Recent discussions
here and
here, specifically the discussions sparked by
this comment, have prompted me to make a set of proposals.
I welcome, nay thrive upon, suggestions, criticisms, input, snark, and other forms of feedback. Pray, good friends, be not offended by my sharp-tongued responses (or be offended and see if I care!).
Use a coin to scrape away the silver area, and see if you have won a prize!
First, based on several strongly worded and well-thought out (not to mention some strongly worded, highly emotional, not so well thought out) responses, I think it is pretty well agreed that changing the open nature of the blog, the diaries, the comments is a lame idea - it should be obvious that this was never in our power as mere diarists, nor was it really seriously suggested. It was put on the table for discussion and I think has been clearly shot down. Comments and diaries should remain as open as they are...
...and even Mike Krempasky can continue to contribute! Actually, given the hours he's spent recently "defending" himself from "high-school level research" (yes Josh Trevino, I read your diary), the Leadership Institute, and pooh-poohing the Gannon work, and protesting way too much, and generally giving me giggling fits considering the degree of guilt by association, guilt by inference and innuendo, guilt by smear heaped upon us and ours by the likes of Mike and his cohorts (think ANSWER, Ward Churchill, Jimmy Carter is a Traitor, George Soros is shylock, and etc), well, perhaps Mike should be contributing to server costs...
Second, the subscriber option should be kept and perhaps expanded beyond simple "maintenance," and here's how:
There are a wealth of Internet-based "Deep Research" tools available for $$$: Lexis/Nexis for news and much more, Westlaw for legal research, DIALOG for business news, GeoRef , and/or ISI Web of Knowledge for science news and publications, and a host of others, with varying focus, content, cost, and efficacy (various White and Yellow Pages, Janes and/or Stratfor , Open Source Solutions and so on).
Perhaps subscription monies should be used for, or perhaps a fund drive should be mounted for, buying some form of site access, subscriber access, Marcos access, front page poster access to one or more of the above tools or their correlates.
Why?
Simply put, power.
Power, in its basic physical sense, is formulated as the amount of work done or energy expended over a given period of time. Keep in mind that force is the product of mass multiplied by acceleration (kg*m/s2), and that work is force exerted multiplied by the distance traveled (kg*m2/s2) or the production of applied force over a distance, and power, therefore is expressed in terms of kg*m2/s3. Bear with me on this analogy, because it works!
The Gannon Affair is an example of a certain degree of power held by this community: the Gannonists and their allies (AMERICABlog, RawStory, and etc) exerted force and propelled information a certain distance (through DNS tracking, "whois", phone calls, wayback, other searches) and did so over a short enough period of time that the Power of their effort was great enough to break through enough barriers and into the national news. The DanRatherites and EasonJordanites on the opposite end of the political spectrum exhibited similar power.
Obtaining access for (variously or alternatively) the entire community, the subscribers, the frontpagers, or the proprietor (all depending on costs, legalities, copyrights, and so on and so forth) to such "Deep Searching" tools would both increase the distance over which and decrease the time within which we can do such work.
This is very simple to portray using an analogy to physics: if F=ma, and W=Fd, and P=Fd/t, and we increase d, decrease t, and keep F the same (or increase it), then P increases a lot.
Want more power? Extend the reach of, and shorten the time takes to exert the collective force we can bring to bear on a given issue.
Our force is our curiosity, our passion, our commitment, our cooperation, our combined intellects, and our expanding knowledge base. Increasing our knowledge base, decreasing the time needed to access it and disperse it, widen the sphere that knowledge base intersects and we will increase our power.
So, what do you all think? And please make suggestions regarding: the overall concept, the implementation of that concept (especially if you have experience working with those systems), and other research tools you think would be useful and feasible.