I have the infrastructure to take over hosting if necessary.

This opens the question of whether we are making use of the Freedom Democrats niche, or whether we should try to merge our community into a larger group.

At this point, most of the registered user base on this site is no longer participating, the theme has more or less evolved from "libertarian" Big D Democrat synthesis to "left/non vulgar libertarianism," so the question is why go through the hassle and expense of maintaining the existing site infrastructure(with a different hosting provider) as opposed to, say, starting a new site/blog. For example, I have a wordpress blog, anarcholiberal.org, that's currently being unused. I bought a slick premium design theme that I haven't gotten around to implementing yet. The original intent for that blog, once I actually got around to publicly launching it, was to focus specifically on individualist anarchist themes from an analytical perspective, e.g, game theory, complexity theory, public choice. etc...

There would probably be merit in having the domain freedomdemocrats.org transferred over and setting it up as a redirect pointer, since it is already included in a number of blogrolls. That being said, gaining control of the domain name would be contingent on the approval of DevP and Logan, since they're the ones who started the site.

That's my $.02 suggestion...

Sorry to volunteer then disappear...

Anyway, I'm wondering if FD.org could be converted into some sort of hub with a blog aggregator. I think that Anarchoblogs could serve as a model. Perhaps Planet would be the appropriate software. I'm looking into the technical details.

I think this strategy would require leess maintenance than maintaining an independent blog. I've also been interesetd in this model of blogging for a while, so I'm motivated to help implement it.

Unfortunately, my free-time has been sparse recently, and it will continue to be sparse for the next several weeks.

If we were to merge into a larger site (meaning that we encourage visitors at FreeDem to participate at those sites), i think that DKos or Swords Crossed would be the prime candidates (this may just reflect my own biased perspective since I already participate at those sites). I don't know if we could maintain any sort of group identity there, but I know that several FD posters also post over at DKos.

I'm not really a fan of the "individualist" model of blogging -- unless you are a professional, it's just too hard to produce enough content to keep people's attention. I think that community blogs work okay -- but in a big community (like DKos), any specialized interest group (like the Free Dems) will get lost in the crowd, and a specialized community blog has the same problem as individual blogs -- it's hard to provide enough good content to maintain an audience.

of niche blogging, however, which can be successful if the content is unique enough. In my case, i am interested in game theory,public choice, complexity theory, alternative voluntary systems as applied to anarchy, stuff that i've been blogging here, but on a more formal basis going forward. I'll probably take a stab of submitting some papers to Libertarian Papers as well.

I am fully in favor of lengthening the "tail", but I want a strategy that will do it effectively--that's why I'm focusing on a content aggregator: it creates a "gatekeeper" system that can direct attention to the small-time writers. For the same reason, I think that submitting to the Liberty Papers (LP) is a good strategy...but in that case you're basically following the traditional publisher/writer model, and I don't think that the FreeDems have the resources to maintain a publishing house.

To get an idea of the type of system that I"m proposing, imagine that you write a post on your blog about how game-theory relates to the state and wealth distribution. In the "publisher" model (e.g. LIberty Papers) you'd submit your paper there, the editors would decide if it is worth publishing, and then there'd be a conversation about your paper at their website. In the "aggregator community" model, your paper would be picked up by the five different aggregators and presented to the members of those communities (perhaps an anarchist community, a leftist community, and a game-theory community) -- then the community members would either recommend or ignore your writing, and they could either discuss it in their community or on your website.

I think that the aggregators will do a better job of intelligently directing an audience to good content produced by writers at the far reaches of "the tail".

So you're basically proposing to rename and reorient this community. Right?

If you want to merge the site into a larger group then why not link this site to Campaign For Liberty. Just a thought. You would be surprised to know that there are some "Ron Paul Democrats" on their too. In my opinion, it's worth giving it a shot.

I'll do what I can to get the posts exported to authors in some reasonable fashion. We'll see how hard that is.

As a practical matter, I would agree that divided government is preferable, specifically, a Dem President and a Repub Congress. Congressional Dems tend to combine 2 unfortunate qualities...corruption and lack of backbone. Congressional Repubs are just as corrupt, but tend to display more backbone. However, it's a bit tenuous to rely on 2-party, divided government to enforce token adherence to "a piece of paper." For one, the egregious violations of that piece of paper of late have been bipartisan affairs. Secondly, you're likely looking at an extended period of time until a new equilibrium of divided control is achieved. Thirdly, voting for someone like McCain, who was a complete anathema to me, just for the sake of achieving such divided equilibrium dynamics for a given election, is intellectually indefensible. You can make an appeal to "pragmatism," but, from an intellectual standpoint, you really have to start questioning the moral legitimacy of any such State that compels you to vote for whatever stiff with a pulse an opposing party throws out just for the "hope" that it will enforce some token measure of accountability.

