Genghis,

I had no way of knowing she was invited by you - I assumed (yes, indeed I do know what it means) it was an attempt for someone to use the site as a marketing forum for their product.  Other times when any have tried to do same (not books to my knowledge, that is true) their post has been removed. 

If you would have done a little note or if there had been a 'thanks to Genghis for the opportunity to introduce you to (or post this) .......', the welcome mat would have been gladly honored and utilized.

If she has a public email I will write her explaining and ask her to please repost.

If I don't like how people treat those I invite to dagblog, maybe I should just stop inviting people.

I hope not.  I'm sorry you are upset and promise that next time if there is a post marketing something, I will email you to find out if it's sanctioned, but not comment. (I'm fairly certain I wasn't here for the Josh Marshall debacle, if so, I have no recollection.) 

I saw Kat did write a blog yesterday and I just hadn't had a chance to read it, she is funny and smart and I really enjoy her writing.

I am sorry that she took the post down. But it's up at her blogsite, so I'll read it there.

What is a blog for if it isn't to market your own books, your own talent? I don't get the animosity towards writers and them marketing their own work, it is a new world, many writers self publish and this is the new way of marketing. It almost feels like the worst kind of jealousy, one where people are jealous of another success. Wow, awfule. It's all about change and dealing with change and DAG should have the chance to expand her readership to many more people.

I don't like the knocks against Josh either, who has never not responded to any email I've ever sent him, I wouldn't know about DAG if it weren't for Josh linking to DAG. He is growing his audience too, and marketing the best way  he can.

There is much bitterness out there, too much. I am glad you wrote this blog.

I'm sorry it's come to this, G.  Ultimately, it's your house.  You have to set the tone and push the vision.  This seems like a good step in that direction.

I'm remembering now discussing the future of Dag way back when.  You were talking about putting up reader blogs and we ended up talking moderation a bit.  Having moderated forums before, I anticipated what a hellish job moderation might become.  I've seen enough firmly worded TOS warnings from you and A-man to know it's been that way for a while.

I'm not sure that I have any helpful advice to give.  Moderation sucks.  Internet forums give people an opportunity to say whatever they want whenever they want without any real world consequence.

I think some of it really is that we all tend to have a thick skin around here, when we're around people we're familiar with.  But we have been too quick to run some people off and the topic of Josh always seems to stir the collective emotional conscience.

Our first guests, with the post about the middle east, weren't accepted too badly at first.  I think that they kind of did a hit and run and if they had stuck around and engaged with their commenters, they would have fared better.  When they didn't, somebody followed their link and publicly dismissed the whole post as a freebie advertisement and then some abuse set in.  Frankly, their publicist should have told them that if they want to sell books that they have to do more than put together a generic blog post to be posted around the web.  It's up to them to build the relationships that sell ideas.

However, Dag would clearly be better off with more participation from authors and all authors, particularly those embarking on self-publishing, have a financial incentive.  They have to eat, too!  Maybe Kat can be persuaded to give us another shot.  I didn't see her posts, but I think the well was poisoned by the first authors.

That said, when it comes to mercantile interests, maybe this community of all communities, should hold books and websites and films and plays and ideas in special regard.  It is bad when somebody tries to use the site to sell knock-off designer shoes and we police for that.  But if the worst thing that happens is that somebody tries to sell you a book, try not to be offended.

As for Josh -- I've been on the less skeptical side and I signed up for TPM Prime.  If I feel like I threw $50 away, I know I won't feel bad about the money going to him.  Mother Jones and The Nation are foundation supported and those foundations are run by old money families.  Nothing wrong with that.  It's one way of doing left wing journalism and it's worked for a long time.  Another is to be like MSNBC and be part of something bigger.  And then you can be left wing until the bigger part doesn't want you to be any more.  Another way is to come from a wealthy family and then you can travel around the world documenting your own caring for the oppressed.  Josh doesn't have any of those things.  He has a history degree and once had a journalism job that he augmented with a blog.  He worked.  I respect that.

And, now let's get to what's important: us.  There's a lot of smart stuff written here.  There are a lot of good debates that should be shared and read more widely.  We should attempt not to undermine that by being a-holes to strangers.  Ultimately, we should try to bring people in, or we shouldn't be surprised when they keep getting their news and views from the same old, flawed sources.

