ah..er...the hottie thing ...never mind..how about ; do any of the big media outlets keep in touch..to say;state their position or spin something a particular way?

Q: ah..er…the hottie thing …never mind..how about ; do any of the big media outlets keep in touch..to say;state their position or spin something a particular way?

Alan: We’re contacted by them occasionally … usually when they want to interview one of us, never to spin a story. During the war we had a high level media person (read, news director) from one of the Big Four’s online divisions actually leak the Jessica Lynch rescue to us before it broke in the press conference (here’s that post). I've also kept the contact information for some of these reporters, so if I feel something needs broader awareness I can send an item to then, but so far haven't done so (with the exception of the Susan Tom fund drive).

We’re also on the pre-release editorial email list for the Christian Science Monitor … they email tomorrow's stories to us the night before so we can link to anything early, and from time to time we do.

Who works us is the PR community … we’re regularly (once or twice a week) being sent press releases, or more often, direct emails asking that we tell our readers about something. And when we think it’s non-partisan, we do, and we always say “we were sent this by the concerned party” so you know (as we did with FrontLine).

Lets get the tough ones out of the way.

How disgusted are you at the tone of your comments function?

Was this not what you had in mind?

To you value traffic over your objection to disgusting comments?

Are you seriously considering dropping comments, and/ or Comment Registration?

How many folks are posting under multiple NICs, based on ISP #s.

Q: How disgusted are you at the tone of your comments function?

Alan: Usually, not at all. Sometimes, though … well, “disgusted” isn’t the right word, actually. “Embarrassed” is more accurate for me (Michele will speak for herself, I’m sure.) We spend an enormous amount of time on this site … by choice, of course. But as is the case with anything you spend a lot of time on, ultimately it becomes a labor of love, and with all labors of love, the value is intangible more than tangible. And for me, the #1 intangible reward is being able to look at my wife or family and say, “I’m really proud of what we’ve done here.”

When our comment threads take a turn for the worse, my ability to be proud dies quickly, and I become embarrassed by the level of discourse that’s happening under the umbrella of my labor and reputation.

Q: Was this not what you had in mind?

Alan: I always knew they could go that way … you only need to browse the blogosphere for a day or so, at pages on the left or the right, and you know how low things can go. I think it’s a function of anonymity … when some people can mask their identity, and when they can do so with no reliable way for other people to contact them directly, those people are willing to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t do in the bright and sanitizing light of day.

Q: Do you value traffic over your objection to disgusting comments?

Alan: Not at all … I’ll vote to toss comments in a second if I think it’s damaging the reputation of the site or the reputation of my name … and I’ve been close to that several times, especially with the Pat Tillman story. Frankly, we’re unusual in that we’re such a popular site that HAS comments … Instapundit does not, and the major news outlets certainly don’t.

And frankly, that’s the thing that keeps me from pushing hard to eliminate them: Philosophically, I think one of the things that makes TCP unique is the ability of the reader to participate in journalism … to talk about a story, fact check it, or make it better through additional citations in the comments. Without that, we’re closer to being another syndicated news site, and further away from being open source journalism, which is frankly one of the things that I think is so cool about what’s happened here.

What I am increasingly willing to do is ban the IP addresses of those who comment here in violation of our policy. To date, we’ve had 117,418 comments posted here, and have banned only 26 IPs. I’m proud to say not a single one was banned for a point of view, every single one was banned for posting a comment that was patently beyond the pale in terms of respect and civility. I’m totally comfortable with banning more should comments warrant … the policy is simple, clear, and plays easily to my and Michele’s gut read of right and wrong. And if anything, by improving the quality of discourse in our comments, participation and traffic will increase. Because at the end of the day, the point of Command Post is NOT to provide a forum in which anyone may behave in any way ... if people want to do that, they can do so in their own home or on their own site.

Q: Are you seriously considering dropping comments, and/ or Comment Registration?

Alan: As noted above, I’m not close yet to dropping comments … I think the vast majority of people who visit here would be eager to participate in a civil and respectful forum of discussion (although some of our readers might dissuade them from doing so by shouting down the least bit of an opposing view … something that I consider neither respectful nor civil, and those people are being handled appropriately). We are, I think, much closer to comment registration, probably via TypeKey.