I was not really intending to revisit this debate, but... WTF - I'll just rehash a comment I made here before:

"I see this primarily as a short-term and self-limiting. Although maintaining divided government has real benefits in terms of governance, the primary benefit of successfully implementing this tactic is to establish libertarians as a self-aware, broadly recognized and self-organizing voting block. Objectively, divided government only slows the growth of the state, with no evidence that it can actually begin to reduce it. I guess one way to describe the heuristic is that the Divided Government vote stands down when the Libertarian vote stands up. Ultimately, if the divided government constituency is co-opted and eroded because Dems and Reps are wrestling with each other to prove who are the better, more effective libertarians, and can prove this to the skeptical, rational, empirical libertarian swing vote ... well then our job here is done."

I have been flirting with the libertarian party and ideas since 1976. So you will excuse me if I am little tired of waiting for the non vulgar New Libertarian Man to come marching out of Galt's Gulch to the cheering adulation of the American electorate. At this point I am satisfied with promoting a practical voting heuristic which has been shown to slow the growth of Leviathan, particularly when I see absolutely nothing else that does. Absence of options clarifying the mind and all that.

Adam says he has the infrastructure to run this and volunteered to do it... That looks like the answer to me. I'm in.

The maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where it's true form is, 'divided we stand, united we fall. - Thomas Jefferson

 

(sorry that I cut the previous post short -- I had to run)

Anyway, if I were "the editor" of the FreeDem site, I would try to emphasize content that fit into one of the following categories:

• Argue that libertarian policies that promote Democratic/leftist values, or provide news relevant to such arguments.
• Argue that Democratic/leftist values should be given higher priority by libertarians, or provide news relevant to such arguments. 
• Emphasize the libertarian qualities of Democratic politicians
• Emphasize the non/anti-libertarian qualities of Republican (and other) politicians
• News about initiatives that would be of interest to Democratic and libertarian activists.
• General news on the history and current development of the Democratic Party and libertarian movements, particularly how they influence each other.
• Opportunities for social activism promoting left-libertarian values.
• Anything else that would be of interest to the community.

As I wrote above, I think that the best way to keep these interests balanced would be to draw content from other sites -- in the manner of Anarchoblogs or Drupal Digest. I envision two classes of blog posts coming into a hub:

1. (Primary: a la Anarchoblogs) blog posts by community members, that are specifically targeted at the FreeDem community and which are republished in full on this site, and possibly archived here also. I think that the authors would only have to provide an RSS feed for their off-site blog, and then tag the appropriate posts with a keyword such as FD, FreeDem, or Freedomdemocrats.
2. (Secondary: a la Drupal Digest) Blog posts by unaffiliated authors, for which we only publish the first few sentences. It may also be possible to add posts that are selected by community members as they browse the web (Diggish).

Both classes of content would be subject to community ratings (posssibly with extra influence given to administrators),. There is also the potential for maintaining original content on this site, possibly including commentary attached to the aggregated content, and possibly including "manifestos/guidelines/libraries" written by the administrator to help define the nature of this website and community. We could also have a collection of "classic blog posts" for contributions that were well recieved by the community and seem to have some lasting value.

 

Okay, that's it for now. Unless there is some objection to moving in this direction, I'll try to set up a demo site and let you guys know when it's ready for examination.

Sounds like you want to move in a direction of explicit dem partisanship(?), a direction i will likely take a pass on. There a 2 things I am more or less interested in: one, theoretical aspects of anarchy vs the State, and,two, speaking truth to power. Since the Dems are in full power now, and the Dem leadership is moving in directions which I oppose(corporate liberalism), I would be betraying my principles so to speak by strictly being an apologist for the Dem party.

I will likely look to get my own blog, anarcholiberal.org, going, which will deal with the first point of interest with me: the theoretical issues of anarchy vs State.

There's a reason the site wasn't conceived as "Freedom Liberals".

