It’s no secret there’s been a big influx of new members in the last few months. I’ve read some introductory material, diaries as well as posting guidelines. A few of them are here
Posting Guidelines
FAQ
Welcome Mat: Q&A Continued
Welcome Mat: Q&A Edition
Insider’s Guide to Motley Moose
And still I have questions. Maybe you have answers. Or maybe you have more questions.
This evening I finally opened my laptop. When I saw Denise’s thank you diary I started to make a comment, then realized I had enough I wanted to say that it was probably too much to post there. I didn’t want to throw an important community diary off topic.
Since Sunday I’ve stayed under the radar. . Bottom line, I am battling severe depression. Not sure if it’s side effects from all the drugs given to me when I was sick and on the ventilator for four days, or if it’s issues going on in my life right now, maybe both.
Even doing the “I have much to be grateful for” thing several times a day hasn’t helped much.
Thing is, I do have a lot to be grateful for. On the other side of the coin there’s some major emotional life stress going on long term.
For eleven months I’ve had a trip to Miami planned for this week. I’ve been in such a funk that it took some people IRL to convince me to go. Snow and record breaking low temps in IA helped, too.
So I’m here. And it’s warm. Yes, I am grateful, and those loving people who made sure I got on that plane are now jealous as hell. They’re freezing their asses off back there and I’m eating sushi outdoors on a patio this evening.
About a week ago I attempted to start a late night diary series here. I need to apologize for not following through, just disappearing.
Due to real life situations lately, and also very hurtful things that I experienced at GOS, I suddenly felt vulnerable posting somewhere new. Vulnerability kicks off fear for me at times, when I don’t handle fear well I tend to disappear. That bit of neurosis, along with the spiraling depression, sent me back into my shell.
The point to all this rambling is that I am very glad the Moose-a-thon was pointed out to me. I am very grateful for this place and those in it I’ve known of some time, and for those folks I’m getting to know.
Do you ever find yourself in awe of where you travel to, without physically moving, when you wander off to various paths in search of a question on the intertubz?
In trying to come up with some brilliant, original, mind blowing, spectacle of an overnight type diary I started pondering whether moose are nocturnal creatures.
An hour later I had learned a LOT about the animal and how much effort has been put into learning about them, too. Let’s not talk about what I should have been doing with that hour, I’ll just say I’m glad the friend I was almost an hour late to pick up for a dinner event we were going to doesn’t read MM…….
Good morning.
Yours truly here is hopelessly a night owl.
Many reasons for why that’s developed over the years but it’s just who I am .
This is a weird topic for my first ever diary here at the Moose.
As I was sitting at the desk I began to wonder just how many meese/meeses? are night owls too.
And more importantly are any of you interested in an open thread, late night hang out, sort of thingy? We tried one for awhile over at the orange, “WAYS-Why Aren’t You Sleeping?” When I say we it ended up being me, jlms_qkw and Frugal Granny most nights with few pop-ins.
Maybe a late-late version of overnight news. Like a “while you were sleeping thing” we could all contribute to so that those early risers have a point of reference to catch up over their morning brew and say hey to us who were creeping ’round making tracks while everyone else was sleeping.
And then there are our friends across the pond. They’re up and about around by now. Would some fresh stuff to hold you folks over until morning when Moose Check-In and F-Bomb appears be of interest?
When Miss Mayta looked around the other day and noticed that many of her favorite bloggers were missing, she followed a trail of purple breadcrumbs which led her to The Motley Moose.
Turns out they weren’t missing after all … they were just meesing!
Greetings fellow Moose (and lurkers!). Welcome to our Insider’s Guide. While most of what one needs to know of the Moose can be found in our Posting Guidelines, FAQ, and About pages, there are lots of quirks of the Moose that are unwritten. Longtime moose are in tune with the spirit of the blog, and they’re familiar with the ins and outs of “getting around” in these parts. For new people, Moose formatting, settings, and culture may be quite foreign.
Not to worry. Motley Moose strives to be a highly inclusive, comfortable, open environment. As such, the last thing we want is for any of our newcomers to feel left out or confused. Hopefully this diary will provide adequate answers to any lingering questions you might have, and perhaps it will answer questions you haven’t even had time to think of! We hope the following tips help you get your bearings and find your stride. If any of your questions remain unanswered… you must be one creative moose! And you are always welcome to email us via the Contact Moose link at the bottom of each page.
