One place a lot of us do not want the site to become is  a freerepublic type of site. Various warnings have been issued in BB about hit pieces and spam and unfortunately we still see some of those. While it is normal and healthy in the primaries to have competition we also do not want to help the GOP who can later come back to this site and others and find things to use against whoever will be the nominee. I don't have any specific suggestions on how to correct the problems on that.

What is best here is the nuts and bolts of Democratic and progressive politics. The insight into polling. The info on organizing, canvassing, running campaigns, how to take over the party from the precinct level up.

Others are trying to play the ideological role (and Chris and Matt seem to be moving to that). This blog's niche, which Chris Bowers has persuasively argued, remains in the pragmatic party and movement building area.

This is the premier blog for information valuable to blogroots activists. Those folks come in a variety of ideological stripes, al progressive, but not subject to some ideological litmus test.

One thing for sure, the platform is sound. Scoop is the best blogging platform out there.

This topic is completely loaded. There's no right way to answer it. Only the designers and authors of this blog can answer these questions.

All we can post here is kitchen talk.

That said. I'd be interested in seeing a push to break down the barriers between second life and
the blogosphere and set up things like activist meetings in SL

Theres a philly blog named mygdala - http://www.mygdala.com that is into the SL stuff. SL has the ability to be more direct, in terms of micropayment business models. I think micropay might be the way to go given the volumes this site would pull ...

again I'm not saying myDD goes into SL because that place is really at present just the cult of the mini-skirt but at some point or another something like that, where people can gather to really meet and plot and do other sort of watchdog activities might be good.

also just for what its worth I felt that Mydd always succeeded most when its willing to go into depth, and stay fairly objective about things. sort of a balance against the popular media where the spin is built into the report more than it should.

Whatever the case, think the right solution has grocery money in it for the people who really work on this site.

so yeah. I'm thinking what, maybe a micropayment thing happening. Not quite sure how.
I tend to follow that first rule of logistics which states: if you can't supply it, it dies.

Jon Singer still kicks ass so Chris got a day job, thats cool but as long as Jerome and Jon are anywhere near myDD I'm not worrying too much about content.

People will come and go, man.  Any blog is little more or less than a coffee shop where people hang out and if there's someone there that does regular readings of their work, great - but they're always looking for a book contract anyway and inevitably they'll be gone some day.

No worries about personell. Chris is cool though.  Does anyone know where he's going ?

Maybe focus more on online activism? I have a hard time mentally disentangling Chris and Matt from MyDD, so I'm not really sure what will be left once they leave, except for a sad and barren blue shell, but I've often longed for an activist outlet, sorta like Firedoglake, except ... not.

One of the things I like about MyDD is the lack of community. The 'focus on content,' I should say. FDL is excellent and full of content, too, of course, but very much about community (I think I saw 'Fitz!' one too many times there ...). What I'm trying to say is, there doesn't seem to be a place that's unrelentingly about Action Items and activism. That takes a hard-edged look at the bottom line of where we are and where we want to be, and connects the dots in a sustained, pragmatic, and effective way.

I'd love to see that somewhere, and since you asked ...

Hire someone that's NOT from the coast!!!!

And no offense to you, Jonathan -- I've read your work since you got started at Basie!, and always enjoyed it -- but Chris and Matt, especially Chris, were why I read this site in the first place after several years of ignoring it.  While I'll probably still come around -- again, mostly because of your work -- expect to see a lot less of me in future.

I hope you don't change your voice too much, Jonathan.  I hate to sound like a third grade teacher, but... we like you just the way you are.  No need to fix something that ain't broke.

This site for me has always been about pioneering ways to understand and then exert the power of blogs and online activism.  I don't know how to turn that into an easily digestable suggestion as to the course of the site, but it's the best I've got.  I always found this to be THE place to figure out what I should do next- both in terms of tools and inspiration.  I think we all have a vested interest in continuing that tradition and will be ready to support each other to keep it going.

An idea: as a group we pick, say, five House races and two Senate races to focus on. My DD could serve a clearinghouse support group for seven important races.

Also it might be good to get people know their stuff about certain issues to come by and lead first-principles kind of discussions. About trade, for example: so that we educate activists about the basics of the trade debate.

