Go Opus.

And also, what happened to the idea that if you don't like TPMCafe today, go away, read something else? If you can't positively contribute, passively ignoring it is much more conducive to improvement than complaining about it.

Yup. Hirshman actually posted on that topic here:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/11/27/what_a_turning_point_looks_lik/

as did E.J.Graff
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/11/26/working_mothers_whos_opting_ou

See also
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/03/25/a_tale_of_two_workplaces/

Not that you would expected to know it, because if you look at her user page you only get her last 10 posts to Oct. 2007
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/profile/Linda%20Hirshman
I am sure that has nothing to do with the situation of her disagreement with the Cafe. Most other contributors and readers both had their posts here obliterated by the software techies who handled this last transition. There were a lot of great threads and discussions on this site, by some very good people, high quality on important topics, and they have basically been obliterated by sloppy archiving practice, with no care as to being able to find stuff. I finally just gave up trying to figure out how the techies expected someone to find her earlier posts, I just googled her name for this site, that's how I found them. (You can only do that for contributors, not Reader Blogs or Reader Discussion Tables, the latter two are still mostly unloaded in the ether somewhere.) That's not going to work for the more prolific posters, someone like Todd Gitlin better remember the titles or keywords related to his posts, or he is never going to find them. And the urls, they have all been changed! So cross-links to one's old posts aren't going to work, you have to refind them. BTW, in previous software transitions, this did not happen.

As TPM has evolved, however, reader blogs have become more prominent and the "official" blogs have declined in number and diversity. While this may seem like a great triumph for democracy and the common man, I personally prefer to read more of what the "elite" write and a bit less of what eminates from college dorm rooms at midnight. I will, of course, be labeled as an "elitist" myself for that remark.

I do, chiefly, agree with you, but I do also wonder whether the comments here have been a little bit too direct and demanding for the elite to take. Maybe that's a reason why they nowadays are less visible than they used to be?

One of the great disappointments to me of the internet is that it has encouraged a generation of pundits who don't have real experience in anything other than chattering. In the old days, one became a pundit only after having been an accomplished reporter, academic, or official. There were exceptions, of course, but most people who talked about Iraq, for instance, were people who had spent significant time there, as reporters, or academic researchers, or government officials.

Now, people who've never been to Iraq at all and don't even speak the language are regularly set up as experts on the country. Blogs (along with lobbyists and partisan think tanks) contribute to this general dominance of uninformed opinion. And this, I fear, may have devastating effects on our ability to craft serious and effective policy.

Personally, I am particularly intimidated by the think tank system since I feel myself to have been impressed and fooled by the high intellectual standard of their products.
...now, that's of course because I myself is an elitist, and since they tend to be easy to fool with intellectual fireworks display.

Purple State,

Well thank you for spending time on the comment. Ironically, probably having read TPMCafe from near its inception, this IS something you have the expertise to write on. :-)

I was surprised to learn that TPM is limiting the number of posters.

I was surprised at this, too, as it happened at a particularly bleak time for content quality. There was basically only a few people posting on the main Cafe page. Truth be told, reading more on it, sounded to me like the possibility of some kind of personality clash going on.

Some have commented on the lack of posts from me. A few points on that. First, I have a real job, and don't have a ton of time to research topics and write informed, original, and truly interesting posts. Second, what makes a blog like this interesting, in my opinion, is that people who do have the time to do research and learn their subjects in depth can post an article, and we ordinary know-nothings can discuss with them and our peers the content of their articles. That's a great way to learn.

Oh bleh to them, I couldn't agree more! I used to put links to great articles I found in my Reader Blog, and get grief about it, people keep saying they prefer "original" posts, by anonymous people on the internet, for crying out loud. Yes, we are supposed to pretend we are experts on something you're not, or take some expert's work that we've read and "reframe" it. For some reason, hearing someone dumber on a topic than someone knowledgeable about it, and then making dumb discussion about it is supposed to be better. I don't understand, for example, why someone wants me to spend a hour writing up a bunch of poorly thought-out theories and ramblings about Al Qaeda, when I've just read a great Peter Bergen piece on topic and am desperate to discuss HIS article with someone with similar interests, because Al Qaeda bores the spouse. What is wrong with wanting a site like that? I am an appraiser of art, not an Al Qaeda expert. It really struck me with the Bhutto assassination, why were people asking me to give my opinion? Why does my opinion matter to them? Have they no mind of their own? Why can't they find the experts that I have read themselves? What is going on with this whole blogosphere thingie, why with the whole internet at their fingertips do they want someone with "average" knowledge to explain it to them in simple terms rather than have someone point them to a great expert piece and try to work through it together? What is this great yawning need for opinionating and emoting outrage over learning?

What you describe, THAT WAS THE ORIGINAL MODEL FOR TPMCAFE, that is what drew me here as an excited new member, the opportunity to read commenters with obvious sociological training or political experience discuss Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter with Kansas?" WITH THOMAS FRANK! When I first came here, I didn't feel the need to comment, I was enthralled with simply reading the discussions. I learned from them and had nothing much to add. I do not need to read every Tom Dick and Harry's opinion on every topic and I don't need friends and family or a replacement for the high school clique that rejected me long ago.

