Thanks. I remember insightful blogs here before, but have no idea what happened. I'm definitely spoiled from my previous years at DK, because 90% of the reader blogs posted here would have devolved into open threads with snarky comments. The reader blogs I detest the most:

1. Reposted entire articles of someone else's work.
2. A link to someone else's work or a video clip with no editorializing.
3. Those people who post a pointless comment and think it's clever enough to post it as a blog AND then still repost the pointless comment in other blogs.
4. Anything written by David Seaton; egomania, bigotry and self-righteousness is a dangerous mix in someone who pretends to know stuff.

Is it safe to recommend this post?

Agreed and recommended.

It's annoying that people post stuff like the latest superdelegate news, but I get even more pisssed that people recommend those posts.

I've been working hard to recommend original posts, even if I don't agree with the content.

I'd also like more local stories - i.e. what's happening with local politics across the country and how does it relate to the national mood.

This is not addressed to Resonating's but to the comoment complaints about David Seaton.

I think the dislike of David Seaton's posts expressed on this thread expresses a desire for an echo chamber.

I've never seen them voted to the Recommended list by this audience (though Charles Gelman has recommended some of them in his roundups) but that's not enough for you? What's the problem. They have mostly been, as Resonating describes a good post post "insight and commentary in an intelligent manner." Are you implying he should be discouraged from posting here or banned because you don't like what he aays?

On the other hand, I've seen a lot of real crap voted to the Recommended list by this audience, just plain juvenile crap that does really hurt the reputation of this website and I would have no problem deleting if I owned it. Seaton at least writes like a grown up, his own content, and doesn't come merely to repost the reworked cheerleader versions of the talking points of one campaign or another and many people have done here during this primay.

You've got your Recommended list that people like me mostly ignore, because they have often been the worst posts, and the ability to withhold Recommends from a David Seaton if you don't like his opinions. What more do you want?

Recommend.

I haven't noticed this David Seaton you speak of, probably because after I run into ranty bigoted bullshit I tend to move on. You who respond to an offensive post in kind are just keeping their foolishness going, taking up screen after screen with angry spiteful in-kind response. What's the point? If Seaton's posts are disappearing unrecommended, why complain?

What really hurts TPM's is the comments on comments on comments attacking and re-attacking an offensive commenter. Leave it alone and work on your own contribution. Don't feed the animals.

Unfortunately, abusive Obama and Clinton spewers are met with equally insulting and offensive opposition; it's just that there are more rude Obama-ites than Clinton-ites. Even a well-reasoned or novel post rapidly goes off topic, as this one has, with self-righteous content-free comments directed at one well-despised commenter. Who cares about Seaton? Who cares about Otto? Let's talk about how we can contribute something to the conversation.

So, some things I'd add to Reasoning's list:

1. Once someone has objected to an objectionable post or comment, leave it be and go back to the original topic.

2. Two wrongs don't make a right, so when you do object to a post as trollish do it reasonably and calmly. It'll make the commenter look foolish and allow others to calm down.

3. Obama supporters, who predominate at TPM, should be taking the high road and moving on into genuinely relevant GE issues. Yes, Hillary's still running, but she's winding down and starting to lead her supporters back to the center. Let go of what happened before West Virginia and help everyone else do the same.

4. Hillary supporters, please remember that some Obama supporters still hold grudges and respond to you inappropriately. Treat them as you would any other troll. Rise above, as we'll all have to do in the GE.

Bottom line: Living well is the best revenge. And intelligence and reason are the best revenge against rage and hysteria. Recognize a real difference in opinion, the humanity of the hand that writes the most insane comment, and the desperate need in this nation, and on TPM, for real news, real conversation about disagreements, and quality.

BTW, I'm not a high-quality commenter. I frankly don't have much to say that adds to conversations. But even my shallow opinions are more on point than most of the comments here. If this site had more intelligent dialogue, or even more intelligent but less private and obsessed snark, I'd shut up and read.

No one is saying that David Seaton is "the problem". This is a discussion forum. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for members of this commenting community to verbalize their aversion to Seaton's blatantly racist (though ever so 'cleverly' phrased) writings. It's just a matter of people who feel truly offended calling him on it.

The continuing downward trajectory of the quality of comment on this site is indeed sad to see.

