We're not going to reach our goal this fund drive. Let's talk. [View All]

[Skinner]

So, it's now Friday, and as I post this we haven't even reached 600 donations yet. Unless we experience some kind of miraculous and unprecedented turn-around, we aren't going to reach our goal of 1000 donations by Sunday night. But before you stop reading, the point of this post is not to beg you to dig deep and donate and put us over the top. On the contrary, the point of this post is to tell you this:

Message received.

You don't like what DU has become. Maybe you have very specific complaints, or maybe you don't really know exactly what it is that you don't like. But what you do know is that you wish it was more like the old DU. A community. A place that was special. Where we had big disagreements, but at least you felt like we all had something in common.

Yeah, I miss that DU, too.

I miss it so much that it makes my heart ache. I lie awake at night agonizing over it. I can barely bring myself to read my email anymore. I'm burned out and tired.

We (the DU Admins) knew that having a Democratic Administration would make things a lot more complicated and difficult here on DU, but I don't think we really had any clue how difficult it would be. I know that many of you believe the solution is simple. I know this because you send me scolding shame-on-you emails demanding that I do {whatever} and then DU would be better. I wish I shared your certainty.

We have been very cautious and deliberate in our attempts to improve the way we run DU, and I think -- especially on the moderator-side -- we have made a lot of very important progress. But the whole effort has the feeling of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Our approach has been to "do what we've always been doing, only better," but I am starting to think that much more radical change is necessary.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: Back when Bush was President, he represented the center of gravity in politics -- the focal point that determined "Which side are you on?" -- and everyone on DU actually was on the same side. Now that Barack Obama is President, he has become the center of gravity. I think it's clear that we still broadly agree on the issues, but we disagree on how best to get there, how long it should take, and how much compromise we are willing to accept. Those are the disagreements that matter now. To be blunt, we are not all on the same side anymore.

Imagine if during the Bush Administration, Democratic Underground had welcomed people who thought the president was doing a bad job, *and* people who thought the president was doing a good job. DU would have sucked. Sure, it might have been worth the effort to stop by every once in a while to argue with conservative idiots, but nobody would have felt like DU was their home, their safe-haven, their community.

This is the situation we face. Nobody is "safe" anymore. DU doesn't "belong" to anyone. We all want this to feel like a community, but we have two fairly large groups of people who each seem to believe that they are the rightful heirs to this community, and that the other side doesn't even have a legitimate claim to be here.

And here I am, grasping to the naive and outdated hope -- against all the available evidence -- that maybe we can all figure out a way to share DU.

I could "solve" our problems pretty easily by picking a side. If I did that, at least the people who would remain here would know that they own DU. They would know that they have a home and a safe haven again. And they would take comfort from knowing (finally) that the DU Admins are on their side, rather than cold, distant, unpredictable creatures whose allegiances are not entirely clear and who could turn on them at any moment.

But I am not prepared to give DU to either side. I see all the people who are still here (thank you for still being here, by the way, despite everything) -- some posting and some, sadly, only lurking -- and I see the people who built this community. Great people. Generous, big-hearted, smart, interesting people. Some of you might post strange and unpleasant things now -- including some things that cut very deeply -- but I remember what you were like before, and I remember how much I liked you then.

So we keep doing what we're doing. But I harbor this simmering doubt. I feel obligated to censor people, even though I have never liked doing it, and like it even less now than I ever have. I feel obligated to serve as an authority figure to a community of people (including myself) who are naturally skeptical of authority. I feel obligated to keep deleting posts and banning people, even though I know that each time I do it serves as "proof" that I have already picked a side, that I am already hopelessly biased, and that I cannot be trusted. I long to let you all take responsibility for yourselves, to give the community the ability to police itself and set its own limits, but in the past our efforts to do so have been rejected almost every time.

I think it might not be a bad thing that we're not going to reach our goal this fund drive. Perhaps it will provide us with justification to experiment with some really radical changes to this place. The Admins have discussed a lot of ideas, but we honestly don't know what's going to work, or what you all will be willing to accept. I think, to start, we're probably going to post some kind of member survey next week to better understand your attitudes, and get feedback on a bunch of different ideas. I'll be curious to learn if you are willing to try any of them.

Thanks for listening. And thank you for being part of this community.