed takes on policy.
I also want to say that I love the structure of the comments. Sometimes the cross conversations are hard to follow but that’s what makes it feel like a public social experience. I’ve only consistently looked at comments on Wonkette and LGM, so those are my comparisons. LGM’s threaded comments quickly turn to shit on mobile so I don’t l spend much time there. Wonkette is so big that the threads become exhausting, .ore so when it’s a lot of OT insider stuff. I do like that commenters can post memes & Twitter links, but I don’t want to sign up for Disqus ( or however it’s spelled). I financially support Wonkette as a business. I sometimes support B J and have been considering signing up as recurring via Patreon.
I love this site and the real world meetups. I would never have met these neighbors without BJ. I also appreciate the ease of access to comment ( no sign up) and the light-handed moderation.
And now, after seeing what I wrote, I will start supporting with $$. The Jackalariate is a diverse, talented, and thoughtful group. I am ever thankful to have found your online refuge, an ever-ranging conversation. I truly find the mix of serious & silly & serene & sensible has helped me maintain my mental health since 2015 (a youngun I know).
206inKY
@Kay: Agree with this entirely.
Here are some things I love about this place:
1) How much I’ve learned from what Anne Laurie has posted over the years.
2) The kindness and hard work of WaterGirl.
3) The fact that when a dog next door was left outside in subzero weather, I could turn to the comments here for emergency advice on what to do. I used some random nym, but it was my first comment after many years of lurking.
4) The commenter in a thread in January 2020 who alerted me to the existence of N95 masks well before they sold out. You saved my life.
5) After volunteering for the Beshear campaign in 2019, this was a place to celebrate.
6) John’s attitide in every way. Few people in life are both an asshole and a mensch.
What I struggle with:
1) There seems to be a gender disparity in the percentage of text front pagers leave hidden below the fold.
2) Few people seemed to open to the possibility that Amy McGrath’s campaign was a trainwreck until long after the primary, when it was way too late.
3) The cruel words toward Alex Trebeck when he was first diagnosed with cancer.
4) The fact that my shameful two weeks of support for Bloomberg is forever enshrined on the internet.
satby
@Steeplejack: Your link is the explaination, my quote is why some of us movie buffs (like Mnem) liked the choice.
satby
@Suzanne: @Steeplejack: I also miss CornerStone and wonder how he and his son are doing.
Audrey
(I will cop to not having read all of the comments here (there are currently over 500 hundred of them) so many of these things may have been said before)
For context, I am a longtime lurker both here and at LGM (seriously long, like 15+ years) although I haven’t been at LGM much lately. I lurk mainly because (as you can see) I’m ususally at least a day behind on threads and comments have moved on.
I did see some of the comments in the early part of the Welcome Cheryl thread and hte one that resonnated was someone who mentioned that they don’t remember the last time someone here responded to them in the comments so they’ve been drifting away from it. That can be a thing about this format, it can be hard to tell when no one has engaged with something that’s been said. In Disqus it’s easy to tell.
You asked whether the community has grown insular, well maybe. It may be hard to avoid. Something I was thinking about after I read the OP was the difference between the FPers here vs LGM. The FPers at LGM are mostly academics. They do post prolifically at LGM, but they also do a lot of other published writing. This gets them in front of a lot more people who might then check out LGM and participate in the comments there. Another thing about Disqus is that, if you go back and forth with people in it, you can see what other communities they participate in and may end up checking some of them out and maybe participating since you already have an account. I think those two things can lead to more easily bringing in new people.
None of this is intended as a recommendation of Disqus, just an observation on why the communities could move in different directions. And there can be downsides. I feel like LGM gets a lot more trolls these days compared to here, and they get to run around for far too long. Being easier to find can run both ways.
And a more subjective reason. I have been finding the atmosphere there much more opressively gloomy. As the media found during TFGs reign, that can really drive engagement, but it’s not necessarily for healthy reasons. TBF, it’s not to say that they’re wrong to be aprehensive, but it’s not something everyone can take for long periods of time.
I think it all depends on what you want the comments section to be. They have had exits from their comment section too of long time commenters. Some maybe stepped away for their own mental health. I worry that some did because life got too hard and they didn’t have the energy to participate any more. Some, I know, were banned (and others have been threatened with it or are under threat of being so). The last category I find a real kick in the teeth in these times. It’s been a very rough 5+ years and people are not ok, maybe even without realizing it. People are edgier, less likely to give the benefit of the doubt, quicker to speak out in anger. That includes the FPers of course, they’re only human. It’s understandable, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a comfortable atmosphere. It creeps in here too sometimes, but possibly the smaller (more insular as you say) community keeps it from getting out of hand. And maybe, my subjective observations are influenced by my not being ok either and thus more sensitive to things making all of my blathering so much nonsense.
I think really, it all comes down to what you want this place to be. I will probably continue to lurk regardless :)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Audrey: I read your comment. It was good. :)
Ohio Mom
BJ has academic front-pagers (the blog master for one) as well as regular commentators, and a good number attorney commentators who add their expertise to the discussion as well.
It’s not a primary part of our culture here to hold that up though. We are more egalitarian that way.
It’s an interesting question about this difference between the two sites and I can’t begin to think of an explanation other than the tone Cole set from the beginning. This blog was not started as a career-defining project for him, in contrast to the way LGM is for their FPs, who see their posts as part of their public service responsibilities (and perhaps also their obligations to publish).
On another note, this long-dead thread answered my question about the appeal of LGM’s nested comments set-up: it’s that you are alerted by email whenever someone responds to your comment. You get immediate feedback that someone read you and thought you were worth responding to. This system promotes extended dialogue between pairs and small groups of commentators.
For me, I would not like email alerts. Just another thing that will need deleting from the inbox. I feel I can check these threads for responses well enough (except when they are 500+ comments long!).
And I am also more easily able to “eavesdrop” on interchanges among other commentators. Eavesdrop isn’t quite the right word because they are not private conversations obviously. But there is a lot to learn from both the context and subtexts of those small interchanges.
Ohio Mom
I will definitely agree with Audrey that LGM tends to be more pessimistic in general. And I agree with that pessimism, I think their dour assessments are spot on. But I can’t expose myself to too much of it for my mental health.
Audrey
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
:)
SadOldGuy
I have been reading this blog since the Obama vs Hilary primary but I rarely comment since I have very little to contribute. But when I purchase from Amazon, I try to use the link.
AnthroBabe
@Ohio Mom: If you are still here Ohio Mom, yes, I am a biological anthropologist – specifically I study the human skeleton from people that lived in ancient Peru. I am one of those liberal university professors that has a state anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate to deal with this academic year (goddamnit).
And I enjoy lurking, but will try to post my comments every so often. Here are some cool evolution facts for y’all: Neanderthal should not be an insult – they had bigger brains than us modern humans, adapted to some of our tools, and made some cave paintings. They also were likely pushed to extinction just by the sheer number of moderns rushing out of Africa (they were genetically swamped). They also gave us some bad genes in terms of nicotine addiction…(no they didn’t smoke).
LAC
@Ohio Mom: I wish this was the case here. I lurk, as there are some topics of interest here and the COVID distillation is very valuable. But this is an insular place, with the “jackals” and some of the front pagers unable to welcome different opinions. I also became depressed and disheartened by the conversations about race last year and stopped commenting anymore. I think that some self reflection is a good idea. I hope it leads to something that makes lurking less an option.