On the old site, the volume of reader-generated content outside the comments sections was relatively modest. For the most part, you had to navigate away from the front page to get to that content, and it was nowhere close to representing the intellectual center of gravity of the site. Only rarely did one of those posts make it on to the front page. As a consequence, you had most of the visitors commenting on two or three posts at any one time, with long exchanges sometimes reaching 200 or 300 comments. The ratings system was never really as important to maintaining quality as the self-policing and collective self-improvement that simply resulted from everyone being in roughly the same place at the same time, arguing with and criticizing one another.

The best way to promote high-quality commentary is to try to assure that the bulk of that commentary occurs in the context of a thoughtful, extended discussion about a weighty and important topic. Channeling reader participation into discussion of high quality, editorially-vetted posts maintains some discipline. That's what's missing now. The ease with which readers can generate their own content, and the shear volume of that content, have resulted in moving the center of attention away from the front page posts, and toward the right-hand column, where the quality is spotty at best.

The prevalence of unmoderated reader-generated content has made the site a magnet for hacks, political spammers, low-level operatives, sock puppets, self-styled entertainers, trolls and boobs. Even the trolls aren't as thoughtful as they used to be. In addition, the front page posts aren't very good. There are also too many of them, and they move too quickly down the blog roll to sustain discussion. There have been several interesting posts in the Book Club recently, but they have typically generated very little commentary, because TPM does everything it can to distract attention from these posts with all of the other junk on the site, and also because there just aren't enough interesting people left around here to comment on them. And the other front page posters - of which there appear to be too many - frequently step on the posts of their colleagues with relatively unimportant stuff.

How many posts do we need from M.J. Rosenberg, for example, about the intra-Jewish hijinks of the day? Most of these posts add little to what he has already posted on dozens of other occasions. They also tend to read like cheesy and and intellectually shallow memos from his lobbying group. And personally, I find the prevalence of this kind of content to be exclusionary. Many of his posts deal with intra-Jewish arguments about which kinds of policies are "good for the Jews", which Jews are good Jews, which Jews are bad Jews, etc. Why is the internal wrangling of one minority ethnic or religious group treated to this kind of obsessive attention on TPM Cafe? I haven't noticed any similar departments here for other groups. There is no Latino Lane, or Catholic Corner, or Asian Assembly. So why is there a Jewish Quarter?

The excessive pace of the postings is harmful to the goal of promoting thoughtful discussion. That fast pace results in people merely entertaining themselves with mindlessly provocative, jokey posts, followed only by strings of one-liners, insults and quick retorts. There were times in the past when I would be willing to spend an hour or two composing a long comment, because I knew that once I had posted it in a comments section, that discussion was still likely to be taking place on the front page for a couple of days. Now it doesn't seem worth the effort.

I see some of the problems with TPM Cafe going back to the collapse of America Abroad. There was an initial problem with an absurdly narrow spectrum of centrist liberal opinion that was out of step with many of the many critiques of US foreign policy emerging in different parts of the left. The America Abroad posts were of generally high quality, but were provincially America-centric and deeply unrepresentative of the foment that was taking place among Democrats. That created a very unhealthy situation here with the posters polarized against a lot of the commenters, and a lot of hostile exchanges. Eventually almost all of the American Abroad posters picked their balls and went home. Rather than diversify the contributor list, or replacing the old list of contributors once it was clear they had no remaining interest in commenting, Josh for some reason left the American Abroad area open for month after month after with no additional posts. This was a slap in the face to the site's regular readers and commenters, who were being told that if they weren't willing to accept the party line, they would get nothing in the way of foreign policy commentary.

I've often suspected that Anne Marie Slaughter, Ivo Daalder and the others at America Abroad were renting the TPM Cafe space for themselves, or on behalf of some unacknowledged outfit engaged in "outreach" (i.e. propaganda), and that was why Josh couldn't eliminate the department even after it seemed to have folded up and left. But that was never confirmed.

In moving forward, I would suggest that Josh consider breaking off the reader-generated posts entirely from the TPM Cafe page, and create a Readers' Forum page that exists as an entirely separate department. There would be a link to the forum in the menu at the top of the page, along with the links to TPM Election Central, TPM Muckraker, etc. But the reader posts would not be listed on the right hand side of TPM Cafe screen. You would have to go to the Reader Forum to find them. The editorial staff could decide, on occasion, to promote one of these posts to TPM Cafe, but that would be it.

And then Josh and Andrew they should do something about ensuring the consistent quality of the front page postings, and managing the frequency of postings so as to promote prolonged discussion.

One final request: lose the avatars. They are kids' stuff that add nothing of value and merely take up valuable space.