In my mind it’s clearly the anonymity of the comments that provides the permissive context for boorish behavior. If you buy that, you need to shed more light on the conversation. At the very least, you should be able to receive email on your posted email address. If I can’t email you and have you reply, I don’t think you should be able to post anything you want in my comments. Just my two cents.

If I can?t email you and have you reply, I don?t think you should be able to post anything you want in my comments.

If 'I' means Alan or Michele, then your comment is reasonable. If 'I' means anyone reading the site, then we open ourselves to harassment. What do you think?

Q: How many folks are posting under multiple NICs, based on ISP #s.

Alan: Hard to say given the volume of our site (looks like we’ll hit 4 million today, BTW). I know a number of people have posted multiple NICs, and it’s easy for us to see this is the case because we can see the IP for each comment. We’ve had some people hijack other folks’ NICS; the hijackers were promptly banned.

NIC hijacking is clearly beyond the pale, and those folks should booted forever, I think. Posting under multiple NICs: if it’s civil and respectful, it’s fine by me, as long as the email address is real and responsive. Again, the “daylight” issue …

I agree. I notice this new guy "Double Standard" does have the moral courage to use an e-mail address. Though not the Moral constitution to avoid solemn threads.

Comment registration might hurt your traffic, but "readers" like him, would still be able to offer a POV here.

I too believe your combination of up to the minute news posting, and allowing comments, separates you from Google News, and makes your site so enjoyable.

What about Bandwidth costs? I'm sure you exceed your limit regularly...do you eat that?

and while I'm at it...

You guys keep this thing rolling night and day. I know you have other contributors spread the world over but it seems that Alan and Michelle carry the bulk of it. How in the world are you guys keep a roof over your heads? Michelle just bought a new house so either she has ties to NY mafia families or she has a day job.(perhaps both?)

Q: If ‘I’ means Alan or Michele, then your comment is reasonable. If ‘I’ means anyone reading the site, then we open ourselves to harassment. What do you think?

Alan: I mean everyone. I don’t think anyone who’s posting stuff that’s thoughtful, respectful, and civil is going to be harassed, and the blogosphere bears this out: there are 5 million bloggers out there putting their opinions on the World Wide Web, each with a stated and monitored email address, and very, very few are harassed. I know some are (Michele is, at times) but she simply adds that person to her junk email filter and puff they disappear from her existence. If anyone WERE to harass another reader (which has happened once, by the way), we’d ban the person leaving the comments and report the user to their ISP and any proper authorities.

I think it’s precisely the “post anything without worrying about how others might respond” stance that leads to the embarrassing commentary we get from time to time. Just as you act differently when your young son or daughter is watching or listening, I think that when the person on the other side of the debate can really engage you regarding your point of view it encourages you to be more civil in stating that point of view. And the same, of course, applies to the person on the other side … don’t you think readers would bombard a harassing commentator with emails? They would, which is why there’s a measure of accountability on both sides of a debate.

It’s the standard Michele and I live under … our emails are on the site and on every single comment. This is clearly part of the greater Internet experience that’s being forged now for the first time, primarily because of blogs. It’s a complex issue, but it’s also interesting seeing the norms develop, here and elsewhere.

Q: What about Bandwidth costs? I’m sure you exceed your limit regularly…do you eat that?

Alan: Bandwidth costs? What bandwidth costs?

;-)

Actually, our site IS a hog, more so that some other large blogs due to our comments and our willingness to post photos when we think the news warrants. This is complicated by the fact that each page is a high-traffic blog in its own right ... last I checked five of our pages were in the top 30 blogs as ranked by traffic. The biggest problem is actually server space, not bandwidth. We currently have nearly 1,000 megabytes of space on the server, and we don’t want to delete anything, as it’s becoming quite a historical archive re: Iraq, GWOT, and now, the 2004 election.