Mainly, I started commenting more when I saw stupid people trying to troll the sophisticated conversations to drag them down. As always, a great flaw of mine, I try to stop a forum from starting the downhill "democratic" slide. I've done this several times now, I guess I am an idiot Sisyphus, not as smart as those who get off the sinking ship earlier on.

Mho, you have to stop apologizing for the "elitism," really. It's getting ridiculous, this whole dumbing down preference of the blogosphere thing, What you want is for everything to stop being dumbed down. Somewhere, somehow, someone's got to create a forum where only people come who are humble and smart enough to know what they don't know and come to ask questions and to read discussions of others with more expertise, one that doesn't become insular and get's because those questions are encouraged if they are respectful and not done in true good faith, not to "game."

Do you know that TPMCafe started out with $40,000 in donations from people who were excited at the prospect of exactly that type of site, elitist and with civil discussion, something different from the down and dirty usual forum fare, more signal-to-noise ratio?

In early 2005, he passed the hat for a far larger amount, to support the launch of TPM Café. That appeal netted $40,000, and allowed Marshall to hire his first full-time colleague.

link

I think most of those founding donors are long gone, lost slowly one-by-one to a downward spiral of the inability to police the comments enough to continue to maintain good civil conversation, which in turn makes it of less interest to potential columnists. I do know that one of the original donors, with a famously bad temper, stuck around far too long because of his anger at what the site had become, and in the end, just before the most recent software change, that temper and anger ending up getting him banned. Really ironic. I can't imagine most of the others recognize the site they donated to create.

Mho, it really was good the first year or so, before the fighting keyboardist types started trolling for people to make straw men out of, the emoters started repeating over and over how they personally hate Bush or why they will never vote for Hillary or why "the Democrats" are a bunch of spineless scum (why o why do I need to know to continually read what you feel about that? what good does it do me? I can read polls), and "fuck these elitists" types starting attacking the contributors rather than welcoming a discussion.

As TPM has evolved, however, reader blogs have become more prominent and the "official" blogs have declined in number and diversity. While this may seem like a great triumph for democracy and the common man, I personally prefer to read more of what the "elite" write and a bit less of what eminates from college dorm rooms at midnight.

Josh Marshall made a very conscious and purposeful decision to do this, to go for this, with this recent software change, he has said as much in comments on many of the threads complaining about the change, particularly on some early ones by Tom Wright. Seemed clear that he gave up on the old model, and I must admit I think things were getting quite poor quality-wise in both posts and comments for a while before the software change. With the new software, I suspect he was expecting more quality to rise to the top and be promoted, along the lines of the posts by member "Fly on The Wall." I also suspect he was thinking that after the primary settles down, that reader bloggers will start posting better blogs on more sophisticated stuff. I think he is in for a rude surprise on that front, and that what he has been sold with the software is a version of "American Idol." Do you think the finest undiscovered entertainers that exist out there are found via "American Idol"? (Me neither.)

My contrarian nature requires me to say this: It's not impossible for the idea to work, as imbd.com is a good model. The movie reviews there are quite good quality and that is maintained by readers voting the best ones up. Ah but, there is no discussion in their "blog" or review section, and there's the rub, it's just blogging and voting, no commenting. The discussions go in in little forums on each movie page and if you have ever looked at them, they are often the lowest common denominator crap.

I will, of course, be labeled as an "elitist" myself for that remark.

I am a proud searcher of elite content. My god, what has the blogosphere done to people, why should one be embarassed to say that, one is supposed to prefer becoming well-educated, it is nothing to be embarassed about. Life is too short to spend it reading a loads of crap! I end up reading tons of crap like some kind of vile addict and throwing away the latest New York Review of Books, etc., unread, to my continual shame. Democracy my eye, that side of the blog triumphalist story is b.s., it's lowest common denominator. That kind of democracy is Pol Pot's Cambodia where those with eyeglasses are rounded up to work in the fields and the 6 year olds are the only ones allowed to be "educators." Ok, that's hyperbole, but at best, it's talk radio but without the screeners, everybody gets to yell his two cents. It's so hypocritical to bitch about the media pandering to Neilsen ratings and then turn around and get addicted to reading every Tom Dick and Harry emotive rants about how they much they hate Bush or Clinton and how the gangs and cliques form on blogs and the silly things they say to each other. Let's be blunt here, that's infotainment, nothing more, and it's addictive, and as destructive as many other addictions, there's plenty of 12-step groups out there already trying to rid themselves of it. I enjoy my infotainment, I just don't want it to be everything that's out there. Those who participate in some of the blog "fighting fun" of "smackdowns" or down and dirty discourse have no place complaining about people who like professional wrestling, and those who like following all the dirt on the candidate's spouses have no place complaining about those who liked to follow the travails of Anna Nicole Smith, that's for sure.