An administrator’s thoughts on the 3rd day
So, I think there have been many great posts here already, and I am working very hard to get some new contributors to post up and expand the conversation a little bit.
I do want to say something about the tone of the posting thus far.
I did request in the invitations that we try to avoid cursing, as I think that gutter language rarely offers anything to a debate, but I certainly don’t have any intention of “enforcing” that request. Everyone who I asked to contribute to this blog is old enough to determine what words to use when, and I will leave that to their discretion.
There are other things that all of the contributors (and potential contributors) to this site share as well. This is an invite-only community, something that separates it from many of the larger group blogs. In deciding who I wanted to invite, my only real criteria was that I wanted all of the contributors to be people who had taught me something. It was, and remains, my hope that this blog would be for people of disparate backgrounds, living in different places and living different lives to have some positive influence on each other, no matter how small.
Now no one who has checked into this blog (and I know there are far more people looking at it than contributing to it right now) could fail to have noticed the heated discussions between Cyetain and Sarge. When I decided to invite two such strong partisans to participate I knew there would be fireworks. But those invitations were also extended with the knowledge that both of these fellas rank among the very best people – in a sort of warm fuzzy way -- that I know. I have known both of them for a very long time now, long enough to know that they both have exceptionally good hearts, and long enough to know that each, in his own way, loves this country in the same visceral-to-the-point-of-unhealthy way that I do.
Few things are more fascinating to me than the fact that the three of us can share such a strong love for this country while holding such wildly different beliefs on almost every issue. This "problem" is a micro manifistation of the apparent divisions in our country as a whole.
Sarge is far to the right of me, and he is almost always horribly wrong. Cyetain is far to the left of me, and he is almost always horribly wrong. Somehow, though, I almost never fail to learn something when I get into a political conversation with either of them.
My point, if I have one, is that this little experiment here is well worth our time, but I doubt it will survive for very long if we don’t treat each other with respect. Even if the warriors keep coming out to play, it won’t be long before no one else is bothering to check the site out.
*****
On a separate note: Daniel has raised an interesting question: should entries that are essentially responses to previous posts be treated as new posts or comments? At this point, I think we should leave this up to individual discretion.
When I brought this issue up with one of the contributors he said “Yeah, my last one was just a response, but it was so good it deserved to be on the front page.” I liked that answer, at least for now. If we get more contributors, which I hope we do, we might have to tighten things up a little bit, but in the meantime the above contributor’s approach is a good one: a response should go in the comments unless we think it is so good it needs to be a post.