It’s here that we owe a huge, enormous tip of the hat to Hosting Matters, who have created our own pricing and hosting package designed just to accommodate the unique server demands of Command Post. We have yet to exceed its limits, though we’ve come close. They’ve also moved us from server to server (we’re now on our thirds) as our processing and storage needs have increased … they’ve been incredible, and I’d recommend them to anyone for hosting services.

i'm curious about three major points:

1. the actual scope of your traffic -- how many pageviews per day, how many unique visitors / ip addresses per day, and how many pageviews per comment (that is to say, how many people out there are lurking).

2. your thoughts about movable type 3.0 and its licensing scheme.

3. how many subscribers you have to your rss feeds, and how often (on average) people are polling them.

okay, four points:

4. what would it take to get you to vote for kerry.

Q: You guys keep this thing rolling night and day. I know you have other contributors spread the world over but it seems that Alan and Michelle carry the bulk of it. How in the world are you guys keep a roof over your heads? Michelle just bought a new house so either she has ties to NY mafia families or she has a day job.(perhaps both?)

Alan: We don’t discuss Michele’s family, at least ever since Uncle Nicky visited.

HA HA HA … HA … ha ha .. he … uhhh … nevermind.

Everyone chips in, especially when the news breaks. That’s one thing that I think we’ve demonstrated here … there really is something to the idea of “open source journalism.” We have some folks who may not post for months, but we keep their accounts live … then, when we capture Saddam or Bush visits Iraq on Thanksgiving (both of which broke here before the majors or Drudge), they log in and post it. And for that, we’re thankful.

Still, some are more passionate about CP than others … not to offend by missing names, but Laurence Simon and Alan E. Brain (yes, he, from Australia, and I, from Pennsylvania, are different people) come immediately to mind. Especially Alan Brain, who had never blogged before Command Post … he gives us a presence in a totally opposite time zone, 15 hours ahead of the US east coast, and the man can blog. In fact, go to his weblog and hit his tip jar or just say thinks, he deserves it.

We both have day jobs, which is while you don’t always see us post during the meat of the east coast day. What’s more, my job requires frequent travel or meeting time, which is why most of my posting occurs either early or late in the day, or on the weekends. In terms of keeping a roof over our heads, the tip jar and BlogAds revenues help, with the BlogAds being more significant … which is how your visiting and passing Command Post on to others helps us: the more traffic we have, the more we can charge for advertising space.

Even then, though, it’s not about the cash (which is good, because we don't make any). Indeed, we regularly turn down advertisers because we think they would make us, at least tacitly, endorse a particular ideology

A & M: Mind if I answer a few of the comments-content questions?

I know I can easily answer X's fourth question: Severe head trauma or being buried in a predominantly Democratic district.

if you didn't operate this site, would you spend more time posting comments of your own?

how much of the comment section do you read? when you do, is it for entertainment, information, or to act as the site moderator (limited as it is)?

haven't you ever wanted to jump in and post under an anono-nic just to refute/question a commenters post?

I'm a rookie to the blog-iverse so to speak, so please bear with me / ignore where appropriate.

First, have you ever considered an "intro" of sorts? I think this would be helpful to draw more people into your fold. I have found my entry into the world of blog somewhat terse, and think that there's a rediculously un-tapped element out there that could be gained with some relative facilitation. I'm thinking along the lines of bios about yourselves, short history of the site, timelines, etc..
I've really appreciated the news I've been getting here but it would feel more rounded-out with a little background.

And to all the aforementioned on making email addresses public (click on mine and you'll gain my opinion, respectfully)...what is to stop an observing 3rd party (ie. someone who never bothers to make a comment) from taking my address and doing what they will with it? Harrassing me from an altogether separate IP from whence they view your site, or using my address for their junk mail business, or whatever other purpose they may have. Again, I have the rookie perspective here, but I think the idea of registering your commenters and allowing them the option of displaying their email to just you or to the general public would be the best alternative.

Keep up the good work.

One more question (under the same rookie disclaimer)...

How do you recruit the people that currently help you maintain the site (ie. your co-bloggers)? Do you use exclusively other established bloggers, or journalists, or what?

Hi folks ... sorry I was away ... I was busy applying for our 2004 Democratic National Convention press credentials. Keep your fingers crossed.

I'll get back to the questions. And Laurence, answer away ... I'd be interested in your thoughts, too.

free
email
accounts

everyone needs a throw-away email address.

