Publius, a couple of suggestions for ObWi; restrictions on who can blog
Oct 31, 2009 by
DaveC
This is not good news for ObWi that Publius is pulling out. Even if I disagree with him to the extent that I think his opinions prove him a crazy stupid idiot, I think he has done an admirable job in keeping things going. He has pulled the Wingers through hard times, posted regularly, and tried to include others like Althouse and McArdle in a debate (shot down by the regulars).
Why not have Edward_ cross-post a few things, and just for the hell of it get LT Nixon to do one post a week. Apparently, Universities are frowning on their faculty spending too much time blogging. I personally think that Publius did not fall into the trap of wasting time on the blog; he wrote what he wrote, and generally stayed out of the comments. If there was pressure from the university to stop Publius from blogging, I think that it was unwarranted. You may hate me for this, but if Hilzoy got shut down by her school, I think it is quite possible that she was spending too much effort on the ObWi blog and not enough on her real job. This is one of those things that is a dicey judgement call. If Glenn Reynoldsand Ann Althouse can do it, why not everybody? Or conversely, if blogging is wasting professional time, why not stop all professors from having blogs?
I think that the fact that Publius was a bit disinterested in the comments (per libjn) was a good thing; it indicated that he was not wasting working hours on a blogging hobby. If his school thinks otherwise, I think that they should consider whether Publius writes his posts after work. I think that he does. I do not think that there is any indication that Publius (besides using the [i]racist card[/i] from time to time) has ever done anything to warrant some kind of "stop blogging" edict.
You can just get tired of it, that's true. And if that is the reason for Publius, that is fine with me; I can dig that.
Comments
Oct 31, 2009, 16:13:08 libjpn wrote:
I'm wondering what will happen to the site renovation.
There are a number of commenters I would like to hear, but everyone is in a commenting mode, so it's tough if to know if you are going to see a links presented.
I think it is a huge stretch to imagine Hil or Publius getting flak about blogging. The only cases where the uni is interesting in blogging is if the teacher is airing dirty laundry. I think that college prof is the most blogging friendly job, because the schedule and the where the requirements are set up are perfect for blogging. But if you don't have that fire in your belly, perfect conditions really don't mean a thing.
Nov 01, 2009, 00:16:47 john miller wrote:
I tend to agree with what lj said about university pressure. I have a hunch that it was just getting to be too much for both hilzoy and publius. I think both of them were really extending themselves a lot, not just with their univeristy issuses, but with other aspects of their lives.
Plus, I think both of them took their responsibilities as front pagers very seriously (not that the others don't) and felt a lot of pressure to post things almost just for the sake of posting.
Unfortunately, with publius gone, and Eric and von doing the only semi-regular postings (it really doesn't feel like Lindsey is a regular poster) most of the posts are probably going to be about either Afghanistan (Eric) or the stimulus failure/success (von). And unfortunately, what we get is a lot of rehashed agruments from previous threads.
But that is the potential problem with what is really a part-time amateur blog set up. Amateur not in terms of quality but in terms of non-financial rewards.
Although I like the idea of having guest postings from regular commenters where a post is submitted to the front pagers and approved for posting, I am not sure if any of them have the time open for that kind of labor.
Personally, I would love to see McKinney do postings. He obviously has the legal background to discuss things and provides a very coherent postulation of the conservative/libertarian viewpoint. I disgree with him a lot, but I would never say that he was an idiot.
Nov 01, 2009, 03:32:06 kenB2 wrote:
Seems to me that ObWi would be a good candidate to become a community-run blog, kind of like how the Tacitus community reorganized into TheForvm after Tac left it high and dry. Vote for a slate of administrators for a limited term, give out diary rights, select the best diaries for the front page, etc.
There are so many strong voices at ObWi that it's a shame to just be selecting one or two, plus it's a much smaller commitment to spit out a good diary once in a while than to be a regular front-pager.
Nov 02, 2009, 08:19:59 hilzoy wrote:
Fwiw: I didn't get shut down by my school at all. (Last time I saw my Dean, he claimed to be going through hilzoy withdrawal.) I just decided it was hard to be (what I thought of as) fair to my job.
Nov 03, 2009, 00:10:59 nous wrote:
Isn't publius teaching at a public university. That gets one a lot more scrutiny for outside projects. The taxpayers demand 100% effort for the crappy little 5% or less contribution they make to the school budget.
