Jim: We're doing a roundtable to take care of few issues. Participating are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz; and Wally of The Daily Jot. Dona has an announcement she needs to make.
Dona: We are excited and pleased when any member of The Common Ills decides to start his or her own site. We would like to do a feature on you and highlight your work here; however, we can't add anymore people to the regular participants. Ava and C.I. do the TV reviews and commentary by themselves. We support collaborative work and prefer it. With the TV reviews, it was obvious that what readers were responding to in the initial ones were the points Ava and C.I. made. They look at TV from a left perspective, from a feminist perspective. Though there's probably a great deal more writing on TV than at other times, the fact remains that there are not a lot of feminist critiques. We're thrilled to have their work to spotlight. It remains our most popular feature. Week after week, the TV commentary gets the largest number of responses. On the other features, we work together and that may mean brainstorming, it may mean rewriting. Each feature goes through several drafts and several looks. Jim's preference is always for writing that could grab so if a draft adds more energy, that's what we go with. If this were a draft, someone might change that to "that's what we run with." All contributions are important to the produced work. But we need to put a cap in place because everyone's pushing against the wall to participate here. Last week's edition is something Elaine and I spoke of at length because it wiped everyone out. We attempted to provide a new edition, and did do that, while working on it before New Year's Eve partying and after. A good session is one that requires only twelve hours. Each and every voice that participates, and those that have participated in the past such as Dallas and Ruth, have something to add. We wouldn't be as pleased with the results as we are were it not for the input and participation. However, we have to put a cap on it now because any more added to the mix would only add to the time required to for each addition.
Jim: We do a lot of b.s. sessions where we shoot the breeze and there are times when Jess, for instance, will point out that we've explored a topic to death and need to write. The exchange allows us all to have a stronger idea of what we're going for. After a feature's completed, it's never completed until it posts. We will come back to it with "one more thing" and the pressure can be intense at points and we've all certainly disagreed on points before. If it's a break it point, C.I. or Elaine especially will say, "Okay but don't put my name on that piece." That's fine. And we've run pieces noting that, for instance, C.I. didn't participate. More often than not, such as on standardized testing, we'll stop and explore a point and understand that we are, as a group, missing something. So the process works and we support it. We just can't add anymore voices and still do the edition in a reasonable amount of time.
Dona: If a member of the community wants to contribute something they've worked on by themselves or with other members, we'll be happy to post it. But the current amount is all that we can handle. If we're on skeleton crew one week, meaning if a significant number of people aren't able to participate, we might be able to pull in additional people. Otherwise, this is going to have to be the cut off.
Jim: And that's not it with announcements. C.I. had a post but ended up holding it because, despite everyone giving permission, C.I. didn't think it needed to go up at The Common Ills since it effects all the sites. Mike, bring everyone up to speed.
Mike: This summer, we did a roundtable and lost it in posting. In that roundtable we'd addressed the issue of the time and timing. This week, my opinion, someone embarrassed himself and did further damage to his reputation. He should have packed it in a long time ago.
Which was an issue that came up in the lost roundtable. I've hinted about it [at] my site and asked that we do another roundtable to address this issue. Here's what it is, in four years, the community sites, current ones, will probably go dark. We're working at a target date of a week or two after the November 2008 election.
Ty: I've read C.I.'s entry that hasn't been posted yet and may not end up being posted. But the point's made about the time that goes into this community and how it's important and worthwhile but so is having your own life.
C.I.: Personally, I need a cut-off date. I need something to work towards. Early in 2003, before the invasion, I began speaking to various groups about the war. This also ended up becoming about the election. It was supposed to be just filling in for a friend a few times but became a weekly thing where every weekend I'd be doing this. When I was exhausted, I'd tell myself, I could continue to do it because after the 2004 election, things would calm down. That didn't happen. And by calm down, I don't mean become "perfect." I supported John Kerry, but I didn't believe that he was going to fix anything without all of us prodding. Immediately after the election, as everyone was depressed, I ended up giving a speech --
Rebecca: Giving a great speech.
C.I.: A speech. And then followed the period of self-examination among friends where we asked what didn't we do in 2004 that we could have? How could more people have been reached? "Do a blog" was a suggestion in 2003 but not having time to pull out off my ass, it wasn't a possibility. After a long discussion on the topic of what didn't we do, I finally decided to start a blog which quickly stopped being a blog. It's a resource/review and members impact anything that makes it up there in a number of ways. But I thought that would be an entry a day. As the community grew and more issues came up it became several entries a day. Seven days a week. And thanks to Ava, Jess, Shirley and Martha who regularly hit the e-mail accounts, when the accounts are working, but it's still more work than I would have guessed. So this summer, I said I needed a cut-off date and felt that since the 2008 elections weren't that far off, I'd try to make it until then.
Mike: Which worked out kind of cool as Jess and me pointed out because if you count the time that the Mamas and the Papas got together until they broke up, it's around four years. That's a group that we love and that the community does. So that seemed like a good mark to work towards.
Rebecca: I expressed then that I might continue on past that point and I might. Others may as well. And C.I. may very well feel that it's not time to stop. C.I.'s always been able to pull out that extra bit of energy when it looked like nothing was left. But there are members who will spend more time than they have on their sites. I can ignore my e-mails with no guilt and frequently do. If I'm in the account, I'll read e-mails from my regulars and if someone has an interesting title, I'll grab that as well. However, I'm not fretting that every e-mail is not answered in some form, let alone read. And I pretty much write about what I want to write about "in a very Daniel Okrent way" she said laughing.
