Maggie's Farm

My, those certainly are some flowery comments up above! Not a harsh word or criticism among them!

Of course, if you hear nothing but praise, then how are you ever going to improve the site?

How about a critical response to the article?

"Well, no, Doc, actually we're-"

Excellent. Let me grab my fine-grade whetstone and let's go to work:

"My take-home message from these data"

If there was just one item of data in the table, would you still refer to it as "these" data? Of course you would. Likewise, if just one TV station was reporting a story, you'd still say the media "are" reporting the story, right?

Peggy Noonan posted a real refreshing article last summer on the interesting divide between the Old School journalists who continue to use "data are" and "media are", and the vast majority of people who refer to them in their singular sense. The data is on your computer. The media is reporting the story.

So, do you write 'properly' and end up confusing the readers with clunky readability, or do you break the rules and write how the people you're writing for actually use the words? I'm solidly in Peggy's corner on this one. You're writing for people, not to please your high school English teacher of 20 years ago.

"small-to-medium-sized 'boutique' site"

"Boutique" site? Where'd you pick up that faggy term? Call it "eclectic" and be done with it.

"With millions of sites out there"

90 million as per last estimate. What's really interesting is how many 'dedicated' blogs there are for subjects we had no idea anyone was even blogging about. In the recent 'Best Blogger' contest, I read a raging screed from someone doing a fashion blog and how upset he was that "fashion bloggers" didn't have any representation in the contest. Who knew?

>For 99.99% of "blogs,"

If there's 90 million of something, is it still supposed to be in quotes, like it's some hip new term and not really an official word yet?

"...it's a hobby and closer to vanity publishing than to anything else."

You verify this by focusing on your site stats. On one end of the spectrum is someone like me. I set up Google Analytics for my site stats when I opened my latest site a few months ago, dropped by the next day just to make sure it was working, and haven't looked at it since. Who cares? Do I write differently or post different things if I have 5,000 daily visitors or 5?

No.

From my viewpoint, if someone cares very much about their "number of visitors", then it is, indeed, a 'vanity' site.

"If we could take in $1 per visit"

You probably should have clarified that a bit. You meant when someone clicked on the banner, not just visited the web site, heh. And did you mean $1 or 10 cents? Traditionally, the usual click-through ad pays a dime. For a whole buck, I'd be buying computers by the dozens at flea markets for $10 and setting up a macro program to have them click on the dang link every 10 seconds. Get a program that 'rotates' your IP number and you're good to go.

"That is why we have not chosen to be a an official member of the excellent Pajamas Media site, despite being on their blogroll: we would have to take the ads."

Why not slip the ad on your site, but decline to take in any revenue from it? That way you could get into the PJ mainstream, but not have to deal with the paperwork. Also, I note that TigerHawk is a PJ "Correspondent" and in on their "Blog Roll", yet doesn't carry any ad banners, so maybe that's a nice compromise?

"Our recurrent question is whether we have any slight impact on 'the world' at all."

I've commented on this a few times in the past here, and in various blogsites around town.

The answer is, you'll never know.

Scenario 1:

Congress is about ready to pass the Shamnesty Bill. Michelle Malkin tells everyone to call or write their personal Congresscritter. 10,000 people dutifully call or write their Congressional representative which helps halt the bill.

Scenario 2:

Maggie's Farm tells everyone to write or call their Congresscritter about the upcoming Shamnesty Bill.

Half of the readers go "Huh?"

3 readers write or call their Congressional representative.

Scenario 3:

Maggie's Farm posts an article on a beetle. It gets young Bill Jenkins interested in beetles, and, years later, he discoverers the cure for cancer in a beetle he found deep in the Amazon Basin.

So, no, you'll never know.

But you can bet none of Michelle's readers are going to invent the cure for cancer. With your readers, there is always that chance.

"Still, we would love to have 100,000,000 readers across the globe, of all political stripes and colors."

No you wouldn't. You wouldn't be happy with a bunch of moonbats taking over the comments, and, with little instances of CDS popping out here and there, I'm not so sure you're even comfortable with Centrists such as myself. That ol' "all political stripes and colors" in a nice trope, but it's a total nightmare in reality.

"with full awareness that what matters most is our own integrity and intellectual integrity"

(ahem!)

"Hillary quote of the day:

"Where is the G-damn f***ing flag? I want the G-damn f***ing flag up every f***ing morning at f***ing sunrise."

That your idea of "intellectual integrity", BD?

How 'bout this one from the home page:

"Nanny-staters just never, ever, ever stop fucking with people. -- Ace"

I guess we'll be removing "family-friendly" from the site description, eh? How about the next time you post an article touting good, strong Christian values?

"We have had many comments about the amount of totty on Maggie's - some positive and some negative."

Not much fun when the screeching moralism preached by many in the right wing comes home to roost, is it? You post maybe FOUR pics of scantily-clad females a month, and (1) the complaints from the biddies in the audience come floundering in, and (2) you knuckle under just like the store that won't say "Merry Christmas" because it might offend someone, with this:

"Perhaps we need to control our inner 13 year-old."