Q: The actual scope of your traffic — how many pageviews per day, how many unique visitors / ip addresses per day, and how many pageviews per comment (that is to say, how many people out there are lurking).

Alan: It’s hard to tell … every site statistic program you look at gives you different counts. Sitemeter, which we treat as our “official” count, currently shows an average of 8,126 visitors and 17,255 page views, but the average is on a short cycle, and I is already skewed by a very low-traffic Friday-through-Monday holiday weekend (to give you a sense of the disparity, one of our hosted web stats programs shows daily averages of 14,000+ visitors, and 37,000+ pages in May).

Looking over the past month, we typically run 10,000 to 15,000 unique daily visitors per day, and 25,000 to 30,000 page views. If Glenn sends an Instalanche our way, we’ll easily do 30,000 visitors / 50,000 page views, and when news breaks—like the northeast blackout or the capture of Saddam—we’ll run over 100,000 visitors a day and much higher page views (due to lots of reloads). There’s no way for us to tell page views per comment, but the ratios of visitors to commentators would suggest that the vast majority of people lurk.

Q: Your thoughts about movable type 3.0 and its licensing scheme.

Alan: I know Michele has strong opinions on this. I haven’t thought deeply about it yet. My initial reaction was “this is a beautiful thing which has just been commercialized,” which it had. And frankly, I can’t disparage Six Apart … they’ve chosen to take the venture capital and run the thing as a business, and as such, I think they should be able to earn off their ideas.

That said, if they’re going to go down that road, they should also be ready for the realities of a marketplace that will increasingly work to commoditize their ideas. No more “well, hell, it’s freeware, so I’ll deal with what dissatisfies me” slack from users once you start charging for licenses (especially at some of their price points). They have to be ready to deal with commercial demands if they’re going to offer a commercialized product. Regarding Command Post, the new structure would certainly place a higher burden on us if we were to upgrade, and for the money I would expect a dramatically better (and for lay people, easier to use) product … and depending on how things go, we may switch platforms.

Personally (and as an aside), as a business person, I think they have the model wrong. The value isn’t in the software as they have it licensed. As a commercial product, companies will need to use blogs with MANY users to get real value … as project logs, knowledge management tools, and internal communication vehicles. For big firms, and I mean McDonald’s big, the value comes from having not dozens but hundreds and hundreds of people in internal communities and networks able to share information and collaborate via a blog. And no offense to Six Apart or their investment bankers, but if I’m a Fortune 500 firm … hell, if I’m a Fortune 1,000 firm … 15 weblogs with 20 users doesn’t get me shit in the way of collaboration or knowledge management. In fact, with Six Apart’s pricing, I would need to front tens of thousands of dollars to get any firm-wide value … and for that cost, I’ll just have my IT division develop the capability in-house, or alternatively, settle for a way to tack a similar (but inferior) capability onto my existing, $400,000 knowledge management software.

What Six Apart should do is continue to sell the software on the cheap … in fact, they should GIVE IT AWAY, and instead advise firms on how to develop and integrate weblogs into internal communities and communication infrastructures—not on the technology side, but on the social side … usage, possibilities, change management, etc. But that, I fear, is something they don’t really know how to do.

Just my two cents.

Q: How many subscribers you have to your rss feeds, and how often (on average) people are polling them.

Alan: I don’t know how many subscribers we have, but my sense is there are many (our syndicated feeds are our most-hit pages, in fact). Some of these are mainstream news organizations. The British news outlet, News Now, for example, syndicates The Command Post feeds, a fact of which we are quite proud.

Q: what would it take to get you to vote for kerry.

Alan: Who says I’m not voting for Kerry? As I’ve noted many times in the past, while our readers seem to slant right, and while many of our contributors on their home blogs may slant right, we work very hard to keep the news pages (not Op-Ed, obviously) as free of contributor bias as we can (and knowing that you can never fully escape your context). This isn’t just blowing smoke: it’s part of the terms of use to which contributors agree when they sign on, and we’ve had to discipline contributors on more than one occasion for editorializing through their posts. As I’ve said before, our (mine and Michele’s) personal views may surprise you (although you can probably find Michele’s on A Small Victory).