Here at the Moose, there really is no such thing as threadjacking. Just about any thread on the Moose is a potential Open Thread, and no one is going to get fired up over a left field comment.
There is no such thing as Jumping the Tip Jar because we don’t traditionally use Tip Jars. Our diarists may not even leave a top comment (though, if a diary has JUST been posted, it is courteous to wait a few minutes before commenting in case one is being written).
Ratings on the Moose are more for fun and support than anything else, especially since we have such a courteous, well-behaved group of regular commenters. We do not tend to take ratings as seriously as other sites might. In the most general of terms, our ratings can be defined as:
Fierce = Anything from “Ayup” to “Oh hell yeah!!!”
Meh = “Meh.”
Fail = “Oh hell no!!!”
We really are pretty laid back as a rule. As such, Fail ratings are rare, rare, rare. If someone has Failed a comment of yours, odds are it was in error (easy to do on a laptop when rating multiple comments).
Think of our comment threads as dinner table conversations. We start with the assumption that all come to the conversation with good intentions and go from there. If you get upset or angry, get up from the table and step outside for a bit. Things can still get heated here at times, but we do tend to make peace quickly and continue working towards finding common ground.
The Moose does not allow retaliatory HR’ing. Do not exchange Fail ratings back and forth with anyone during an argument, and do not fail a “bystander’s” nearby comments because they HR’d one of yours. If Fail ratings are being passed around in earnest, something is wrong, and it’s time for those receiving them to take a little break from the computer.
The Moose moves at a slower pace than some other sites. Rather than lasting a few hours, a conversation may last for days (and/or be carried over into multiple diaries). Don’t be shy about commenting in a diary that is more than a day or so old. Chances are, moose are still watching it.
The Moose is an Anti-Flame Zone. Our interactions are more like casual discussions with family and friends. That said, everyone has a bad day now and again, and we just try to cut each other some slack when it happens.
Try not to drag drama and/or altercations from other sites over to the Moose. Odds are, the moose it would interest are already aware of it, and those that aren’t probably don’t want to be aware of it in the first place.
Users on the Moose are to be judged and rated based on the content and quality of their diaries and comments HERE only. Do not pick fights with people based on their behavior on other sites. The Moose also does not allow Hide On Sight (HOS) rating. Do NOT hide a comment that is not hide-worthy just because you do not like a user or his/her message.
Avoid excessively criticizing other blogs’ moderation, membership, or site content. We try to avoid bashing other sites in general (the obvious exceptions to this rule would be Rightwing and/or Hate sites). We see no need to build a divide amongst those fighting for the same causes. In fact, most Moose are active across the blogosphere. For example, many Moose diary and comment regularly on Daily Kos.
To follow what we are up to on DKos, join and f
ollow the Group Moose Tracks: Moose on the Loose. By looking at the profile for the Moose Group, you can click on individual Moose and follow them as well.
Moose have pretty thick hides, and many (if not most) comments have a healthy dose of snark in them. Almost universally, we tease each other out of affection. If you find snark aimed in your direction, just laugh and roll with it. Even if you’re new and not accustomed to this sort of banter, chances are it was well-intentioned and good-natured.
This is YOUR blog. Write about whatever you want. While our primary emphasis is politics, we also love food diaries, horse/pootie/woozle diaries, poetry diaries, science diaries, biographical diaries, photo diaries, funny clip diaries, and any number of other things you can think up! Music, books, travel, personal stories, and the occasional unicorn porn fansite are welcome. Whatever you feel led to blog about is fair game on the Moose, so long as it abides by our Posting Guidelines. Not only do we want you to join in on the conversation, we want you to start new ones!
While the Moose is indeed now YOUR blog, we understand that many people keep personal blogs as well. Moose with Blogs is a blog roll found in the right column that links to… you guessed it: blogs that belong to other Moose. If you have a personal blog that you would like added to the Moose Blog Roll, you can ask in any active thread or use the Contact the Moose link.
If you are plugged into social media, Motley Moose has Twitter, Facebook, and Networked Blogs accounts. You can find links to all three in the far right column beneath the Moose with Blogs section. Add us, Friend us, and Follow us!
