First off, bonus points for tardigrades.
Second, I like that much, much better. I think it does set it up slightly as a dichotomy, but the addition of a third participants (or fourth or fifth) would turn dreary argument into a buzz.
A+. Er… full marks… Hm…
Five Water bears.
Sounds like we need a point-counterpoint on the use of this font.
I thought we were using Comic Papyrus.
If I have any influence at all in my position as convenor, I say
The key word here is discuss. You can discuss any topic in a civil manner, but whoever posts on the next mass shooting is going to find himself with a comment section on gun control whether he wants to or not.
Just stating your opinion on the latest blockbuster can easily put you at odds with some very nasty people who will feel threatened because you do not love what they love, there’s just no escaping it, at some point you have to decide you’re OK with pissing some people off if you want your opinion to be heard.
Having said that, I agree with this:
The key here is “hater’s gonna hate”, all we can control is what we write.
To be honest I like d’oh more than oops.
Reading this thread has reminded me why I do illustration:
‘Snow, we need something for tomorrow’s opinion piece on circus groupies.’
[six hours later]
‘Looks great, love the ink splatters. Send me those sketches for next week’s in-depth sometime tomorrow if you can. Cheers.’
I don’t think that will work so well with us… remember how “herding cats” has been a recurring theme in this thread. Finding a consistent voice will be a fool’s errand, and I think would be more appropriate in a personal blog rather than a gang-owned one like this. I mean, I think the initial germ of an idea for this blog must have arisen from seeing how we all communicate on the BBS, right? And @Mindysan33 doesn’t sound anything like @IronEdithKidd, and neither’s writing would ever be mistaken for something written by @ActionAbe, and so on.
I mean, you could go ahead and found a blog using only the writers who can write in some kind of unified, consistent voice using “the format, voice, and subject matter standards that we all agree are necessary to ensure consistency and quality.” (And I think it’s obvious that I do not, in fact, agree with this particular point.)
But I think we have a fascinating group of voices here, and the qualities that make those voices interesting (and make the whole idea of this blog interesting) should not, I stress, be homogenized for the sake of consistency. Not every post needs to be a gem.
I, for one, will rarely (if ever) write a post that relates to what my old Social Studies teachers used to call Current Events. My first post is planned to be about the recent death of my father, and it’s a very personal thing that might not mean much to every casual reader, but I hope will be readable… at least as much as anything else I write.
So we gotta decide: how focused do we really want to be with this blog?
Well, you know that’s gonna disqualify me right out the door. 
I really do like it for headlines, but it’s terrible otherwise.
Maybe voice is the wrong word. What I’m saying is that we should aim for some consistency in the kinds of things we post, the format we use, and the general way in which we say it, which is not to say that we all sound the same, or have the same opinions. I don’t want that kind if consistency - the point of this was to elevate the commenters, not to take away their unique commentariness.
Again, I think there should be different catagories - this seems like a “story” or “essay” entry for which the point-counterpoint format wouldn’t apply.[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:309, topic:79000”]
So we gotta decide: how focused do we really want to be with this blog?
[/quote]
I don’t think should be a completely blank slate, but I’m open to some experimentation.
Couldn’t agree more.
An open question to each and every contributor in this thread: in a single sentence, how would you describe BB to someone who hasn’t heard of it?
I wouldn’t, because I couldn’t get across any useful description in fewer than six or eight sentences.
But that’s me. Brevity ain’t the soul of Donald.
Hmm. Now that you mention it, anyone attempting what I just described would likely be seen as manic.
[Erases work on his counter-point to how Donald feels about the death of his father]
Have to think about that, but I am sure the word “Marxist” would be in there somewhere…
A directory of wonderful things written by professional bloggers, with a very busy discussion site hidden inside.
A unicorn brigade shining light on wonderful serendipities, oblique fascinations, and, increasingly, terrible people and developments and what, if anything, we can do about them.
I think we should keep ourselves a little agile in the beginning and experiment some.
It’s not all that hard to rearrange articles or even create multiple entry points with different views of the same stuff, and I certainly wouldn’t presume to know where the gems are going to be or what’s going to stick the best. It may even be that we discover that there’s a dual identity to this whole thing (with one entry point being more in a ‘random acts of senseless fun’ direction and another in a ‘deep thoughts’ one for example)
Plus for all we know there are a couple of lurkers here who are going to suddenly go nuts and turn into lynchpins or blossom before our eyes. While I’m a big fan of having a plan, I also know that it’s pretty easy to overbound the box prematurely during the design stage.
We’ve got some nifty folks with lots of great ideas and while not everything’s going to work there’s a HUGE window of opportunity and a lot of pent-up demand for good online communities.
Heh. That gave me a welcome laugh. 
I heartily agree. If anything, I think it might be a good approach to keep the design and face of the blog as neutral as possible, and let the voice(s) emerge organically. If I were Emperor of this ice-cream stand, I’d look at each submitted post and just ask myself if it’s halfway interesting and reasonably well-written, and let it out there. I honestly don’t think it needs anything as formalized as a Mission Statement or an editorial policy as such… or even a pre-imposed identity stronger than the communicative bonds we’ve established among ourselves here in the BBS. If this thing’s gonna work, I think it’ll need to work without the pressure of prefabricated expectations… and if it does work, it’ll build an audience and begin to establish an identity, and a voice, and a brand.
It’s all well and good (and advantageous, I think) for us to review submitted posts together, and avoid approving ones that are unnecessarily inflammatory, or abusive, or (saints preserve us) boring. But other than weeding out the stuff we actively don’t like, I don’t think we need to do a whole lot of curation or high-handed editorial guidance toward meeting some more-or-less arbitrary tonal standard.
That said…
Yes yes! This! It should essentially be a magazine, with feature articles, the occasional column, maybe a cool webcomic, and a lively Op/Ed section for all our strong opinions to get a healthy workout. Right?
Anyway, that’s tuppence more of what I think.
Also, that helps with workflow distribution. It’s not like one person has to be on top of everything, and the categories are obvious places to ‘tree out’ responsibilities.
Plus the categories will make it fun for us when we’re writing. I’m guessing ‘weird nature’ is going to be something I’m a heavy contributor in for example, but I’m really looking forward to seeing others trying to out-weird me (or find strange critters that I know nothing about) Categorization kind of sets that sort of thing up. 
It also might help when it comes to gathering writers. For example Joseph over at Real Monstrosities might really take to an invite to join a nature-related subblog (he’s a cool dude) but would probably be less interested in something generic.