I think one sign that we're doing this well is the fact that antiwar.com and a number of other very "left" sites link to our posts.

Q: If you didn’t operate this site, would you spend more time posting comments of your own?

Alan: I probably would. But as “co-founder,” I think I have to be sure not to steer the news pages one way or the other. The same issues are out there elsewhere in the blogosphere, and if I want to talk about one of them I can find plenty of places to do so. But again, it’s more about my not wanting to have readers, left or right, think I’m biasing what we post. I post Op-Ed items from time to time, but they tend to reflect a personal value I feel strongly about at that time (like all the stuff we did for Memorial Day ... my wanting to respect war dead has very little to do with my political leanings).

Q: How much of the comment section do you read? When you do, is it for entertainment, information, or to act as the site moderator (limited as it is)?

Alan: I read as much as I can, but one person simply can’t keep up. When I do I almost always start as moderator, but then nearly always find myself being entertained and informed. I have to say, for the times I read a comment and go “damn, going to have to ban this guy or post a policy reminder,” there are times that I’m astounded by the knowledge in our comments. Not just policy discussions, but first-hand expertise. When I read a comment that says “I was on those Iraqi oil rigs two months ago, here’s what it’s like,” I’m amazed.

Q: Haven’t you ever wanted to jump in and post under an anono-nic just to refute/question a commenters post?

Alan: Honestly, no. Not as an anonymous NIC. But it’s only a function of my sense of stewardship of the site. I have been known to launch the occasional broadside on other sites, though, and usually not anonymously.

Q: First, have you ever considered an “intro” of sorts? I think this would be helpful to draw more people into your fold. I have found my entry into the world of blog somewhat terse, and think that there’s a rediculously un-tapped element out there that could be gained with some relative facilitation. I’m thinking along the lines of bios about yourselves, short history of the site, timelines, etc.

Alan: We have a short “about the post” on each page, but you’re right … enough people are coming here for the first time that we should have a more rounded introduction. Great idea … we’ll gin one up.

Q: And to all the aforementioned on making email addresses public (click on mine and you’ll gain my opinion, respectfully)…what is to stop an observing 3rd party (ie. someone who never bothers to make a comment) from taking my address and doing what they will with it? Harassing me from an altogether separate IP from whence they view your site, or using my address for their junk mail business, or whatever other purpose they may have. Again, I have the rookie perspective here, but I think the idea of registering your commenters and allowing them the option of displaying their email to just you or to the general public would be the best alternative.

Alan: You well articulate the concerns of many, and it’s why comment registration is gaining appeal. Ultimately, if we feel we need greater control, I think it’s where we’ll go. (Also, BTW, our installation of Moveable Type prevents spambots from grabbing your email address from the comments, so that, at least, is something you don’t have to worry about.)

Q: How do you recruit the people that currently help you maintain the site (ie. your co-bloggers)? Do you use exclusively other established bloggers, or journalists, or what?

Alan: A mixture of luck and design. The original set (some 140) came on board as a result of Michele and I posting a “anyone who wants to play can play” notice on our blogs and the original Command Post site the first days of the Iraq war. Since then we occasionally see someone we like and recruit them, and occasionally we get an email from someone asking if they can join, and they need not be bloggers. Our position is and always has been: if you can abide by our posting guidelines and can write reasonably well, and if you want to join so you can participate in the effort and not promote your point of view, you can join. That’s still true today.

I have noticed many other bloggers seem to be losing interest in their blogs. Has this become more like work, than fun to you?

I have noticed Nikita Demosthenes seems to push the envelope on what you allow contributors to post.

A. Do they have to filter what they post through you?

B. You decided not to publish photos of the Fallujah Contractors here. Then you allowed the Berg beheading photos ( and your hits spiked ). Do you, in hindsight, regret allowing them here.

"our installation of Moveable Type prevents spambots from grabbing your email address from the comments"

actually it doesn't. address harvesters are now intelligently decoding the &#64 codes used in newer mt antispam installs. the most effective way i've seen at stopping harvesters is to either create a two-way hash in javascript (one of the more novel approaches is to store the e-mail address backwards in the source of the code, then have an onClick event change the address to the correct one) or to not display the e-mail address at all.