Betty: But, for instance, you have seven college students just participating in this roundtable and many of them have school and work so they're giving a great deal of their time. When college ends, the core of this site, Ty, Jess, Jim, Dona and Ava, will likely be scattered in different physical directions. Who knows how long anyone will be interested or able to continue this site as they begin entering their professional lives? So the four years concept was something that did surprise a few people when C.I. mentioned it in the lost roundtable, but a wave of relief immediately followed. I believe Wally and Elaine weren't present for that, though they were informed of it some time ago, so I should probably stop here and let one of them speak.
Wally: There's fun in doing your own site but there's also times when it's not really pratical. This week, a friend came in at the tail end. We went to school together but he got a scholarship to a Michigan university and we spent time hanging [out] and I didn't post one day and Friday I just provided some of Isaiah's comics. I felt a little guilty when I skipped a day for about ten seconds and then remembered that Mike and I did a joint entry on Saturday so I gave an extra day last week. I also remembered Kat's "It is what it is" and Elaine's talk about the importance of taking time for yourself.
Elaine: Right, because people haven't been taking time for themselves. Even second, third and fourth wind C.I. can't run a marathon forever so a goal is needed. In terms of other sites, various things have been proposed to allow for people to grab the time they need.
Cedric: For example, I cannot post on a Wednesday night. There's no way with work and church. And Elaine was nice enough to say she'd cover that day and I grabbed Thursdays since she did therapy that night. She's going to have another group coming up and will be dropping back to four days and I'll grab the night she needs off but none of those things really addresses C.I.'s situation.
C.I.: Well, Kat's did an entry to cover for me Saturday and she's done that before.
Kat: And happy to do do that but that doesn't really address the issue of a day off. That's one post off not a day. The community wants "new content" as often as they can have it. That's great but people need to realize that everyone's not going to be pleased no matter what you do.
Ty: And as C.I. wrote in the thing that's not been posted thus far, Gina and Krista will continue to do their round-robin after the 2008 election and C.I. will participate there. The community won't come to a screeching halt. But hopefully, during the time that it exists via various sites, enough issues will have been raised and enough out of the box thinking that the community will really be something within [and] members, including us, and not something you need to go to a site for.
Ava: That's three years notice. We'd prefer to go out, unlike someone else who embarrassed themselves this week, while we've still got something to say. We may pass this site on to other J-school students or we may not. And, as Rebecca pointed out, when time rolls around, we might all feel like we should keep on or some might. But having a date to work towards makes it a little more workable and less stressful.
Rebecca: Announcement. Friday night at my site, I repeated Ruth's heads up to Pacifica's live coverage of the hearings on Alito this week. That's all this week and if you're interested in following it live, that's the place to be and may be the only place to be radio wise because once again NPR feels their cloying programs are more important than serving the public.
Mike: I'll back that up with "Listen to Pacifica!" Other than that? Hmm. I'll probably take some evenings either off or post late. I had to pick up a gift for my kid sister for two weeks before Christmas and I kept putting it off because I work in the morning, then go to campus for my classes and then head on home to eat and blog. I didn't want to let anybody down. And if you read the e-mails written to you, you do develop a bond with some of your regulars.
Ty: Right. Because Jim will visit the e-mails if he wants. If he doesn't, he won't. And that's more or less Rebecca's attitude. But as someone who still tries to reply when possible to people who write in to The Third Estate Sunday Review, I know that you do get to know the people.
I'd also add that when Jim does visit the e-mails he's dealing with angry e-mails mainly because that's what he enjoys. Those are always written to "you." You's divided, not by the e-mailer, by thirteen people, so it's easy not to see it as a personal e-mail, even if it's one that's not a rant. Now maybe someone misses the note to the readers each week which notes who contributed to what, but right there on our profile and visible without clicking on it, you see six names. Somehow that's confusing to some readers.
Cedric: My announcement would be that as soon as Elaine knows what night her group's on, I'll pick two scheduled nights a week for blogging and stick to that schedule. I took the week off. I was exhausted from last week's edition and Kat was saying, "Take the time you need." I listened.
Kat: Well, it wasn't just the edition. It was New Year's Eve. It was the time you put into your church and singing with the choir and you had worked very hard on the Christmas program. It was you obligations outside of online duties. And this was a time for you to reconnect to that. Sometimes, when I read e-mails asking for "new content," while flattered that anyone's interested in what I think, I also think about how I do have a busy life. I have no announcement, by the way, I just wanted to say that and point out that Cedric's got a really busy schedule. He's dating a new woman this week that he'd put on hold because he just didn't have time to go out in December. I mean, when someone's interested in someone else, when they're both interested in each other, and you have to postpone the first date for around a month, you're life is very busy. Cedric's life is very busy and I wanted to make that point.
Cedric: Thank you for that. Seriously.
Betty: Well my announcement is I'm stuck trying to figure out why Thomas Friedman was again on vacation. He took one in the summer, I thought. Then he returns in December from another vacation. Then after he returns, I get one entry done and he's back on vacation for a week. Is the man ill? Is he being forced on vacation? I have no idea. It's stumped me. And C.I.'s made an offer of listening which is so sweet but I know that C.I.'s busy and I really don't want to add to that. So that's the plot point I'm stuck on. Hopefully, something will come to me.
Jess: Betty, let's pick a time and you can bounce some ideas off me.
Betty: Thank you. Kat's offered that as well but you're the only one besides C.I. that I know of who can actually get through Thomas Friedman's columns. And I figure there has to be something in the columns that I can use to explain why he's been on so many vacations and just returned from yet another.
Jess: Announcement. I'm not a fan of Thomas Friedman's writings. I only read him to anticipate Betty's response at her site.
Jim: And on that note of clarity, we'll go ahead and wrap up.