It is highly recommended that you download the browser add-on Lazarus. It is available for both Firefox and Chrome, and it can be an absolute sanity-saver. It prevents the loss of a diary draft or comment (on any site) in the case of an errant click, power outage, or balky computer (and it also prevents the loss of forms and emails). Do yourself a favor and take the very brief time needed to add it.
Put quite simply: Our Search sucks. Try using the Advanced Options beneath the search box at the top righthand corner of the page, then hit teh Googles in case of colossal Search FAILure.
You will occasionally see a diary labeled The Lounge. The Lounge was an early forum for all things silly during the building of the Moose. Our resident snarkmeisters reigned supreme and kept us all from getting too serious. We carried The Lounge over to Motley Moose in the form of snarky and/or free form diaries. A couple of examples:
The Lounge: Flashback-Gate and part deux
Feel free to use the “The Lounge” as a subject header when you want to get your snark on. It is NOT necessary to begin a diary with that heading simply because it is apolitical or whimsical. The designation is really only meant to be used in cases of [how to word?].
Our comment threads tend to become “unmanageable” at about the 200 comment mark. Things get boggy and can really frustrate those with slower machines. So when a comment thread is hopping and has reached that point, just start a “Part Deux” diary to continue the conversation.
You may find that using Preview while writing a diary is a frustrating experience. The font, spacing, and general “look” do not accurately depict the way the diary will appear once published. In order to see it properly, select Draft, then Preview, then SAVE (as draft). Viewing the saved Draft allows you to see the diary as it will appear once posted. This process adds a couple steps, but in the long run, it can save time in editing.
To post YouTube clips, please select “use old embed” code when embedding. Soapblox does not accept iframes as valid tags. Also, when posting video OR images, please avoid using those which exceed 500px in width because it distorts the formatting of the site. Be aware of how far to the right margin you are in a comment thread — if it is a long thread, the images should be even smaller.
The front page of the blog has a Recent Comments section which displays the full subject lines of our most recent comments. Because of this, a subject line which is just a long string of characters with no break (e.g., “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”) can actually throw off the formatting of the entire main page. Needless to say, this should be avoided.
Nobody is perfect — not even the great Motley Moose — so I am sure there are many quirks of the Moose that I am missing.
I hope you all stick around to figure them out (and perhaps contribute quirks of your own!).
For those new to the Moose you might not know but, in the three years it’s been on four legs, we’ve developed a set of self-moderating guidelines that mean we generally forebear talking at length about other progressive blogs, and I don’t think there has been one diary on them.
There’s are several good reasons for this: it’s generally bad to talk behind other people’s backs, and also dangerous, as slagging off someone here can come back and bite you at other places. Generally meta discussions are also tediously dull to the uninitiated, the blog equivalent of psephology. At worst, meta is like gerrymandering, changing the rules or the boundaries in order to game a result. At best, it is like talking about electoral mechanisms and voting machines. Dull, dull, dull and usually irrelevant.
I say ‘usually’ because of course gerrymandering districts is a huge slow problem in US politics, leading to the polarisation we see now, and electoral voting mechanisms were rather important in Florida in 2000.
In terms of the left blogosphere, I think the story below is important, and can’t really be ignored. But I’m open to being convinced otherwise, and will delete this diary if it causes too much offence. I’ve stripped out the links in my diary too, for obvious reasons if you read the piece, though I have left one in which precipitated this boycott. If you agree with the boycott, please try not to log in when you read the link.
I don’t know how this will resolve itself. The worst thing that can happen (for you guys) is that I’ll devote all my blogging energies to the Moose from now on. Whatever happens, last night, as dozens of diaries were published with the ‘boycott’ tag and hundreds of previously silent commenters came forward to voice support, was a tremendous moment for me of the power of solidarity. You don’t feel scared that you’ll be punished for speaking out with so many others there to support you. You also don’t care if you will be banished, because all the other great people seem to have down tools too.
So have at it. Please feel free to ignore this diary and its contents. I won’t make a comment if no-one else does. I definitely won’t FP this either.