Why don't you just tell the complainers that if they don't like the occasional hot totty, they can just take their hackneyed, antiquated, stifling Puritanical morals, shove 'em where the sun don't shine and get the hell off your site?

Of course, that would cost you a few readers, wouldn't it?

Too much for your 'vanity' to take?

Besides, I thought you were making a point. One of the real downsides of the RW blogsosphere is the rule, "If you're going to be taken as a 'serious' site, then you have to be serious 100% of the time." That means no jokes, and certainly no pictures of scantily-clad women. If you'll look, Ed Morrissey and Michelle Malkin have never, ever, cracked a joke on their sites. A little witticism is okay, but that's it.

Maggie's proves how wrong this assumption is.

"Also, we have had frequent suggestions that we create a place for comment threads, because they become diluted among all of our daily posts."

That's such a dumb suggestion I had to read it over three times to understand it. On average, a post here probably gets 4 or 5 comments. Some gets lots, but some don't get any at all. So, how is "4 or 5 comments" so many that the comments become "diluted"? Tell them, if they want to see "diluted", go over to Little Green Footballs. He currently has a picture of an ocean liner far out on the ocean. That's all, just a big ship on the horizon.

637 comments.

Anybody else here want to complain that their precious comments are being "diluted"?

"Well, we have been determined to reduce the amount of daily 'product,' but it never seems to happen."

Sure, that makes sense. "Well, there were so many comments that they got diluted, and that's why we cut back on the number of articles, so the readers wouldn't be hurt because their oh-so-valuable comments got lost in the swarm of 5 or 6 comments every article received."

That's one of the main reasons I don't have comments on my site. You end up changing the site's direction because of a very vocal minority, like the people who complain about the hot totty. But once you lose that internal compass, it's not really 'your' blogsite anymore. It becomes nothing more than pandering to the (approving) masses.

"Finally, another response to a repeated question: Why the anonymity of our writers?"

Unless one were (literally) trying to make a name for oneself, I can't think of anything stupider than using your real name on a blogsite with the slightest hint of a political leaning. You'd be going into the local market and wondering why the clerk was being particularly rude to you. Bad breath? Ugly shirt? Uncombed hair?

That Fred Thompson video you linked to this morning?

Bingo! And just feel grateful you didn't hear what the clerk called you behind your back after you left.
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Okay, that's my response to the post. Probably a bit harsh in spots, but that's how I write. Strip it all away, though, and the strongest point remains:

Michelle activates. Maggie inspires.


Doc's New Years Resolution Suggestions:

We, Birdie, Barry and the Junkman, do hereby resolve:

"a bit obscure but but"
"chosen to be a an official member"
"The NYT makes no sense on immiration."

- To proofread better. :)

- To spell it "Muslim" like the rest of the galaxy does.

- To recognize that the Clinton Derangement Syndrome that infuses this site is just as unreasonable as the BDS that infects the Left and that you have no right, whatsoever, to criticize the Left for the extremes it carries politics to as long as you're coming off sounding like a bunch of high-school sophomores.

Wow. :)

- To either eliminate the worthless email link on the page, read and respond to the damn things, or put up everybody's email address and let them deal with it individually, rather than you, BD, acting as some kind of censor or 'gatekeeper'. For a links guy like the Junkman not to have a 'hot line' email link is almost unbelievable.

- To not use the F-word on the home page anymore -- and still want to claim it's a respectible, family-oriented site. If you guys want to be Ace of Spades North, have at it, but please remove the word "intellectual" from any future description of the site or its bloggers.

- To promise to find out what it would take to incorporate a comments area that accepts embedded links. I haven't actually sat down and done the tests, but I think there's a distinct correlation between sites with tons of comments and ones that have comment areas where it's easy to embed a link. Some of the coolest sites I go to are from Ace's comments area. But if they're difficult to embed, like TigerHawks', or difficult to use, like here, people simply won't bother. That's a shame, really, as links are the lifeblood of the blogosphere.

- And finally, to promise not to change the site in any other way.

Speaking as someone who's been webmastering since the web was one month old and was the Director of Graphic Arts at a computer college for two years, I'd give the site an 'A' in design. Your balance of text & graphics is perfect, your images are usually sharp, the mix of vids and pics is excellent, and taking the extra effort to hide some of the longer articles behind a 'Continue reading...' is certainly a professional touch.

As far as the actual commentary goes -- despite the cool articles on beetles and tractors -- it's really the site's strong point, and is probably why so many eclectic sites never get off the ground. Interesting links are great, but if that's all we wanted, a couple of Instapundits would do just fine. The commentary here is a cut above in more ways than one.

To you three lugs, as well as Roger and Dr. Bliss, here's hoping for a fun, interesting, successful year ahead for a blogsite that is truly, truly appreciated.

Doc