Hi Barbara.  My tuppence-worth:

I (still) think ET needs some kind of formal grounding...a participatory structure with roots beyond the internet.  I mean, a members structure of some kind (and oh so open, and free at the point of entry etc.)...well, I banged on about that before!

Against that, if ET is an online magazine (a very good one), then forcing it into one box or t'other might hurt that.  Printing presses are often owned by one enlightened individual coz the various areas of the magazine live in different (and sometimes conflicting) worlds.  To give it one direction could be to push it away from others...

(btw I post diaries to a) enjoy myself, b) hope others enjoy reading them and c) storage for ideas/pics/quotes I've picked up and would like to refer to later.  So I'm on the edge of any discussion about moving things forward in a political-activism sense...I don't have the experience or the knowledge.  I can offer enthusiasm and comments I s'pose, but I don't think that's worth a great deal without...well, I'm back to my point at the top.)

And there's always the question of time/energy/commitment.  To really make (a) change(s) will take extra work, will or may be burdensome at times.  And although we have some agreements here, we also have disagreements (e.g. nuclear power.)

And, importantly, certain tasks will go beyond the "I can afford to do this for free; it costs time not money" part of our lives...

For instance.  It's clear to me that anyone investing in solar/wind tech. at present will make money.  Setting up a factory to manufacture components etc.  (or whatever...etc...) would be a wise use of anyone's time and money...run the whole progressive program through every step (hiring/firing/building/materials/advertising/etc.)  But I don't have the money, the knowledge, or any relevant skill set for such a project.  Yet I think ET would be a great place to bring together the kind of people (and money) that could.

So, I thought we could move ahead small-steps-style by re-locating the site in Europe, getting some basic payment and ownership system worked out (ownership=extra sense of belonging with all the other owners?) I was pleased to see that Canard Enchaine makes money and political waves and is owned by the journalists...that's my kind of thinking.

I agree with your questions, and that's enough of me trying to answer 'em.  Let the big brains type!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

and good questions...

Not all diaries here are the dissemination of knowledge/opinion, they can also be requests for knowledge. You'll find quite a few headlines have a question mark at the end of them.

Feedback is important, of course. It is only human nature that one's time spent here, whether creating a diary, or on an exchange of comments, is appreciated. The one thing we never really know is how many people actually read without making their presence known. There is nothing wrong with lurking - today's lurker may be tomorrow's diarist ;-)

It can be daunting that ETers are not afraid to disagree - but I have never seen it happen except to regulars.

So get started!

You can't be me, I'm taken

I really appreciate your comment, Barbara. I discovered ET a very short time ago and I really appreciate the positive attitude here but I do ask myself the same questions. So many

brilliant individuals

and

What are we going to do with it?

I'm a newbie so I cannot really comment on this in any comprehensive way but I do wonder if any regulars could let us know what "the whole picture" might be? If any ?

The only thing necessary for the persistence of evil is for enough good people to do nothing

The original idea was kind of a pan-european political grass-roots organisation, analogous the DailyKos. But we don't have the mass participation for that, nor is our brilliant readership (with the exception of Jérôme himself and Ritter when he was still around) well-connected (brilliance doesn't get you networking). For now, there is participation in EU consultations. However I would like to participate in something bigger, to do something of the caliber of Albina Ruiz's feat.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

But is validation from others ultimately the only reason why we contribute? Or do we write and share our opinions, wisdom, expertise and whatever skills we have in a hope that it might do someone, somewhere, somehow, some good?

Personally, my main motivation (well of course besides validation) to diary something is to 'spread the word'. Silly hope that advocacy might have more effect if a few others are convinced, or to get some understanding. From Lebanon diaries to train diaries. (Even my autumn blogging was kind of a tourist commercial...)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

... to which there are no easy answers.

The goal for me is to become an influential voice in public debate (I was going to write policy debate, then political debate, but it's both and more). Scoop (the software for sites like dKos and ET) makes it within grasp of unknown writers on the internet, but the critical mass is still elusive.  The trick is to get the combination of the brilliance of individual voices (more than one) and the readership of a mass publication. Getting readers to write and be read - and to let writers know what they think is something new and still not fully explored. There is an element of direct democracy, with all the associated risks of populism and cliques.

I'm glad that you see standards maintained here. We also have not to lose our soul in the process.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Ego: always..
Status: Looking for it.No way I/we can avoid it.
Questions: always
Learning: a lot
Networking outside, connections outside: null (except for the two cases mentioned above)
Internal future projects: Not sure that the effort put into it will lead to anywhere since we lack connections.

Probably we would need four times more readers to start networking and working in small projects where the load of work will not be very high, the quality good and then the possibility of succes not taht relevant (spending one afternoon and getting no evident results is OK, spending all the month weekends and not getting anything.. well... I think nobody would do it).

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

I was also silent for long time with diaries simply because English is not my native language and I cannot master it as Reinald Tolkien. I wish I could.
My mother tongue is not Russian as many think here, though I was educated in Russian and even wrote some books. I am learning other languages (Tibetan, Hindi, Mandarin), more books are in the line, participation here in full is very time-consuming (especially with pictures and links). I do really appreciate work of all bloggers who selflessly contribute to this wonderful site and I hope when I have a bit more time I could emulate them.  

cohesion is a big theme for me right now, along with coherence....last month it was identity.....

here there is a growing (motley) identity forming, there is a staggering amount of coherence, and yet very little cohesion.

a collection of spirited horses, difficult to harness as a team.

is some ways it was more interesting when there was more counterpoint, as when wchurchill posted.

but since we are mostly in agreement here now, there is more chance of being able to pull in the same direction, once we decide what to pull for...