UPDATE TODAY: Bkos diary is up for 15 minutes before deletion. It consists of this
And then in the comments this statement
As the Black Kos managing editor, I have decided to support this boycott. I felt it was important and necessary to state why we are doing so, in my own words. During the past several months the atmosphere at Daily Kos has become poisoned to the point where there is no longer any meaningful discourse occurring. What was needed was for cooler heads to prevail, and for a more civil tone to be established. Instead, the poisonous atmosphere was allowed to fester and grow until I saw a number of tough sanctions handed out. In my opinion the distribution of these sanctions were neither fair nor even handed. It had a disproportionate effect on members of this community. This unfair distribution is what lead to the calls for the boycott that we support. Justice requires fairness and equity. My criticism of Markos’ decision is based on his tardiness in stepping up and dealing with this situation, until he was forced to use a crude instrument, rather than any personal animosity, ill will, or accusations against him. Waiting as long as he did allowed the rhetoric to get overheated. But when finally responding in anger, Markos labeled many of these people with personal epithets that are close to slander. Daily Kos is his blog in more ways than one.
Black Kos has always strived to be an area for civil discourse on issues that not only directly affect race, but also on its intersections. The intersections of race and gender, of race and sexuality, and yes- race and politics. We have also strived to be Black Kos and not Obama Kos. For example, during the long drawn out Democratic primary we didn’t endorse then Senator Obama until nearly the end, and welcomed Hillary supporters, but we also recognized the historic nature of his run. But history and the Democratic Party also carries a number of heavy ugly stains. Race has divided this party and it’s allies. Race has in the past divided labor movements. Race has divided elections. Race has divided each feminist wave. And yes folks race has divided this blog.
We hope that in our absence people will take time to do some self examination and ask “why are we all here?” I’m here to build a movement. But any movement large enough to be capable of making changes in a country as large and diverse as ours requires being in a coalition that makes you uncomfortable. But your willingness to be able to learn to navigate in a group large enough to make you uncomfortable, is directly related to your commitment to that coalition.
State your case and opinions with passion, express your frustrations with vigor, but always do so with respect. The internet is a medium for communication, but the greatest fallacy in any communication is that communication has in fact occurred. We hope that our in our absence folks ponder that fact.
David aka dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Evenin’, Moose.
I will admit that I’m not much of a poet, though I love poetry deeply. There are a lot of reasons I don’t share poetry here. One is that I haven’t actively written poetry in years. In fact, I burned my “collected writings” in the late spring of 2006. (Perhaps best if I don’t go into why.) The other reason I don’t share poetry here is that I’m a bit embarrassed. Like I said, I’m no true poet. When I do write, I tend to be melodramatic to the point that it makes me shake my head when I go back and read.
Still, the Moose is a bit slow of late, and I’ve shown my ass here plenty of times – so why should I be embarrassed by a bit of bad poetry? And I know we’ve got poets here (I am looking at you in particular, John and Peter). So let’s see it, folks. Good poetry, bad poetry, and everything in between. Sonnets, epics, haikus, whatever. Serious, depressing, cheerful, or cheeky, I wanna see some writing here. Feel free to make up goofy shit on the fly! No one has an excuse not to post at least ONE silly limerick or haiku. 😉
The middle part of the last decade was pretty rough for me. In 2003, my mother was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). My father had passed away in 1999, so my mother lived alone. She was a very independent woman, but eventually she could no longer manage on her own. That’s when I became her caregiver.
Being a caregiver is an all-consuming task, as anyone who has ever been one can attest, especially when it is a debilitating disease, like ALS. One of the hardest things anyone has to experience in life is watching a loved one wither away. When the end finally comes, it can seem like a blessing. That’s a tough thought to deal with. Wanting someone’s suffering to end is basically wishing for him or her to die. There can be a lot of guilt mixed in with the grief. It’s no wonder many caregivers fall into depression after the death of their charge.
That’s when Alex came into the story. Al came to live with me shortly after my mother’s death. He was about 6-years at the time. I had been thinking about getting another dog for years without ever acting on the thought. Quite typically, for me, I had dithered until the decision was taken away from me. My son was forced to move and could not keep both of his dogs. The thought of Al, who was a somewhat emotionally fragile dog, being forced to live with strangers wasn’t a very pretty one. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone anymore.