Just dropping in on borrowed computer time to say that I will get to these questions. I have limited access, as we just moved and the computer will not be hooked up until tomorrow.

Do they have to filter what they post through you?

Speaking as a contributor, no. I just log in and post, and the post goes up. Any review by Alan and Michele is strictly after-the-fact.

Q: I have noticed many other bloggers seem to be losing interest in their blogs. Has this become more like work, than fun to you?

Alan: I certainly haven’t lost interest. There are times when it feels like work, but those times are usually only when (1) there’s nothing really compelling in the news and I’m not learning when I’m posting (part of what’s cool about this is that it satisfies my own curiosity about world events and helps keep me one of the better informed people around), or (2) when I’m really hitting it at work. I usually pull a much-longer-than-traditional work week and posting at 5 AM or 11 PM, when I’m free, can be difficult at times.

Where I’ll start to fall down is in the things I try to do to make the site not just good, but great: finding novel, off-the-beaten path content; coming up with polls and other interactive features like our breaking news alerts; getting new contributors from far corners of the world; planning and working with the site design, layout, etc. These things all take time separate from posting, and when I’m short on time or spending needed time with family, they suffer. I also run or contribute to three other blogs (tip for you as attentive readers: the little-known Alan home blog is Avocare), and posting time needs to go to those sites as well.

All that said, at the end of the day, it’s still fun, and more than that, it’s worthwhile. I look back at the whole thing … that this is likely the first time in the history of the world that laypeople wrote a history, collaboratively, as it happened … that two of our pages have been made part of the US Library of Congress permanent collection … that major media outlets use our site as a tip sheet and that troops in Iraq email us to say they use our site to keep up with local activity … all that promotes a feeling of fulfillment and pride more than anything else.

X, thanks for the MT tip ...

Q: I have noticed Nikita Demosthenes seems to push the envelope on what you allow contributors to post. Do they have to filter what they post through you?

Alan: No. They know the guidelines, and they post first, we review and edit second. On the whole, the contributors do a great job of meeting those guidelines. We very rarely—nearly never—edit an original post. Occasionally we need to add comment to a post as “editors,” or ask that something be moved to Op-Ed. Very rarely have we been forced to delete a post, although we’re certainly not afraid of doing so. We’re also not at all hesitant to ask a contributor to leave. We’ve never booted one, but we have in the past drawn the threat. I think our contributors know we’re fair, but that we’re also not afraid to lose a contributor for our principles.

They’re also scared of Michele, which helps. ;-)

Q: You decided not to publish photos of the Fallujah Contractors here. Then you allowed the Berg beheading photos (and your hits spiked ). Do you, in hindsight, regret allowing them here.

Alan: They’re related issues in my mind, and you’re perceptive to see them that way. I made the call not to post the contractors photos, and did so not so much because I found them viscerally objectionable (because I did), but because I took the perspective of the families and thought “would I want those photos out on the web?” I simply thought posting them was in poor taste. It was a gut reaction for me, and I acted on it (and checked with Michele later, as she was busy that morning).

In polling the readership, though, I found that many did not want to see the photos, but they wanted the option. That’s something I should have realized at first, if I had been less emotive in my response … that we could put them in the extended entry and give readers the option. Upon reflection, I came to see the issue this way: information wants to be free, and the key issue of balancing the drive of the information to be free and the desire of the reader to control which information they gather is an issue of choice. So choice is what we should provide.

Of course, I think that choice still must be balanced by the importance, salience, and appropriateness of the information … a judgment call that Michele and I have the ultimate luxury to make. That’s why, for example, there are no photos of child porn posted in our extended entries, even though that information wants to be free, there is a demand for that information, and the extended entry would give readers choice about viewing that content: when all is said and done, not only is it not relevant to our site, it’s inappropriate given our values and the values of most of our readers. In that respect, we’re in the same boat as any other editorial staff: having to make a judgment call about what to “print.”