so far it's been like a very above-average party, where you go home shaking your head at the improbability of meeting so many nice, funny, clued-in folks in one room.

while most blogs i find boring, ET shimmies along, serving as much-needed intellectual stimulation. i love the contrasts between wonky wonders and goofball yooma.

can we drop-ins ever become 'movers and shakers'?

prolly not, but we can let off steam wagging our digi-digits at those presuming to be....

satire acts as a brake to fanaticism, which has far too big a bootprint on all our lives.

fanaticism is prelude to fascism, and we all should and do worry about that.

what to do?

well, till we find a cause for yurp as worthy as kos has in restoring a nation, we can come and soothe our impatience, keeping each other as savvy as we can by speaking out and sharing our feelings, validating each others' perceptions, debunking propaganda (this would justify ET by itself), and reminding each other that loneliness is often geographical, and with this amazing technology we can disseminate opinions, sharing info (and even emotions) at lightning speed.

i see ET as a still-new machine, revving up in the hangar, getting ready to....matter a bit more?

or is that too much to hope for?

i think when we are ready to fly, the destination will emerge, and like you, i wonder if our virtual kaffeklatsching will bear fruit, or just the pretty blossoms of repartee that help the hard truths we face each day a little easier to swallow.

mux meta4s means time to end comment...

best meta ET diary yet, thanks barbara

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

I have not seen any insults so far...

This is easily remedied:

^{"You have the intelligence of a bucket of rocks."
"A mud pack is good for the complexion. I suggest you leave it on."
"Thou weedy motley-minded baggage!"
"You are so stupid, If you had a brain you'd take it out and play with it. "
"You have as little honesty as honour."
"Are you always an idiot, or just when I'm around?"
"Don't let your mind wander - it's too small to be let out on its own."
"If you were orphaned when you were a child, I feel sorry for you, but not for your parents."
"You lisp and wear strange suits."}

This is a full-service blog.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

It's both easy and hard to answer your questions, Barbara. Easy to say we probably share a similar view of a tired and fucked-up world (yes, the world always was, but there are ups and downs and we're on a down that might be terminal) and a desire to speak with a new, energetic, and authoritative voice that might help humans live more generous, linked lives on a breathing planet. That, to develop a voice, we've discussed using, and use to a greater or lesser extent, tools that (are not mutually exclusive and) include

• this Scoop site, its community exchanges (virtual and real), its writings and comments, its debates, its capacity to attract new participants;

• monitoring the activities of the European Union and attempting to have some (small) influence on them -- this has at best led to a couple of contributions to EU Consultations;

• pushing out sketchy pseudopodia that correspond to a wish to watch, monitor, critique, formulate policy, communicate to the media, in other words develop a think-tank personality;

• since Ritter has been mentioned, another possibility is "networking", using connections to find receptive ears in the corridors of power;

• an overarching project at least some of us have discussed is the creation of a new narrative for society and the economy, to replace the one anti-progressive, aggressive capitalism has used to turn the world to its profit over the last thirty years.

The hard thing is to say what we can actually do with the time at our disposal. Try doing all these things at once? I don't think it's possible. Some of them are beyond us at the moment -- the think-tank, for example, or the connections (though Mig might be right that the connections will come). None of us can be full time on ET, many of us are stretching the time we can give. We need more people, particularly Europeans (non-Europeans please don't take umbrage, this place is open to the world but its focus is European). We can invite family, friends, acquaintances, contacts to tune in here, but above all we can collectively contribute to make the place intelligent, attractive, alive -- and accessible to those for whom English is not their first language. For the moment, I think that's quite a lot of work for apprentice train-stoppers.

Sorry if this sounds discouraging.

I think of ET as a european magazine with a political agenda. And I think this is a way of affecting political change in the EU.

One of the main problems of the politics on EU-level is the lack of accountability. Just look at the reporting from a minister-meeting. Every minister returns home and proclaims loudly to the pres what they salvaged from their greedy opponents and what they alas had to conceed. I have the feeling that if you compare all those statements you will find reforms that no one claims credit for and yet they passed and you will find stuff that everybody claims they loved that failed. I feel that way because no one checks them, there is no european public. And if you do not believe me, ask yourself which party groups advanced and which went back in the last EU-parliament elections? You probably do not know (except if you read it in an outdated comment of mine here at ET), but I guess that you do know which parties in your country that gained and which lost seats?

So I see ET as a way of building a european public sphere. And I think that is very important for changing Europe. If we can channel this into specific actions, all the better.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. So is truth, as I say... to start with a snark.

Let me share something personal with you. When I first joined ET (November last year) I was at a crossroads, lost, and looking for the warmth of the tribe. That warmth I did find, and appreciation, and recognition, and much newer to me, humility.
When I left, it was because what I sensed over there was too much of ego massage, perhaps not enough of my own, for that matter. I do not qualify to answer your so right to to the point questions as my own story with ET is too much of a love and hatred one.

Among the many things I owe ET is discovery that the tip jar is actually a great invention.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have this single one (after Paul Claudel, rusty translation being my trade mark). Ego massage is dangerous only if that's all what it's about. ET is so much beyond that. And ego massage is good in a world otherwise made of doom day augurs.

When through hell, just keep going. W. Churchill

I spare you the usual outsider's look and perspicacity blah blah. I am no longer a regular. Used to be. Used to be quite proud of it actually. Not dreaming, I am confessing all my sins, but the repentance is for tonight only so take advantage. :)
Used to have (and may still have) all the overinflated ego symptoms. But never would I have said that people who just ... what's the blogosphere word for it again ? Let's say "poke in" are less entitled to raise issues and ask questions and question the system. There is no one to claim more relevancy. No one to fear less.

When through hell, just keep going. W. Churchill