I wish that this site would dedicate itself to keeping Hillary Cliinton out of the White House.  (But I don't expect that to happen.)  One of the wonderful things about Bowers was that he could maintain a level of neutrality and objectivity through it all.  He is going to be hard, if not impossible, to replace.

I appreciate Matt's and especially Chris's contributions, but I hope that in the future there will be fewer overreactions over distinctions without a difference. For example, all the candidates use similar language about not hesitating to defend the US militarily, and no credible candidate is going to take any option "off the table". But for a while here Matt was shouting about Edwards' "insane warmongering" on Iran, which was just ridiculous.

No one who listens to what Edwards says about the direction we need to take in foreign policy could seriously think that he is an insane warmonger (a la Cheney).

And while I donated to Lamont and can't stand Lieberman, some of Matt's posts from CT were a way over the top, like when he called Lieberman a "sociopath." It distracts from the task at hand.

Stay with the meta stuff stoller and bowers always riffed with.  That's the stuff i always loved.  It was essentially a running meta discourse on blogs and american politics.  

Also, do more stuff like hiring people to go and camp out with the camp, like stoller did with joementum.  Its essentially what journalism used to be before murdoch decided that kind of stuff wasn't as profitable as what we have now.  

This is always a must read during campaign season.  Things get a little dry in the odd-numbered years.  The best blogs now are TPM and Firedoglake because of their reporting/blogging/liveblogging of all things scandal tainted in Washington.

Everyone loves a scandal, and maybe a good niche would be to provide an intensified broadview of local scandals (preferably of the GOP variety)  with linkage (or even partnership) with local blogs that are focused on that particular scandal.

I sort of hate to do this, but I have to contrast MyDD to DailyKos.  I occasionally post diaries here and there and I've come to a conclusion about what fits better here, what fits better there, and what is appropriate for cross-posting.

DailyKos is the activist site.  It's for appealing to the emotional, political id.  It's where I post about rhetorical paths that fire up the Democratic base (although I don't necessarily agree with anyone on what the Democratic base should be).

MyDD is the strategist site.  It's for appealing to the political ego and superego.  It's where I put analysis that generally gets lost in the fold and ignored at the Big Orange.  It's also where I talk about campaign tactics.

The two ideas complement each other, but they require different forums, preferably multiple different forums, but MyDD should be a flagship for ideas, almost like an online thinktank.

I have no idea if I'll miss Chris and Matt or not, as I've always been attracted to MyDD for the readers' posts, not for the conversation starter.  I don't mean to detract from what they've apparently done, but the broader community is what brings me to this site, not the folks running it.

Vegas baby!!!

We could use more candidate diaries.  There are like two or three registered members who still have not told us who they intend to support.

you should have a chart tracker, for stats and trends, and use the site as a reference tool as well as just news, that way when you collect all this great info, you can systemetize it and archive it so it isn't lost to the internets.  Sort of a poor mans gallup.

I think this community should focus more on cutting-edge electoral strategies.  How can the netroots create winning strategies for Democrats, and more specifically progressives.  We all know that their are a ton of inefficiencies in the system (hello Democratic Party consultants).  How do we remove them?  What do we replace them with?  How do we maximize a candidate's resources (money, time, people), particularly one that has substantially less than his/her opponent?

Jerome needs to start writing again. Not just writing every now and then, but writing.

I tend to view this as the blog for Democratic politics and strategies, while the others are issue or news based.

I'd like it to stay that way.

Also, keep doing the podcasts--especially the debate wrapups. Actually, if I could add one more thing: DO MORE PODCASTS!

We go forward.

Don't change a thing.

Admittedly i was drawn in to MyDD my a post of Matt's and then of Chris's.  But that was just the beginning (seems like forever ago.)  I stayed because of the across-the board thoughtful writing and perspective on the site and in the MyDD community.  That hasn't changed.  
I'm sure i'll check out what Matt and Chris are doing - it'll be great, i'm sure.  But I'll still keep visiting MyDD on a daily basis for my dose of perspective and analysis of the root of Democracy and Democratic-cy (or however ur supposed to spell it)

Dan

Well, with less than even 50 replies at this point, perhaps they are going to make an exit like former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin did...so to speak of 'get-out-whilst-you-can'.

to not go completely native with regards to the anti-Obama jihad that seems to have stemmed from HRC astroturfers on the one hand, and Jerome's egotistical ring-kissing complex on the other.

