Greetings peeps,
I held off making changes this weekend because of an interesting proposition that came our way and I wanted to get feedback from everybody first. Another website www.dagblog.com ran across our new site and wanted to know if we’d be interested in some form of collaboration with them. They are essentially like us in that…well here; I’ll just quote what they said:
Our site has absorbed a lot of the traffic from the TalkingPointsMemo Café, which like your group, is an intelligent crowd with its own distinct sense of itself. They seem to be pretty happy at dag, and we think these groups would play well together, and that our platform could be helpful in the long-term preservation of your commenting and writing community. We hope you agree.
So I thought I’d put this out there for your thoughts my good commenters. What say ye?
538 Refugees 
I followed a link there last week and, though I didn’t stay long, one of the blogs had a great George Carlin Video!I’m sure I’ll be back. I’ll repeat my comment about moving: if you do it too often, people lose your address. That is you will lose traffic at least for a while. Maybe being at Dagblog would increase visibility though, if that is important to you.Me, I’m just looking for intelligent, witty and diverse opinions on political stuff. I’m still looking for an intelligent conservative blog; so much of it (like all politics these days) is mutual masturbation and dittohead kneejerk ad hominen attacks on anyone who disagrees….
I know I don’t comment very often, but I log on daily, and I like it here.
The Dagblog folks seem like good, intelligent folks, but I agree with dr_funguy about not changing the address too often.If you could set it up so that “blog.538refugees.com” redirected automatically to wherever you finally land, maybe that would help.It says something that the commentary here is valuable enough to be worth wading through HTML glitches and other oddities for the loyal contributors and persistent lurkers. I wouldn’t want to lose the identity of this well-balanced community of reasonable voices from across the spectrum.
My thoughts… on cursory examination, dagblog looks like a bright, witty, fun kind of place. Interesting posts, sophisticated humor, awesome graphics. A lot of our commenetrs woudl fit in well over there, I think… and management chores would be greatly reduced for poor Mr U, the Reluctant Webmaster who is working on a thesis, teaching graduate courses, going on 2,000 mile hikes and playing in a band while also trying to have a personal life. (Plus the picture of “Sarah Bieber” currently on the front page over there is pretty much worth the price of admission all by itself … :-)My one complaint after a quick scan of the comments is that I don’t see the “bright right” well-enough represented, and I’m not fond of echo chmabers. When I’m in the mood to talk politics, I like to be challenged as well as agreed with.If we could merge and take our own bright righties with is, I’d be all for it. Dagblog could really benefit from a liberal (sorry!) application of Bart, Jeff, parksie and GROG. (I love those guys 🙂 I’ll bet the blog’s discussions would improve and their hit count would explode.”Hybrid vigor”… gotta love it.
My one complaint after a quick scan of the comments is that I don’t see the “bright right” well-enough represented, and I’m not fond of echo chmabers. When I’m in the mood to talk politics, I like to be challenged as well as agreed with.Amen! Echo chambers are, to me, rather pointless.
I echo (pun intended) what filistro and Realist said. The administrator over at dagblog says he has the same problem. My guess is that we’re hard to argue with and not prone to Mule Rider flame wars. Though it’s fun to have our neo-cons around.Good article coming up later by Michael.
I quite agree. We should do the merge thing. For all the reasons listed. And because, as the old saying goes, the more, the many-er.Here’s one suggestion. Keep the 538refugees.com URL and welcome page. The “Articles/Contributors” link can take visitors to whatever location will have the blogs. Best of both worlds — the brand is maintained, and there is a sharing of minds, and a larger community.
I’m… not that impressed. I read several articles and the comments and frankly it’s about the level of intellectual discourse I expect to find at Huffpo or TPM. Since 538 closed I’ve been spending a lot of time at LGF. If 538refugees moved to dagblog I’d follow it there but I wouldn’t expect it to raise the level of discourse or the general blog-IQ at dagblog.FWIW I do a lot of website tech support and would be happy to volunteer in any way. I do find the white text on black difficult to read but, again, worth it just to see the regulars and the intelligence.
Guess I’m just pretty content here and enjoy the information that at times explains things I have read other places. I get cranky at times with some but figure we all have a role to play so what of it? If we move I follow but not sure I see any thing at the other site that really excits me. Mr. U took on much for us to have this. I see above another offer of assistance, my offer of doing what ever could help stands as well.
Have to say I agree with Justsayin. I occasionally check out DailyKos, Ariana Huffington’s site and others, and by and large, I leave wondering why I bothered in the first place. Dagblog did have a very funny piece, which I very much appreciated. Some of the regulars here, though, occasionally post things nearly as funny/parodying, but that’s not primarily what 538refugees is for, anyway.Although Gator hasn’t found his way here, like many others, I appreciate that Bart, Parksie, Grog, and Jeff do post and sometimes have thoughtful comments to offer.Move to another site? Black background notwithstanding, I’m really enjoying this one! Sorry, Mr U …