I refer to this:

There are multiple petitions by many of you, the diarists, readers, and commenters of this site, to disband the recommended diaries list because it is being gamed by a number of diarists at the expense of new and, frankly, quality non-conspiratorial material.

And as long as I’m griping about it, here’s your real problem with the recommended diaries list: We used to be able to get a blurb of the member diaries just like we do the front page. We could click that little link and they all came up with a top part (or the whole thing if it was a quickie) and then we could click the ‘read more’ button if we wanted to check it out, recommend it, comment on it, or what ever.

(and of course, some people had trouble figuring it out and wore out all our mouse wheels getting through their ‘top blurb’ which was not exactly a top blurb – but at least we could still scan stuff)

Now, all we get is a title (which never says jack crap about it) and a poster’s name, and with a couple of thousand registered users, HTH are we supposed to screen those? I mean, I know by now not to click anything by Nikitas3 because (s)he is like an internet grammar panda: comes posts and leaves. But there are lots of others that I would probably read and follow more if I could give it a quick once over before I opened it.

And this is not some foreign idea, as we used to do it and it worked and the front page is still organized in this manner. Clicks matter and everyone knows it.

at the very bottom of the member diaries list. If you opened it in a new window, it looked a lot like the front page.

Don’t you remember Clayton (or maybe it was AdamC) complaining that people weren’t using the ‘more’ cut-off and putting their whole diaries above the fold making our roller wheels roll off into the sunset?

It was an excellent way to screen for member diaries that were worth noting. And as I said earlier, it’s one of the reasons new writers aren’t getting the same level of interest that they used to. We can’t ‘pre-screen’ so to speak.

And it was also on RS1

you brought the OLD goats out of the woodwork.

Darin, I mentioned you in the same post that I mentioned c17. How old is your baby now? More than 1?

I sure have missed you. And ntrepid as well. I hope everyone is still working for the conservative movement, even if you’re not here as much any more.

I know I said it before, but I sure do miss all you guys.

You’re another one that is a major addition to the site.

I figured out how to do it.

And it was a helluva slam. No wonder you all wanted it whited out.

But I’ll also say this, I’m going to miss EPU. He’s been a good egg.

Augustine is posting under his own name: Ben Domenech, and wasn’t Tacitus Josh’s name? I can’t remember now.

Does anyone know if JustMe is anywhere these days? I can’t remember the last time she posted.

though it is a response to your general theme.

We are all well aware that we don’t own this site. That falls right in the middle of the No $h!t, Sherlock square. However, as a site, it has long been the goal to engage participants not only in comments but in diaries and activism as well. We are interested in advancing the cause of conservatism.

That engagement is going to come with some level of opinion, not only about things about which management wishes us to express out opinions, but a vast array of subjects of interest. As adults, we don’t typically have a problem with this.

Yes, Eagle owns the website, but their advertising revenue comes from clicks, which come from an engaged and interested readership. It may at times be a difficult line to walk, keeping readers involved and still moderating their involvement, but don’t act like you’ve brought us some great words of wisdom, solving this problem for them by telling the stupid riff raff to STFU and Get Offa My Lawn.

That’s really not at all the vision of the website, or at least it hasn’t been in the past. We shall see in the future, I suppose.

I’ve only read powertothepeople’s posts in this thread, having not noticed him before now, but I think maybe his report card would not give him a gold star on the ‘plays well with others’ line.

And I’m positive Becker’s card doesn’t have any gold stars at all. I can’t tell how long you’ve been here, but Becker has been a curmudgeon since God made dirt. You have to take him and Tbone with a grain of valium. Or just ignore his comments.

I’ve developed a real fondness for the old coots, but I know that’s not universal. Heh. That may be an understatement.

I had a front page contributor and former moderator essentially tell me, Chuck you, Farley. It’s our site and we’ll run it like we want it. If you don’t like it, you can go somewhere else.

And that was in response to a private email lamenting a particular action taken by the site, not a public posting. Not sure that’s the way to engender our enthusiasm when they’re putting on the red blinking light to spend a few hours on the phone with Congresscritters.