Hmmm.... this sounds familiar to me.. like a time when I tried posting a comment on TPM last year or so and found was attacked intensely  for disagreeing with the president.  And as I recall there were times that things were really rank and heated in the cafe there at times.

I have not experienced that same animosity here at Dag but I tend to keep a low profile so maybe I just don't see these things.  I enjoy intelligent discourse and diverse opinions that have an added perspective of getting to know something about the writers here over time.

It would be helpful for us to give new posters a little space to say hello and reveal themselves and perhaps to be 'inquisitive' as you might be when meeting a new person in real life.

On the other hand I think new posters could also be encouraged to engage and find there way and everyone always has the option to invite dialogue to a higher level including Josh:)

Representative of human nature it might be healthiest for us all to learn as a community how to uplift conversation or move it to a more constructive place when it devolves as your post does.  Thanks for posting this.

Maybe invitations to review a new book could be done differently from the blog post format where one or a few ideas are put forward and people respond to those points.

When I made my comments on the Drew post, I was expressing actual confusion, not employing a rhetorical put down. I had gone to the link for the book and it did not let one "look" inside it, not even an introduction.

I can understand why an author hoping to garner interest in their writing might not want to write an essay for the sake of posting on a particular web site but that essay should be available somewhere.  I have read some interesting work via the Creative Corner where people just pointed elsewhere to view them. Maybe a "New Book" heading could encourage the same sort of interest and encourage both poster and reader to treat the matter differently than when responding to a self contained exposition.

By the way, I just reviewed the Mike Drew post, and the comments don't seem all that harsh, although many are quite critical.  And if a publicist steers client away from exposure to critical comments of that sort to protect the author's fragile ego, they are in the wrong business.

I have written some essays lately that were picked up by web sites with large readerships, and some of the comments I received were brutal.  They mocked my thesis, my argument, my writing style and even my byline.  It goes with the territory.  Guess what.  When your ideas are exposed to readers a lot of people don't like them.  You try to learn from the ones  that make good points and say an inner "F you, Jack" to the stupid ranters.

The authors of the recent post in question posted a book advertisement, a spiel, a pitch, a piece of marketing copy.  I am not using these terms just for rhetorical effect.  I think I'm describing the post 100% accurately.  That's all it was - a marketing pitch.  I ask people to read the text of the post which I re-posted above to form their own judgments.

It wasn't a piece of substantive content with a marketing pitch subtly worked in at the end.  It wasn't an excerpt from the book  It wasn't a post aimed at engaging with the readers and provoking discussion.  It wasn't clever satire on the nature of marketing and commerce.  It was pure, fly-by marketing copy.

So is the standard now that people can't use the reader post privileges to post marketing pitches for flowers, tobacco or legal services, but they can use them to market books?  Because book writers are creators whose unique service to humanity earns them a special license to hawk their wares in whatever forum they want?  That's good to know.  I work in the book industry and know many struggling publishers who are always happy to find more venues for disseminating their marketing materials.  And I can personally vouch for several of them as very nice people.

I wish I didn't have to say these things since they are probably embarrassing now to the author of the post, who probably wishes she had written something different.  It could have been dropped.  But it's the host who is not dropping it.  My understanding is that dagblog expects readers to do a certain amount of self-policing of the site, and some of those readers now are being charged with responding inappropriately to a guest in a way that embarrassed the site host, when it seems to me they responded appropriately to a kind of content that thankfully does not now clog the site.  It's no different than when you see someone drop some litter in your neighborhood and you say, "Hey, pick that up.  We don't do that around here."

Hey Everybody,

It seems to me like we've well exhausted this topic and that everybody has had their say.  Certainly, some good things happened in this thread.  If you'll consider something, I hope it would be this: that you post and write here to make the shindig a better place (funnier, more creative, inspiring, intelligently critical, whatever that means to you) and that you'll encourage others to do the same, whether that means helping some one out or mercifully letting some offense against taste or reason slide the first time. 

We should move the discussion back to other topics of life and how we live it, though.  I'm going to go ahead and close up this thread now.  I don't want Barack Obama to surf by the site and think we've given up the crucial argument of whether or not he and the Democrats deserve our support in a few weeks.

If I've cut off anybody's saber-like retort to anyone else, I apologize.  Write it down and use it in a short story, blog post, poem or letter to the editor to somebody.  Nothing ever has to go to waste.