I've been a reader for a very long time, and I suppose what drew me, and also I think what the long tail entails, is the idea of a libertarian constituency within the Democratic party. It won't by any, any, any means be an intellectually pure exercise---I think Adam gets at it well in his bullet points. It's about trying to move libertarians towards a more liberal (vulgar) libertarianism, trying to make mainstream Democrats and progressives more comfortable with (some) strains of libertarian thought, and perhaps to find issues, candidates, and elections in which the two can meet. Check out the endorsements or even to some extent the links---that's the common thread. And as I said, there is plenty of that that goes on within conservative/Republican circles; this is, that I'm aware, the only attempt to forge some of that spirit in liberal/Democratic circles.

That was indeed more ascendant when the site began, with the Democrats re-investing themselves in non-interventionism, civil liberties, and then a lot of individual interest in guys like Schweitzer, Allen, Kos' never-realized book, etc. Now, as you say, there is a great deal of state-worship going on in Democratic circles, but that's always going to be the case whenever they get power (indeed, if anarcholiberals ever somehow rose to dominant power, that issue would be germane then as well, almost certainly). That makes the need for a constituency, however small, that opposes that kind of thing but through an emphasis of being in the interests of the party even greater, not less.

I never viewed that mission as being exclusive, or singular. It's not like it's ever been billed that that's the solution to all libertarian concerns, just aligning with Democrats. This site, to me, always represented more a thrust, sometimes even a peripheral one at that, taking libertarian ideas to new and (sometimes) hostile territory, rather than just sitting on the sidelines of academic theoretics.

All of this, of course, is very easy for me to say, as I don't have anything to do with the running of or writing for the site. But I've always appreciated the idea of this site being out there.

I'm not under any impression that "power' gives a damn about what some semi-anonymous bloggers think. I'm interested in speaking to regular activists in the world. I'm also interested in getting outside of the libertarian echo-chamber. That's what I think the purpose of this site is, and why there is a use to taking a partisan spin.

I understand if you don't feel like putting your effort into that project. I still want to read your writings (maybe I'll catch them at Liberty Papers, or on your own blog -- anyway, I appreciate your writing here as long as FD hosts original content).

But anyway, the issue is whether there is a point in maintaining this particular community identity (Freedom Democrats) and how to do so given the resources available.

IMHO: I think it might be good to consider developing anarcholiberal.org, as it seems like a good brand for the angle you're taking your philosophies in. It might be a more coherent home for that than FD. (My two cents; you can do what you like. Definitely announce here when you get it running so others can follow along.)

While waiting for an update, I decided to try implementing the site concept that I had described. I managed to get most of the stuff working yesterday, and figure that I can have a it ready for perusal over this weekend.

Even if I'm not going to take over the hosting, I figure it is worthwhile polishing the site as a demo. It will be at http://freedems.ownlife.org/drupal-6.9/  

I'll post a blog entry when it is ready for evaluation.

nm

Hey, nice job Adam! This is a lot more like what I'd want. So to replicate this sort of thing, I just need to use FeedsAPI?

IMO, I think it would work better to:
- allow generating new content on the site itself
- allow a human editor (rather than voting) promote articles to the front page
- keep it more simple, with just a community view, and a the front page being "recent" promoted articles, if that makes sense

I imagine that once I take a look at the configurations, it shouldn't look too hard.

I followed the model outlined for Drupal Digest, involving 4 modules:

Here's a complete list of contributed modules I used for the site:

• FeedAPI, FeedAPI Node and SimplePie parser as part the FeedAPI module
• Views and Views UI as part of the Views module
• Plus 1 for the voting mechanism and the VotingAPI module it requires

FeedAPI splits the feed content into independent nodes.

Plus1 and VotingAPI handle the voting stuff.

Views is needed to do complicated page display (such as selecting/sorting content based on votes) .

So if I read you right, the only function that you want to add here is to have the feeds coming in so that editors can select interesting articles and place them on the front page alongside original content produced on the site. If that is true, I think you'll only need FeedsAPI, and it should be simple.

The main problem that I had with the feeds is how the author information is displayed-- the Feed author (e.g. you) is listed as the author of the individual stories. I wanted to display the source feed in the "author" line, but couldn't figure out how to do that. Views doesn't offer great formatting options for the individual stories...I just went with the default node formatting. I could not find any tool for modifying node formats. It seems that if you want to change the node formatting, you have to go into node.php (maybe a different name) on the server and change it there.