Regardless, Clinton people have astroturfed the shit out of this community anyway, so it's probably beyond repair.

I'm really drawn to the nuts and bolts side of this blog. It's very close to the kind of bog I'm looking for.

I'd like to see a blog with more minutiae of the specifics of campigns.

I know I could learn a lot from other people on these things. I've got some ideas that other people might want to read about.

This forum isn't quite right for that, but it could be.

phat

With all due respect to Jerome, to me Stoller and Bowers were mydd, so the loss is huge.

What I like best about mydd is detailed, data-based voting analysis.  That's where I think the strength is and where it should continue.  That's what differentiates mydd from dkos, FDL, or TPM.  Trying to make mydd more like any of those sites seems like a quick way to obscurity.

I agree with the general tone of the comments - don't change too much, we like it as it is. Keep the focus on elections in electoral years, maybe look more at state races which occur in off years and between electoral cycles pick a few big non-electoral campaigns which will structurally benefit the progressive movement to focus on.

There are plenty of other sites that focus on the presidential horse races. I'd like to see MyDD ease off the presidential coverage and diaries. Re-focus more on the less covered but very important US House races and Governor races and Mayor races.

It's really sad to see congresspersons and senators posting important diaries and looking for feedback, and then they get swamped and pushed off the recommended list by presidential candidate smear wars and astroturf.

So each front page writer should get 10 votes when recommending a diary. And maybe the front page writers should designate some diary rescue people who can moderate the diary recommended list.

Otherwise the diaries will be more and more wasted and ignored except by the fighting partisans.

One of the things that I'd like to see the ability to subscribe by RSS to specific TAGS and to specific  DIARISTS.  This is something I was wanting anyway, but with Chris leaving, it will help me continue to make this my #1 read everyday.  (Perhaps this already exists and I don't understand how to do it.)

Another thing would be to use a cronjob to automatically post top rated diaries to the frontpage.  This has community building pluses, but it could have a downside in loss of editorial control and blurring the focus of MyDD.  I'm less committed to this thought than the RSS issue, but I thought that I'd throw it out there.

Also, the TAGs need some housekeeping and discipline.  There are like 8,000,000,000 that only have 1 or 2 instances.  Others are duplicated needlessly through tiny iterations.  Loading the "See All Tags" page has crashed my browser.

In closing, I'll second what many others have said before.  The focus on

For me the utility of MyDD has been rapidly diminishing of late.

I really try to avoid and ignore the candidate spam and anti-spam.

Experience has taught me that candidates and their campaigns have no control over their supposed (and amateur) fans. That, and my belief in the qualities inherent in each of the Democratic Party candidates for the presidential nomination, leads me to only one possible conclusion:

The military service age rnc interns are ensconced in their cubicles in Washington where, when they're not online fantasy gaming, are engaged in an Internets contest, disguised as progressive netizens, to see how many obnoxious posts it will take to bring down major progressive sites. That can really be the only possible explanation. Well, either that, or we've been infiltrated by a bunch of junior high school Heathers.    

Like the title says, I agree with most everyone who commented. This might sound silly, but I think of MyDD as the "infrastructure" of the progressive blogosphere. The nuts and bolts, you might say.

I do want to say that I appreciate the specific diaries like the ones on Net Neutrality and Farm Bill Blogging. On the whole, the power of MyDD is that beyond being a blog, it also tries to bring about alliances between progressives and like minded parties, such as Techies during Net Neutrality.

Anyways, those were my thoughts.

Make it yours.

what we do really well here is create an alternative information stream which gives rise to an alternative conventional wisdom. One way to make it easier for us to create this conventional wisdom would be to have some sort of message board/wiki/open-thread feature such as "2008 polling" where all discussion of polling could take place, and "framing" where people can talk about linguistics.

I'm sure there are some experts out there who have some great ideas to trade with me, but I usually only run into them when we're both commenting on something the frontpagers said. And that's an argument, not an exchange.

We're doing some really cool stuff here in Virginia, and it's 2007, so there's no other election around. Let's learn from politics at every level.

it's not that I want focus on my local stuff, it's that i'd like to see less focus on how to run the DCCC (although that is enthralling), and more focus on how to elect Democrats to school board.