Nov 03, 2009, 01:06:00 JanieM wrote:
publius has said that the university where he's teaching is private.
Nov 03, 2009, 01:32:59 JanieM wrote:
FTR, from here:
http://obsidianwings.blogs....
*****
Since I have a real problem with those who chose to give their opinions on an internet site but are unwilling to attach their names to their work, I have a problem with you, John Blevins. If you felt there would be blow back from blogging due to your private business, your family and your friends, perhaps you should have put them first.
And since you going to be teaching at a university that is funded by my property taxes (and other taxes I pay) in the state of Texas, I have sent an email to ask my congressman (also a personal friend) to research your comments here and determine if you can objectively teach Texas students and not try to indoctrinate them.
Posted by: retire05 | June 06, 2009 at 10:53 PM
*****
Later, from publius (emphasis added):
First of all, thanks to everyone -- much appreciated. there are too many people to thank individually, but I do appreciate it.
I especially want to thank Feddie for his kind post over at Southern Appeal (I'll try to do a roundup of links after it shakes out a bit). In case any of you doubted, Feddie is a good dude who is of course wrong about everything else. :)
And to clear up one thing - Im' not retiring. I wouldn't give Whelan the pleasure. I was just unsure how to proceed, and Im inclined to just keep doing what I've been doing and let enterprising Googlers do their best. in short, i'm following manny's advice, which is usually a good thing to do. :)
[b]And retire05 -- South Texas is a private school.[/b]
So thanks again all.
Posted by: publius | June 06, 2009 at 11:07 PM
Nov 03, 2009, 01:41:42 nous wrote:
Janie-- Thanks for clarifying that. Guess my snark is misplaced in this instance, even as it is confirmed by the comment.
Nov 03, 2009, 01:47:47 JanieM wrote:
nous -- your snark was confirmed, that's for sure.
retire05 rightfully got bashed from a bunch of commenters at the time, and I don't remember ever seeing him/her except in this instance.
I'm not the first to say it, but it's hard to tell parody from the real thing at a time like that. ;)
Nov 03, 2009, 04:04:43 Slartibartfast wrote:
That was, in fact, the only time retire05 ever posted a comment to OW. But someone under that name has posted comments elsewhere; mostly right-leaning blogs. I'm guessing the whole publius/Ed Whelan brouhaha alerted various folks around the blogosphere, and some of them decided to comment.
Nov 03, 2009, 23:51:54 Chandler wrote:
Nice! Four days with zero posts. Comments are slowing to a trickle. Plus, Slarti just massacred a bunch of posts that weren't even me. Either he's getting trigger happy, or trolls are the only people left here. (The "R@ygold" comment was, of course, me. Please google the handle.)
Nov 04, 2009, 00:27:23 Slartibartfast wrote:
<quote>Plus, Slarti just massacred a bunch of posts that weren't even me.</quote>
No, I didn't.
<quote>The "R@ygold" comment was, of course, me. Please google the handle.</quote>
Obviously.
Nov 11, 2009, 04:12:52 justinslot wrote:
Four days without a new post. This is depressing.
Nov 11, 2009, 05:55:37 cleek wrote:
ObWi had a good run.
Nov 12, 2009, 02:32:16 Slartibartfast wrote:
I'm thinking of giving myself posting privileges back. You do [i]not[/i] want that, trust me.
Nov 12, 2009, 07:04:06 Ugh wrote:
Hiiilllllllzzzzooooooyyyyyy!
Nov 12, 2009, 09:45:47 JanieM wrote:
I've been trying to leave the subject of Lindsay alone because I thought she should have a chance to prove herself at ObWi. But it's been more than 2 weeks since she posted a thing, and she hasn't made herself a presence at all. I just checked Majikthise and it's going strong...so what was the point of bringing her on board, I wonder?
Just whining, I guess. I thought the guest post idea was a good one, but maybe the current proprietors don't have time to manage a system like that.
Or: what Ugh said. :|
Nov 13, 2009, 01:41:01 nous wrote:
If I were Lindsay I'd be less than enthusiastic to post at ObWi too. Haven't seen this concerted an effort to drive someone off since Charles. The sense of privilege is just...wow.
Think I miss the old commentariat even more than I miss the old posters.
Nov 13, 2009, 01:55:40 JanieM wrote:
I didn't mean to convey privilege, mostly just sadness and, as I said, I was whining and I knew it. Also, I am certainly not part of anything "concerted." It's just me here alone in my living room / office.