So by this calculus, I don’t regret having the Berg photos here (and I would regret having seen them if it hadn’t prompted me to do the whole Susan Tom thing), and upon reflection, I’d permit the contractor photos in the extended entry as well. Because of the political context, they were relevant, and I don’t believe totally gratuitous, although for many they may be offensive. So the choice option, for me, applies.

Interesting that you mention the traffic spike: not anything we ever considered with the Berg post, or really, any post. Frankly, Michele and I never think about traffic, expect when we notice a milestone is coming up (as it is today: 4 million). I think this is also a way Command Post is different from many blogs. I think exhibitionism is a big part of blogging for many of those who take up the hobby: we do it to be read and to get traffic, and a lack of traffic is, in essence, a lack of validation. If that wasn’t a motivating factor we wouldn’t all have hit counters on our sites. But I can be much more attentive to the traffic of my personal blog, for example, than I am to that of Command Post. For Command Post the drive is almost entirely about producing something of value … of demonstrating the validity of the distributed journalism hypothesis: we (the laypeople) can serve the need for news as well as, and in some ways even better than, the professional, centrally-controlled news sites. The traffic is a barometer of how well we do that, but the motivation is about the quality of the site, and not the attention of the visitor.

Reading x's comments and contributions on this thread is causing me cognitive dissonance. How does a tin foil hat wearing el cubo turn in to a well spoken, technically competent regular guy? Damn it, X, I'll never read another one of your comments in the same way (probably will still disagree with you, but what the hey).

Thanks for spending time here, Alan. I guess I am questioned out.

Let me convert this into a suggestion box.

If you allow comment registration requiring a valid / non-web based email address for password retrieval, I believe your will get less traffic, but also less childish name calling comments. However it wont stop people like me from leaving crude comments here, if they are willing to stand beside them.

You should consider some HTML automation software for the comments, to allow novices to more easily post hyperlinks here. And the ability for commenters to edit their posts. Some people are just too lazy to preview :o)

Maybe a published list of allowed HTML tags.

I like the recent comments function that Dan Spencer has on the right side of his Blog. It lets you know where the action is.

Overall, I think Yours and Michele’s creation is the biggest "Killer App" since the browser. My wife and employer curse you daily.

Thanks, RT. Appreicate the comments.

...staff pictures ?...hey what can I say..the intrigue is killing me ;-)..

SHIT!!!!!! I've been logging in 20 times a day for the last week trying to be number 4,000,000, and I missed it by 1,589. Congrats, and thanks.

What's your handicap, and do you ever think of writing professionally?

Q: …staff pictures ?…hey what can I say..the intrigue is killing me ;-)...

Alan: I kind of prefer my visage to remain private. Michele thinks I look like Rob Lowe. Not really … actually, Michele and I have never seen each other face-to-face, so her full visage is a bit of a mystery to me, too.

Q: What’s your handicap?

Alan: Sadly, 16.1, up from 10.3. See what blogging does for your game? Dropping recently, though …

Q: Do you ever think of writing professionally?

Alan: Frankly, no. My work already indulges my desire to write frequently, and the stuff I post at Command Post I don’t really consider writing … it’s not the right forum for my creative style. My home blog is my creative writing outlet (outside of some speechwriting I do professionally). If the right person were to call, I’d consider it, but it would have to fold in nicely with my career, about which I’m already very passionate. What I’d like to do is give more speeches: I already speak often as part of my professional role, but I’d enjoy doing more.

That said, if you want to improve your writing, blogging is an excellent method for doing so. It forces you to think about language, to appreciate brevity, and perhaps most important, a commitment to daily posting simply gives you plenty of practice. Pair blogging with a few reads of Elements of Style, and you have a great regimen for improvement.

Hey Alan (and Michele, but mainly Alan, obviously) -
Thanks for being so thorough in your little op-ed here. Appreciated the info you gave us.

"Do they have to filter what they post through you?"

I've been here since the beginning and I've never seen anything like that. I have had at least one post summarily pulled when it was concluded that my subject line was incendiary. (That's my word.) I have no complaint. This is Michele's and Alan's sandbox: they call the shots while they allow me to play here.

If I recall correctly, I believe I pulled one post myself, when I'd inadvertantly duplicated someone else's post of the same story only very few minutes prior.