Maybe I shouldn't have singled Lindsay out, because the real interesting thing to me is the dynamic between posters and commenters. ObWi is the only blog I read regularly that has a very active community of commenters, many of whom have been around for a lot longer than I have (not quite 2 years).
I understand -- and have said to other commeners -- that we don't pay a cent for the privilege of reading and commenting, and the posters don't get a cent. Still, it's plain that for lots of people, ObWi is an important part of their (our) day. The fact that I recognize that the owners don't owe me a thing doesn't stop me from hoping ObWi won't go away, or wondering what's going on in the background, out of sight of "the commentariat."
Based on the many statements by fans of Gary that they would love to see him on the front page, plus other suggestions of specific people as additions to the line-up, plus suggestions for a guest-posting system, lots of commenters clearly feel like they have a stake in ObWi. Obviously, they (we) feel like we have more of a stake than we actually do, and certainly more of a stake than we pay for.
nous -- I'm sorry not to live up to the standards of the good old days. Or let's see, were you whining about me in the same way I was whining about Lindsay?
Nov 13, 2009, 02:23:06 nous wrote:
Janie - that was not aimed at you in any way and I'm sorry if it seemed it was. I always appreciate your comments and think you add to, rather than take away from, the discussion.
There are still a lot of commenters from the early days on the blog, but the overall dynamic has been sliding for a while now. Hilzoy seems like the biggest loss to many, but I think it started sliding before she left. I really miss the range of things covered back when G'Kar and Katherine were contributing. Hell, I'm even nostalgic for the occasional drive-by jeremiads that Tacitus would drop in the comments.
I don't think the posting quality on ObWi has dipped tremendously. Publius was about on par with what Edward used to contribute and Eric does great in his core role on foreign policy and Von is the same old Von. Where we lose out now is in the cross-talk and exchanges between people, and in this we miss Charlie Carp and Thullen and Katherine and Bob McManus and even Tacitus as much as we miss Hilzoy and G'Kar.
My $0.02.
Nov 13, 2009, 02:38:22 JanieM wrote:
Thanks, nous. I'm awfully cranky these days; I oughta ban [i]myself[/i] for a while.
You make me miss the old days, and I wasn't even there. ;)
Nov 13, 2009, 03:41:03 Slartibartfast wrote:
[quote]I'm even nostalgic for the occasional drive-by jeremiads that Tacitus would drop in the comments.[/quote]
Not me, really. Although I liked Tac a bit at first, his stuff got a bit too Godlike for me. Although his comments did stirr up quite a lot of...er...fertile silt for further discussion. Which may have been your point.
Nov 13, 2009, 04:16:17 nous wrote:
That's it, slarti. Tac's comments did not always smell the best, but they composted well.
Nov 13, 2009, 21:07:58 Slartibartfast wrote:
Ha! I like it!
Nov 14, 2009, 01:58:59 cleek wrote:
Tac's comments always reminded me why i stopped reading Tacitus.
Nov 14, 2009, 05:04:57 nous wrote:
Tac looks better in hindsight every time that Moe or Eric Erickson posts anything new. Granted, I've not read anything that Tac has written recently, so we can probably chalk this up to rosy-eyed nostalgia.
Nov 15, 2009, 00:02:26 russell wrote:
Probably five years or more, Trevino was a guy you could have a conversation with. At some point he bought the "clash of civilizations" party line and ever since then it's the Song of Roland redux.
I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but by my lights the man is something more than halfway to a fascist at this point.
I haven't read anything of his in a year or two, maybe he's worked himself through his "fall of the west" phase. But I haven't really felt like I have anything to say to him, or he to me, in quite a while.
Nov 16, 2009, 05:33:57 nous wrote:
russell - "...by my lights the man is something more than halfway to a fascist at this point."
Agreed. A lot of what he was selling sounded like repackaged Carl Schmitt to me, hence the philosophical overlap with fascism. I think that modern conservatives have a really strong leaning that direction and it scares me. I always thought that Tac was wrong and told him so, but at least he was capable of critical engagement.
Nov 16, 2009, 06:52:48 matttbastard wrote:
[i]Tac looks better in hindsight every time that Moe or Eric Erickson posts anything new. Granted, I've not read anything that [b]Tac has written recently, so we can probably chalk this up to rosy-eyed nostalgia.[/b][/i]
Um, yes, that. His twitter feed is positively odious. He makes Michael Savage seem thoughtful -- and, more precisely, [i]earnest[/i] -- by comparison.
Nov 16, 2009, 07:34:21 nous wrote:
C'est la guerre.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
Nov 18, 2009, 19:52:18 OCSteve wrote:
It appears that the newest front-pager has unilaterally suspended the posting rules. I’ll stay away from whether the post even deserves to be on the front page…
I only check in a couple of times a week, and I don’t go through all the comments anymore (if I see someone whose comments I enjoy/respect in the sidebar I’ll click) – so feel free to correct me - but I don’t find Lindsay to be a great addition to the lineup.
I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, as anyone following hilzoy’s departure was going to have a tough row to hoe. But I have to say that her stuff is pretty weak tea.
And if you can’t respect the site’s posting rules in a front page post then there is certainly no reason to expect the commentariet to respect the rules.
Unbelievable how something that took years to build can turn to shit in a matter of weeks.
Nov 18, 2009, 22:50:21 libjpn wrote:
I was going to say something, but I didn't want to pile on. A lot of it depends on how she was asked, what she was told, blah blah blah. Still, it is pretty disappointing.
Nov 19, 2009, 01:35:00 Ugh wrote:
Agree with OCSteve. In fact, the reason I came over here was to write something very similar to that.
Nov 19, 2009, 01:35:57 OCSteve wrote:
Agreed LJ. She may be doing exactly what she committed to when accepting the offer. But it’s limited to occasionally cross-posting stuff she puts up on her own blog. She rarely seems to engage in comments, and I wouldn’t ding her on the fluff/silly posts if she was frequently posting something substantial. She has 5 posts on the front page of her blog. Four of them are substantial. She chose the Palin one to cross-post to ObWi…
But for all I know that is all she ever committed to. So I can’t blame her for her effort (although I do blame her for not respecting the posting rules on a front-page post).
I do trace the overall decline to her selection. But that blame goes to eric/pub/von. At a minimum, when it became clear she was not going to post often they could have invited someone else to be a front-pager.
I know – what’s it to me when I don’t even participate there anymore? Nostalgia I guess…
Nov 19, 2009, 02:02:01 JayS wrote:
Damn you OCSteve, you forced me to go back and read her post. I had only skimmed over it. Damn you LJ, you made me read through the comments. I don't see any piling on, or any notice of the f'ing word in the f'ing post.
I want drama highlighted here! Not the gradual decline of the Obsidian empire.
Nov 19, 2009, 02:10:13 JayS wrote:
I was going to edit that last comment to do a strike through of "gradual", but bbcode doesn't seem to support it.
Nov 19, 2009, 04:30:55 Slartibartfast wrote:
That post made mine look like positively well-considered.
Nov 19, 2009, 05:00:02 JayS wrote:
Slarti, if you are talking about your posts of yore, they were mostly maddeningly ambiguous, probably because we were looking for deeper meanings in your sparse prose.
Assuming by that post, you mean the rule breaker mentioned above, I suppose it was ill considered. It is something of a feminist contrarian position to take, which could be hip, but upon reflection the assertion that she deserved what she got because of the way she dressed might make one pause.
Nov 19, 2009, 05:16:53 Slartibartfast wrote:
[quote]probably because we were looking for deeper meanings in your sparse prose[/quote]
That could be your mistake for looking, or mine for not having put any deeper meanings in there for you to find. Kind of like putting up an empty pinata, maybe.
No, I'm just mystified how a couple of silly, poorly-composed pictures elicited all of the spluttering fury, mistaken analysis, and erroneous comparisons with Vargas girls. I won't argue Lindsay's disdain for Palin, but this is right up there with analysis of Michelle Obama's latest fashion choices, earth-shattering significance-wise.
Nov 19, 2009, 05:46:12 JayS wrote:
[quote]That could be your mistake for looking, or mine for not having put any deeper meanings in there for you to find.[/quote]
Mostly the former, with a bit of longing for the latter. In the end you kind of became the pinata, sorry about that.
[quote]... this is right up there with analysis of Michelle Obama's latest fashion choices, earth-shattering significance-wise. [/quote]
Well yes, this is one of those "why can't we have a better press core" moments. Palin mania strikes with thunderbolts and star bursts everywhere! Film at 11.
Nov 25, 2009, 22:36:05 Ugh wrote:
Is this thing still on?
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