Beyond that, I pretty much do what I want here, which is, essentially, to help keep on top of important breaking news. I'm one of those who sometimes don't post for a long time, but whose account hasn't been iced. When there is a story, and I've got an angle on it, I know where to put it so it counts.

This has been a remarkably valuable experience.

Q: Staff pictures

Unlike Michele and Alan, I'm not afraid to display pictures of the staff. Of course, the support staff consists of four cats and several potsl of triffids disguised as habanero peppers...

Q: Do they have to filter what they post through you?

Self-editing is the key. There are times when I've come to my senses and I'll remove my all-too-frequent parenthetical comments from a post in GWOT, but for the most part if I'm in a mood to fire both barrels I won't hesitate to fill the facade for terror that is the PA full of virtual buckshot.

Q: How do you recruit the people that currently help you maintain the site (ie. your co-bloggers)? Do you use exclusively other established bloggers, or journalists, or what?

Michele got me in a trade with the Houston Astros. The Astros got Roger Clemens, she got me. Clemens is 8-0, while my record is significantly worse..

It also helps with the fact that when CP was being set up, I was unemployed and unemployable. Despite being on a dialup connection then, I did what I could to help out.

Q: Do you value traffic over your objection to disgusting comments?

I tend to be fairly lenient when it comes to comments. It's kind of hard to keep up with several 100+ comment posts at the same time without extremely intelligent threading in the mail program.

I figure that folks are intelligent enough to ignore the "Kill them all, let Satan sort them out" ones and focus on the ones forwarding the conversation or presenting additional facts, information, or thoughts on the matter.

A: Still, some are more passionate about CP than others … not to offend by missing names, but Laurence Simon and Alan E. Brain (yes, he, from Australia, and I, from Pennsylvania, are different people) come immediately to mind.

I'm really just a front man for my cats. Frisky reads Haaretz, Piper reads JPost, Nardo reads Maariv, and Edloe keeps a constant Google search going for Reuters and breaking news.

I KNEW Edloe was trolling Google ...

I have my own domain and with it the luxury of an unlimited number of email addresses. I have never gotten spam at the email address I use here (HarvestedFromCommandPost@alanmrobertson.com). Is that because of MT's software, or because I also include a URL here?

Probably because of both, although now that you have it on the page, you might get some ... I'll put it on the list to go in a change your comment to harvestedfromcommandpost at alanmrobertson dot don't send me spam com or some such thing.

Tomorrowist. I have never gotten spam at the email address I use here

Do you comments lean or lunge left or right?

No worries. I have my email set up to have all mail to that address shunted off to another directory. When I see new mail there, I glance at the mailbox, see that I have new "urgent and confidential" mail from "PRINCE MUSTAPHA WILLIAMS" and mark the folder as read.

But this isn't about me. Do you have any favorites? Favorite post? Favorite response out of left field? What the heck, favorite troll post that was so bad it was classic in its orn right?

Tomorrowist. [...] Do you comments lean or lunge left or right?

To the best of my recollection, I've commented mostly in favor of the war on terror and in support of our leadership.

For the record I have gotten many e-mails from C-P Readers. Most of them are supportive of my somewhat extreme opinions I leave here.

Most are to wind-up online conversations with a more personal conversation that might not be appropiate here.

One was from a German accusing me of being a Nazi.

Using a real e-mail address here, tells me that you are a person that is willing to stand by what you say, even if you have to repeat to their face, in person.

I have had many e-mail addresses in my life, if I have to change it again, it aint the end of the world. I got spam before I posted here. Anthony, you could get one from your ISP, just for the command post if you wanted. Use it for password retrieval and then ignore it.

Stop being so freakin paranoid man. Nobody is going to harrass you over your enviromental views.
I did once want to have an off-topic enviromental discussion with you (re: non-fossil origin of hydrocarbons) but couldn't.

I believe nobody should say anything here, they wouldn't say to a stranger on the street. Or to a Muslim if you had a .45 in your pocket. ;o)

Stop being so freakin paranoid man.

Not paranoia. I don't have the time to weed throught email. I remember last year a few folks had been harassed, and as a result stop using their email. But you know what, I'll give it a try.

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